The Virus

Item Icon
Pickup Quote	"Poison touch + speed up"
Entity ID	5.100.13
Character Appearance
Item Pool	Ultra Secret Room Devil Beggar Treasure Room Treasure Room
Quality	0
Item Tags
Collection Grid	(page 1, column 3, row 2) (page 1, column 13, row 1)

The Virus is a passive item.

Effects

• Inflicts poison on enemies who make contact with Isaac.
  • The poison randomly hits either 2 or 3 times, dealing a total of 4 or 6 damage.
  • The poison randomly hits either 2 or 3 times, dealing damage equal to Isaac's tear damage each tick.
  • The poison hits a total of 6 times against normal enemies and 3 times against bosses, dealing damage equal to Isaac's tear damage each tick. The effect can only be applied to bosses roughly every 6 seconds.
  • The poison lasts for 6-7 ticks and deals damage equal to (0.2*HeartContainers^2) + 2, where HeartContainers is the total number of heart containers and bone hearts Isaac has.
• Enemies take 12 damage upon contact with Isaac.
• Enemies who are killed after they have been inflicted with this type of poison have a 20% chance to drop Black Hearts.
• -0.1 speed down
  • This is not applied until the next time Isaac's speed stat is updated.
• +0.2 speed up.
• Template:Transf

Notes

• The black heart is only dropped if the poison was caused by The Virus. The item's effect doesn't extend to poison tears.
• If an enemy doesn't do contact damage, The Virus can safely be applied to it for more chances at black hearts. Black flies, Mulligans, and Hosts are the most common enemies this can be applied to.
  • With Skatole, Hives and Swarmers will constantly spawn normal Flies, meaning they can be endless sources of Black Hearts.
  • Although Stonies and Shopkeepers can't be visibly poisoned, they still can drop Black Hearts if destroyed after being touched.
• Enemies won't start taking poison damage if they are pushing up against Isaac; The Virus will be constantly trying to apply poison and refreshing the ticks where poison damage would occur.
  • Gnawed Leaf and The Virus can still work if Isaac has a short-range orbital such as Cube of Meat or Ball of Bandages, as it will kill enemies pushing against Isaac that are not taking poison damage while still dropping Black Hearts.

Synergies

• Invulnerability: Contact while invincible poisons enemies.

Interactions

• Odd Mushroom: The speed down from the Virus does not stack with the Odd Mushroom; if both are collected, only a total of -0.1 applies.

Unlockable Achievements

• 

  Little Baggy - Pick up any 2 of the following items in a single run: Roid Rage, The Virus, Growth Hormones, Experimental Treatment, and Speed Ball ( Any 2 items that have the 'syringe' item tag).

Trivia

• Upon picking up The Virus, Isaac looks very similar to Lust, which is fitting since Lust also drops The Virus.
  • As such, The Virus may be a reference to an STI.

Seeds

PC 26ND Z11A (Treasure Room adjacent to spawn)

PC 1389 DNH1 (Treasure Room adjacent to spawn)

PC FKVG 36FZ (Lust fight right of spawn)

PC A643 V2FE (Treasure Room adjacent to spawn)

PS4 913D J63B (First floor Treasure Room)

3DS TKYD 8DRA (Treasure Room adjacent to spawn)

Switch FEKK E8JS (First Golden Treasure Room)

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
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