Rules

Platform

• You must play on PC, so that other people can replay your seeds to verify your runs. (For example, replaying a seed from the Nintendo Switch on PC would result in a completely different layout.)
• You must play on the latest version of the game, so that other people can easily replay your seeds to verify your runs. (For example, reverting your game to a previous patch before something was changed is not allowed.)
• Every run must be streamed live on Twitch or YouTube. (For example, showing video recordings of your run after the fact does not count.) You must also enable VODs so that administrators can review your runs after they are finished.

Before the Run

• Every run must be played on the "hard" difficulty.
• Every run must be played on a fully-unlocked save file (i.e. Dead God).
• Any mods that change gameplay are forbidden. (For example, mods that add new items, add new rooms, or change vanilla mechanics.)
  • Mods that are only cosmetic are allowed. (For example, sprite tweaks.)
  • Mods that make lucky pennies and tinted rocks easier to see are allowed, since they count as cosmetic mods.
  • Mods that swap the sound effects and/or music are allowed, since they count as cosmetic mods.
  • MinimapAPI is allowed, since it counts as a cosmetic mod. (Note that you must configure MinimapAPI in a way that is comparable to the vanilla minimap, such that you do not get any gameplay-related advantage.)
  • The Planetarium Chance mod is allowed, since it counts as a cosmetic mod.
  • The Time Machine mod is allowed, since it does not alter gameplay.
  • Mods that skip "giantbook" animations such as Whore of Babylon are not allowed, since some people consider them to affect gameplay in the sense that they interrupt the tempo of having to dodge difficult boss patterns.
• When your streak starts, the donation machine in the shop can be at any value between 0 and 999. However, once the streak starts, you are not allowed to change this value in any way other than by donating coins to the machine and bombing the machine. (For example, you are not allowed to edit the save file in manually change the value.) You are allowed to bomb the donation machine in the shop in order to get coins that were donated in a previous run.
• You must start the run as the character from the category you are playing. If you accidentally start a run as a different character from the streak you are working on, you are allowed to exit the game and restore a previously backed up save file in order to preserve the streak count.
• You are allowed to change any value inside the "options.ini" and "config.ini" files. (Not all of the configurable values are properly exposed in the in-game menus, so editing the files manually is needed to enable some options, such as mouse control.)
• You are not allowed to use Cheat Engine, replace the game files, or use any other method of modifying the game.

During the Run

• You must trigger the ending cinematic/cutscene of the goal for the category you are playing. (For example, if you complete the goal but die before jumping into the chest, your streak is not incremented and it is counted the same as if you died to the boss.)
  • Ending a run at Cathedral or Sheol is not allowed. Your streak is reset to 0 in this case.
  • Ending a run by skipping the main goal in order to do a harder goal like Delirium is not allowed. Your streak is reset to 0 in this case.
• You are allowed to end the run on another character than the one you started with. (For example, you are allowed to take Judas' Shadow and revive as Dark Judas.)
• You are not allowed to pause the game in order to gain any type of gameplay advantage. (For example, you are not allowed to pause in the middle of a fight to think about what to do next, go back to the menu to escape damage, reset the Holy Mantle, stop a Restock Machine from "double rolling", select collectibles more easily with Glitched Crown, and so on.)
  • You are allowed to save and quit and continue if it the only way to recover from a soft-lock.
• All runs should have the seeds visible on the screen, so that they can be replayed to verify if you are cheating. (We recommend using the Rebirth Item Tracker for this purpose. Otherwise, you can pause at the beginning or at the end of your run.)
• If you are streaking as Eden and you get TMTRAINER as your random starting passive item, you are allowed to skip the run without losing your streak. (However, this rule does not apply if the TMTRAINER was granted by an Eden's Blessing or a Genesis. If that was the case, then you have to continue the run.)
• You are not allowed to use the in-game console, with two exceptions:
  • Sometimes, you can accidentally take The Polaroid or The Negative in the middle of a streak that requires the other photo. In this case, you are allowed to use the debug console to remove the photo that you took and manually add the photo that you need. For example, remove negative and giveitem polaroid.
  • Sometimes, the game can get soft-locked in a situation where it was not the fault of the player. Most of the time, this can be fixing by saving and quitting, but other times, even that will not help. For example, in some floor layouts, using a Reverse Moon card to teleport to the Ultra Secret Room results in a soft-lock due to the Ultra Secret Room not having any doors. In this situation, it is allowed to use the console to give yourself a Fool card (e.g. `giveitem k1`). More generically, the player is allowed to use the console to get themselves out of a soft-lock which was not their fault. The moderators reserve the right to arbitrarily determine which specific soft-lock situations warrant console usage.
• You are not allowed to look up the recipes for Bag of Crafting corresponding to the seed of your run.