Golem

Golem is a living rock statue with a stone-cold expression, and is the second playable character of Fiend Folio: Reheated. He is a trinket specialist, having access to a wide variety of rock trinkets as well as a hub area that features a slew of unique traders to interact with.

Golem starts the run with one Red Heart container and a Soul Heart, two Bombs, and can hold two trinkets at once, starting with both Dirt Clump and Rolling Rock.

Golem does not have a Tainted version as of right now. His closet in Home will only contain a Shopkeeper.

Abilities & Traits

Rocks

Main article: Trinkets § Rocks

Golem's main ability and gimmick is having all trinkets in the game be replaced with rocks — special variants of trinkets semi-exclusive to Golem with their own unique effects.

Rock trinkets are divided into three main rarities, being Common, Rare, and Fiendish. Alongside these rarities are two unique types of rocks:
- fossils are rocks that yield an additional reward when crushed by the Bismuth Golem.
- geodes are rocks that have additional effects when held in the trinket slot alongside another geode.
Some normal trinkets based on rocks can still appear when playing as Golem, which includes Petrified Poop, Lucky Rock, Shiny Rock, Fool's Gold and Massive Amethyst.

Golem's Subway

Golem's second ability, and his most essential regarding his rocks, is having access to the Subway — a central hub room that can be accessed through a special trapdoor and allows fast travel to various special rooms, and contains his exclusive Subway Traders.

The trapdoor to the Subway will first be found in the starting room of the floor, and additional trapdoors can be found in the entrance of the Treasure Room, Shop, Secret Room and Boss Room.
- Upon finding and entering a special room listed above, the respective door in the Subway that leads back to that room will open. However, if the current floor does not contain the special room, then the door to that special room will not appear.
- In Greed Mode, the trapdoor to the Subway will only be located at the entrance of the Shop of the floor, and in the first Boss Room before Ultra Greed on the final floor.

Common Subway Traders

Various traders and machines can be found in the Subway that will allow Golem to process or trade with their rocks:

The Unfinished Golem is a statue that can be destroyed with an explosion, dropping a random rock. Appears on every odd-numbered floor.
Sourpuss the pig will smelt one of Golem's held rocks in exchange for 1.5 Soul Hearts, applying the effects of the rock permanently to Golem. Appears on every even-numbered floor.
The Bismuth Golem will crush one of Golem's held rocks, destroying it and exchanging it for 1 or 1.5 Soul Hearts. If that rock had a Crush Effect, it will activate it. Appears in all Subways.
The Mining Machine costs 3 Coins to use, and will grind one of Golem's held rocks, rerolling it into a different rock. Appears in all Subways.

On floors with Curse of the Labyrinth, both Sourpuss and the Unfinished Golem will appear in the Subway.

Rare Subway Traders

Some additional traders have a rare chance to appear in the Subway, and offer more specialized deals. They have a 20% chance to appear on every odd-numbered floor or floors with Curse of the Labyrinth, and a 5% chance on even-numbered floors. Typically, only one of these traders will appear in the Subway per floor.

The Geode Golem can be given a rock trinket, and will give a reward in return based on the rock. They will only do this once, in which case trying to give them another rock will have them reject it. Destroying them with an explosion will drop a random geode.
- If given a rock that isn't a geode, Geode Golem will crush it and reroll it into a random geode. This can also activate the Crush Effect of fossils.
- If given a geode, Geode Golem will crush it and create two copies of said geode.
Babi is a demon with a pig mask that will sell 1 to 3 random rocks that have a rarity of Rare or higher in return for 1 Red Heart container or 2 Soul Hearts, similarly to Devil Deals. After taking one of the offered rocks, the rest of the options will disappear along with Babi.
- Babi also has chance to sell golden trinkets, in which case they will cost 2 Red Heart containers or 3 Soul Hearts.
- The prices of the rocks Babi is selling can be affected by any item effects that alter Devil Deals, such as A Pound of Flesh, Keeper's Bargain, Your Soul and Dealmakers.
The Midarizer is a golem that will take one of Golem's currently held rocks along with 10 coins and convert the given rock into a golden trinket. After each trade, Midarizer has a 50% chance to fall asleep, where it can no longer be interacted with.
Sweetpuss the pig will take one of Golem's currently held rock trinkets and trade it for a random fossil in return. If Sweetpuss is given a fossil, he will instead crush it, activating its Crush Effect 3 times at once. After paying out with a reward, Sweetpuss will disappear.

Notes

As Golem, a random rock trinket will drop upon visiting the Secret Room and upon clearing the Boss Room of the current floor.
Random trinket drops not from Golem's set spawns, such as from Chests or room clear rewards, will only have a 50% chance of being replaced with a rock trinket — they instead be turned into some other random pickup, with a high chance of being a rune.
When Golem smelts a rock trinket onto himself, the smelted rock's effectiveness will be reduced to 66%, if applicable.
- In addition, smelted geodes will not contribute towards the Geode Bonus while smelted, which can only be active while Golem holds 2 other geodes in his trinket slots.
- Mom's Box will not increase the trinket multiplier of smelted rocks.
- Smelted golden trinkets will have their effect instead reduced by 1.66×.
Sourpuss can be killed by an explosion, and has a 25% chance to drop 2-4 coins, or a 10% chance for a random rock trinket.
Sweetpuss, Bismuth Golem, and the Mining Machine will not drop anything when destroyed with an explosion, so bombing them is not a good idea.
Babi and Midarizer cannot be destroyed by explosions.

Birthright

"Rockier tinted rocks + luck up"

Golem's Birthright gives him +2 luck and gives Tinted Rocks the ability to drop rock trinkets when destroyed. Tinted Rocks will no longer drop Soul Hearts.

Unlockable Achievements

Icon	Name	Unlock Method
	Pet Rock	Defeat Mom's Heart or It Lives on Hard Mode as Golem.
	Golem's Rock	Defeat Isaac as Golem.
	Golem's Orb	Defeat ??? as Golem.
	Cherry Bomb	Defeat Satan as Golem.
	Bridge Bombs	Defeat The Lamb as Golem.
	Massive Amethyst	Defeat Mega Satan as Golem.
	Solemn Vow	Defeat Boss Rush as Golem.
	Dice Goblin	Defeat Hush as Golem.
	Perfectly Generic Object	Defeat Delirium as Golem.
	Eternal D12	Defeat Mother as Golem.
	Astropulvis	Defeat The Beast as Golem.
	Molten Penny	Defeat Ultra Greed as Golem.
	Nyx	Defeat Ultra Greedier as Golem.
	Snow Globe	Get every Hard Mode completion mark as Golem.

Lore

On first blush, Golem appears to be a statuesque automaton fashioned after Edmund McMillen's prodigal son, Isaac McMillen. While such an assumption might hold up on one's intuition alone, it is far from the truth. The dregs of Golem's long and confused history can best be understood by "taking a gander" at his first conception. "Devil's Harvest!" you're thinking; "Probirth!" you squeal, no doubt, taking delight in your own esoteric proto-Biblical apprehension. "Angry Birds!" you are not thinking, because you are ignorant as you are squalid.
Rovio Entertainment began development on Angry Birds in the early months of 2009. The project was shepherded by senior game developer Jaakko Iisalo, whose conception of the game entailed not just the titular "angry birds" but their ideological nemesis, the "bad piggies." The game released to critical acclaim, but not without compromising a hushed, tertiary component of Jaakko's vision. "Ghoulish golems" were to serve as a mutual enemy to both the angry birds and bad piggies, being a rogue construct built by the piggies for their egg-snatching capabilities. The golems would have turned on their masters, however, when they uncovered the truth about their power cores — which were in fact not eggs, but did have an aftertaste reminiscent of European food coloring number E133.
Jaakko Iisalo left Rovio, disgraced, following the rigorous focus testing that the "ghoulish golems" had failed to endure. Playtesters consistently reacted to the golems with abject horror and disgust, citing their "unscrupulous nature" despite Jaakko's insistence that they were "just funny little guys." After Angry Birds cemented its place within the cultural zeitgeist, however, Jaakko Iisalo vowed to redeem his vision for the series. In 2012, Jaakko reached out to Rovio under the alias "Piggie Back" wherein he would serve as the creative oversight for the upcoming spin-off Angry Birds Cheetos. His attempt at retribution inevitably fell short, however, when then-PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi caught wind of Piggie Back's involvement and immediately placed an ultimatum on the app's development, stating "I don't want those ****ing goblins associated with any of our subsidiary brands." Jaakko responded by insisting that they were golems, not goblins, but by then the jig was up.
The "ghoulish golems" would only be realized half a decade later through Jaakko Iisalo's strenuous connection to the Devil's Harvest MOD, in which he served as a shadow influence over Greg, a developer who had not yet earned his excommunication by the time he suggested the character of "Golem." While Jaakko expected a cathartic release in seeing his ideas come to fruition, he was faced instead with the revelation that he had compromised his own artistic vision; he had sullied his creation more than any joyless corporate pressures ever could, and he had done so entirely by his own suggestion. The cataclysmic mental breakdown that followed, characterized by intermittent periods of derealization and intense psychosis, eventually culminated in him reading the entirety of Homestuck completely of his own volition.
The Golem of Fiend Folio is (gracefully) all but completely abstracted from his original progenitor. Rather than being the subject of any amount of developer consideration, Golem's presence within the mod was simply felt through the Mother Orb, which had inexplicably shown up one day and would invariably crop up again any amount of time after a developer excised her from the files. We can only hope to regard the sudden disappearance of the responsible developers that coincided with each resurgence as the merciful downsizing of a bloated development team. The message was as clear as the character that lay swaddled within the deep, non-euclidean strata of alabaster protrusions: rock on, brothers.
When finally presented with the Golem of Fiend Folio: Reheated, Jaakko Iisalo clasped his hands above his head and let loose an exhalation which had stirred in his sternum for perhaps the better part of the past decade. He then suggested the developers add a "cum item."

Trivia

Similar to Fiend, Golem is a returning character from the Afterbirth+ MOD, The Devil's Harvest.
Within the first few weeks of the Fiend Folio MOD's Afterbirth+ release, hidden within the MOD and its files were various ciphers which, when solved, were the keys to password-locked Google pages as part of a hidden community-driven ARG created by the developers. Upon the ARG's completion, Golem was revealed as the second upcoming character for Fiend Folio's Reheated update.
- The full documentary about Golem's ARG can be found HERE.
Instead of a thumbs up, Golem will gesture a "rock on" symbol with his hands. (index and pinky up).
The orb held by the Unfinished Golem appears similar to both the Item Golem's Orb and the consumable Soul of Golem.
If Golem dies to an explosion, he will drop a Soul Heart.
Sourpuss and Sweetpuss are canonically Mammonites; a species named after one of the Retribution MOD's characters, Mammon.
Golem has unique voice lines when taking damage and dying. These were voiced by Fiend Folio developer PkPseudo.
In an early teaser for The Reheated Update, the Bismuth Golem can be seen with a different design, appearing more like a Beggar.

Audio

Various sounds of Golem getting hurt.

Sound of Golem dying.

Gallery

For more images, see the gallery here: Golem/Gallery

Golem's cutscene portrait when transitioning between floors or in the versus screen of a Boss.
Golem's "thumbs-up" gesture — the "devil's horns", AKA the "rock on" hand symbol.
The ghost of Golem, disappointed in your failure.
The trapdoor to Golem's Subway.
Golem's menu portrait.
Golem's starting room tutorial.
Golem's subway tutorial.
Golem's icon in the Co-Op selection menu.
Tainted Golem's locked icon.
(NOTE: Tainted Golem has not been implemented yet; the icon is used on the flipped character select screen.)