Malice

Malice
Flavor text	"Concentrated hatred"
Appearance
Recharge Time	5 seconds
Item Pool	Devil Room Dire Chest Treasure Room Devil Room Treasure Room
Quality	3
Item Tags
Unlocked By	Defeat Delirium as The Bastard

Malice is an active item added in The Reheated Update.

Effects

• Upon use, Isaac will turn into an invulnerable black fireball that lunges forwards, leaving a large trail of black creep.
  • Enemies hit by the fireball take damage equal to 10 + (5 × Stage).
  • If the fireball hits an obstacle, the effect will end and Isaac will turn back to normal.

For The Bastard only:

• Each enemy killed by the fireball has a 35% chance of dropping a Half Black Heart.
• When the fireball hits a wall, Tainted Fiend will break down into several controllable minions.
  • Minions are all controlled by the player's inputs and all fire tears independently, have smaller hitboxes than Tainted Fiend similar to Pluto, and share most of Tainted Fiend's stats and effects of items he has collected during the run. However, while in this split form, Tainted Fiend and his minions gain an additional negative damage multiplier.
  • A minion is spawned for every full or half-full Black Heart Tainted Fiend has in his health bar, with a minimum of 2.
  • Each minion will die in a single hit, and causes Tainted Fiend to lose the respective amount of health said damage would've dealt. Each minion will gain invincibility frames when one takes damage, but the time of invulnerability is much shorter than normal.
• When in this "split form", using Malice again will instead make all Minions turn into intangible puddles before coalescing together into one spot (indicated by a controllable crosshair) and reform back into Tainted Fiend in his original state.

Notes

• The fireball lunges forward in the direction Isaac is shooting towards. If he's not shooting, then it launches in the direction he's moving towards.
  • The movement keys can influence the direction of the fireball slightly, and can strafe left and right while moving forwards.
• While Isaac is normally invulnerable while in the fireball, touching things that would normally hurt Isaac may still trigger certain "on hit" effects (such as losing the shield granted by Holy Mantle).
  • (NOTE: This is a result of a bug.)

Trivia

• The form Malice takes, despite looking liquid, is referred to as a 'fireball' only in the External Item Description for the item.
  • The reason why is explained by Erfly, a developer, to be because it is a "faux fireball made out of malice".

Gallery

• 

  Malice's alternate appearance when Tainted Fiend is in his split form.