Iron Heart

The Iron Heart is an item placed in a newly spawned player's inventory. Upon being used in Expert Mode, it enables or disables several effects on every character in the current world:


 * Natural Health regeneration is completely disabled.
 * Recovery Potions cannot be used.
 * Direct damage taken by the player now deals a minimum amount of damage, dependent on the player's max HP. The minimum damage is calculated as 40 + 10% of the player's max HP. Hits that would deal more damage than this minimum will deal their normal damage.
 * If the taken damage is below (and therefore becomes) the minimum damage, it plays a softer custom hurt sound.
 * If damage taken is above the minimum damage it plays a louder custom hurt sound.
 * This minimum damage is not affected by any Damage Reduction.
 * A secondary effect of Iron Heart is that the player's life hearts will become light gray in appearance, with black 'eyes' on either side of each, matching the appearance of being heart-shaped skulls. They remain with this appearance even after using Life Fruits or other permanent power-ups.
 * The player will have a custom death sound.

Tips

 * Due to disabled life regeneration, Iron Heart may be used to trigger certain effects that only happen when below certain amount of health such as Necklace of Vexation, or Old Duke's Scales.
 * The player can manually lower their health to trigger these effects by using items such as Lucrecia, Nullification Pistol, or Thorn Blossom.

Trivia

 * The appearance of the life hearts after using the Iron Heart is a reference to the game Hollow Knight, in which the player's mask-based life meter bears a striking resemblance.
 * This item's name is a reference to Hollow Knight's perma-death mode, known as "Steel Soul".
 * The life hearts' appearance also references the life hearts in Minecraft's perma-death mode known as "Hardcore", as the mode causes the player's hearts to develop eye-like streaks.
 * In previous versions of the mod, this item made dying while a boss is alive permanently kill the player in a similar manner to Hardcore.
 * Additionally in previous versions of the mod, this item became unusable after a minute of runtime in the world.