Going room to room but can’t find the item you are looking for? Maybe they are in one of the secret rooms of the floor. You can’t find these Secret, Super Secret and Ultra Secret rooms on the map, and as you know the map is generated every time you run the game, so instead of looking up their location you just have to learn how to find them on your own. In this guide I’m going to tell you how to find secret rooms Isaac needs. Read till the end to master finding hidden rooms once and for all.
What you’ll find in this guide:
How to Spot a Secret Room on the Map
After you have explored enough rooms on one floor, check out your map. You will see that there are some empty spaces that are surrounded by 3 or 4 regular rooms that you have explored already. Those empty spaces are the most likely locations for a Secret Room.
Binding Isaac veterans say that if you find a U-shaped pattern, that is an empty space surrounded from three sides, that’s almost always a Secret Room. Secret Rooms might be adjacent to 2 rooms but that’s less likely. Also remember that Secret Rooms will never border a Boss Room, a Super Secret Room or other Secret Rooms. This way you can eliminate some of the options.
How to Get to a Secret Room (Bombing the Wall)
You can’t get to a secret room using a regular door, in that case it wouldn’t have been called secret, right? Instead you have to go to one of its adjacent rooms. From here the common way is to blow up the middle of the wall to get access to the Secret Room. You should put the bomb where a door would have been if it wasn’t a secret room.
For larger rooms, divide them into smaller normal-size rooms in your head and try blowing up the middle of each chunk’s wall separately. There’s a trick here that makes finding the correct spot much easier. Walk right next to a wall from one end to the other. When the camera shifts, that’s usually the spot you should blow up.
You should have access to the middle of the wall, and no rocks, spikes, or anything else should be blocking your way. If that’s the case, you can’t blow up that wall, go to the other rooms and try those walls instead. If the room is long and narrow, similar to a hallway, don’t bother bombing the side walls; instead try blowing up the wall at the end of the room (if it meets the other criteria).
What You Find in a Secret Room
You might find various rare items in a secret room, but what you usually find is a shopkeeper. Killing a shopkeeper (which is not possible by normal attacks but by explosion and certain items) might yield some rewards but it always increases the chance of finding an Angel Room or a Devil Room by 10 percent on that floor.
How to Find Super Secret Rooms
Super Secret Rooms are always adjacent to only one other room, and they cannot be located next to special rooms (like a Treasure Room or Shop). You’d have better luck finding a Super Secret Room if you look for them near the Boss Room or around one of the map’s dead ends.
Basically these are similar to a normal Secret Room but they are rarer to find. You can get to these rooms the same way, by blowing up the wall of the adjacent room.
How to Find Ultra Secret Rooms in Binding of Isaac
Important Note: In the game you only have access to Ultra Secret Rooms and Red Keys if you have DLC Repentance. Otherwise you won’t have this part in your game.
Finding Ultra Secret Rooms is trickier than Secret and Super Secret Rooms because they are not adjacent to any other normal rooms, but they are adjacent to at least two Red Rooms that are connected to normal rooms. I know it’s getting confusing, but if you look at the pictures and try these techniques it will become much easier.
There’s one Ultra Secret Room on each floor, and you have to find a Red Room that will lead to the Ultra Secret Room. The best way to look for this Red Room is once again the process of elimination. These specific Red Rooms are never adjacent to Curse Rooms, Secret Rooms, Super Secret Rooms, and Boss Rooms.
After eliminating these, you will be left with a couple of options. Start with the possible Red Rooms that are adjacent to 3 normal rooms, it’s 11.5 times more probable that they lead to the Ultra Secret Room compared to Red Rooms that are adjacent to 2 normal rooms, and these are 11.5 times more probable to lead to an Ultra Secret Room than a Red Room adjacent to only one normal room.
How to Open Red Doors
These Red Rooms are not opened with a bomb but with an item called the Red Key. You’ll see a red frame when you get close to the possible locations of Red Rooms. Go near the frame and activate a Red Key (this uses a charge) to open it. Once again, there are many Red Rooms on each floor, but not all of them lead to an Ultra Secret Room, so look for the Red Rooms that have the criteria above.
Tip: I found out that these red frames would appear in a place where there should be a normal door but isn’t, just like the places where you had to blow up to get access to a Secret Room. So if you get close to these locations but no red frame appears, it means behind it is probably a Secret Room, and you have to bomb that wall instead.
When you enter a Red Room, the door to the Ultra Secret Room will automatically open, and you don’t have to use the key again.
I tried to explain how you can find different types of Secret Rooms without any sort of items. There are certain items like X-Ray Vision that make all this much easier, but you need to find those items first. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments and I’ll try to find the answer for you.
