I have been using a new strategy recently where I bind the gourmet knife and get as much gold as possible in the wolfsbane woods to get as many upgrades immediately as possible, this has resulted in me paying a lot more attention to the first shop and I have found an item that has been previously unexplored (as far as I know.)

The poison orb is a health orb that only spawns in the first shop but whatever damages it dies immediately, including bosses. I have successfully insta killed the first 2 bosses with it but not tried the 3rd or 4th, my idea is that it could possibly skip the first phase of the final boss? as in kill eva through to bubble, but if not if can definitely save time killing the half elf.

It does of course introduce a heavy layer of health management and makes an upgrade like the metal ram very good, so it is potentially not viable, but I thought I would at least mention it here so other people can test how it works against bosses, and just keep us on an even field.

Update: If you use the poison orb on the final boss it will not kill eva through the bubble, but it does destroy all 4 glass chambers, if you use it after the bubble is down then it will instakill the boss

I have played around with it as well but saving the orb until Eva has been to difficult for me to do consistently. I think there is to much rng involved to try and bank on that as your strategy because its spawn rate is so low. I still buy it whenever I can though.

I had the knife bound for a while in my runs but did not have good luck with it, but ill chalk that up to poor rng on my part. I did have a run with +50 gold going into the first peculiar room.

Yeah my idea with binding the knife is that it's faster to get lucky upgrades earlier than later, it's for sure not consistent though, and neither is the orb, it's just another thing to think about.