the-binding-of-isaacwrath-of-the-lamb
In Binding of Issac Wraith of the Lamb I picked up a Range Down Pill that I already identified. Some time during the play-through it changed to a Range Up Upgrade. I am not sure when it happened or what happened. I know that that the Lucky Foot Item and the PHD can change negative pill effects, but neither one of those items were picked up in this run.
Are there any other items that could of changed the pill type?
If you hold on to a known negative pill long enough does it change?
TL;DR: Yes, try every pill you find
In the game, according to the list near the bottom of the items page on the wiki, there are
8 pills with definitely good effects:
4 pills with definitely bad effects:
And 5 pills with neutral effect or possibly good or bad effect:
If we assume that the set of pills for each playthrough is uniformly chosen from all of the pills, then it would be wise to take every unidentified pill because it is more likely to be good than bad, and even some of the neutral pills can be useful in the right circumstances.
If we assume a reasonable bad distribution, with 2 bad pills, 2 neutral pills, and 2 good pills (generally worse than random but possibly what actually happens), it may still be wise to take random pills. Some of the neutral pills have useful effects at times, so it would be best to try random pills with as many of the following conditions as possible
So the absolute best time to test pills would be when you have defeated the boss and cleared the level and you have 1 heart and you still need to break a rock somewhere.
However, even discounting the possible benefit of neutral pills, I would say it is still good to test every pill because knowing what pill you have and what pills there are can be useful. If you know that you have an Explosive Diarrhea! pill for example, you can use it against a boss or a room full of enemies that are easier to kill with bombs.
Also, if you know what bad pills there are, you can more accurately determine whether to buy the PhD or Lucky Foot, because they transform bad pills into the corresponding good ones. So if the bad pills are Range Down and Speed Down, and you already have both of those at max, it is probably not worth it to buy the PhD because you will not get any new benefit from those previously bad pills.
Thus I conclude that unless we know that we can get very bad sets of pills, it is probably good to try unidentified pills.
It's a warning to remind you that your health is critical, i.e. that you only have half a Heart left.
As long as you're at half a regular Heart (regardless of how many Soul/Faith Hearts you have), you will soil yourself in terror each time you enter a room.
(If you're playing as ???, this will happen when your Faith is critical instead, because he has no regular health.)
Best Answer
from the wiki:
From The Cathedral
So if you were holding the pill as you entered the Cathedral it would have changed.