Badge
More cubes
Raises the chance that the dead drop a cube. Each one comes with a rank in the afterlife's org chart, from Junior Undead Auditor all the way up to VP of Brains.
Loot, mostly
Items
Stats alone make every run the same. Equipment is what makes them different: five slots, each piece a rule that grows with one of your stats.
Equipment
Hat
Cheaper shop
Takes a cut off every price in the shop. Merchants respect a good hat.
Gloves
Better pick-ups
Potions heal more and power-ups last longer. The right hands for grabbing things off the floor.
Belt
A shield
An energy shield that soaks the hits before your health does. Go three seconds without being touched and it starts to recharge.
Exoskeleton
A third gun
A frame with a weapon slot of its own. Put a gun in it and it fires at your full rate, on its own, while your two hands do the rest.
Rules, not numbers
Epic and legendary pieces carry an extra rule, named after it: Gloves of Blood Pact, a Badge of Second Heart. A few of them:
Second HeartBadge
Once a run, when your health hits zero, you get back up with a minute of regeneration.
Blood PactGloves
The more health you're missing, the harder you hit.
ThornsBelt
The dead touching you take damage every second they keep touching you.
VampireExoskeleton
One health back for every so many kills. A critical kill counts twice.
Piggy BankBadge
When you die, part of your unspent shards turns into gold. Death, but thrifty.
BlinkingGloves
Every few seconds, a blow that would land misses, and you're three meters away.
HourglassHat
Time slows down for the last seconds of every wave.
GreedBadge
Greedlings turn up more often and drop more gold. The legendary one makes them stay longer, too.
Loaded DiceHat
More luck. The shopkeeper noticed, so prices go up a little.
Pick-ups
Health Potion
About one kill in thirty
Heals. Walk into it. Gloves make it heal more; some legendary gloves make a full-health potion raise your maximum instead.
Magnet
Rare
Every shard lying anywhere in the arena flies to you at once. Satisfying in a way that's hard to explain.
Nuke
Very rare
A short build-up, then a blast all around you. Everything in it dies, except bosses, who lose a third of their health and think about their choices.
Power-ups
Invincibility
Nothing takes your health: blows, blasts, orbs, bombs or acid.
Attack Speed
Every gun's clock runs nearly twice as fast: shots, reloads, the minigun's spin.
Damage
Every bullet and pellet hits twice as hard.
Speed
You walk 40% faster. The dead do not.
Slow Time
The dead, their orbs and their bombs move at less than half speed. You don't.
Shards
Soul shards
Blue cubes the dead leave behind. They buy cards in the shop and vanish when the run ends.
Gold shards
From bosses, elites and greedlings. Kept between runs. Unlocks are bought with them.
Red crystals
One for each boss you beat in Descent. Set them into the next biome to open it.