Jacob's Ladder

This article is about the Afterbirth † item granting electric tears. For the renamed Antibirth item granting Angel Room shops, see The Stairway.
**Jacob's Ladder** is a passive item added in *The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth †*.

## Effects

* Tears fire 1-2 sparks of electricity in random directions upon hitting an obstacle or enemy.
* Tears fire 1 short-ranged spark of electricity in a random direction upon hitting an obstacle or enemy. When an arc strikes an enemy, it will strike another nearby enemy, chaining up to four times.
* Sparks deal half of the tear's damage.
	+ Sparks behave like spectral and piercing lasers and will arc to hit enemies that are close enough, even striking multiple ones in a row.
	+ An enemy can take damage multiple times from sparks of a single chain. If an enemy take damage from a tear, it does not take any damage from the chain which the tear causes.
	+ Tears that hit the floor due to running out of range do not generate arcs.
	+ If the floor is wet, such as Downpour, Dross, Flooded Caves, some rooms in Scarred Womb and after using , the arcing distance is increased.

## Synergies

* Multiple battery-themed items can are able to buff the sparks
	+ / : Damage of electricity is increased to 75% of the tear's damage if Isaac owns at least 1 copy of those items, to 100% if Isaac owns both.
	+ /  / : Increases arcing distance of sparks.
	+ /  / : Increases amount of arcs a spark can generate.
	+ : Allows sparks to arc on the same enemy multiple times.
* : When Isaac uses Abyss to absorb Jacob's Ladder it turns into a pale blue locust. The locust can create arcs of electricity dealing 0.1 damage per tick.
* : All of the split tears will be electrified.  Also, the sparks that pass through the prism will be split.
* /  Azazel /  Tainted Azazel: The beam gains a light blue tint, spawning sparks at the end of the beam and near enemies hit by the beam.
* : Spawns the sparks for each tick they hit.
* : Tears block enemy shots as normal and will then spawn the sparks where the shot was blocked.
* : Sparks deal damage based on the tear's, increasing with distance. No extra damage is applied by the distance covered by the spark.
* : The knife will occasionally generate sparks when hitting an enemy.
* Spectral tears: The tears can spawn sparks while passing through obstacles, and a tear can spawn sparks only once in this way.
* Tainted Magdalene: Hugs cause sparks to spawn.
* Tear effects: The tear effects will be applied over the sparks as well.
	+ : The poison caused by the sparks will not drop black hearts.
	+ / : The boogers do not spawn sparks when directly hit on an enemy, but their sparks spawn the boogers for each enemy hit.
	+ : The sparks coming off of needle shots also act as needle shots themselves, allowing entire rooms to be killed instantly.
* /  /  / : Lasers gain a light blue tint and generate sparks.
* : Spawns the sparks for each tick they hit.

## Interactions

* /  Azazel: The beams do not spawn the sparks.
* : The sparks cannot hit the enemies' backs for the extra damage and bleeding.
* /  / : Split tears can spawn the sparks.
* / : The bombs do not spawn the sparks.
* :
	+ Only main tear can spawn the sparks.
	+ Burst tears can also spawn the sparks.
* : The sparks spawn only when they hit a wall.
* : The Ludovico tear spawns a large number of sparks when in contact with an enemy, but not on obstacles.
* : The knife does not spawn the sparks.
* : The sparks will decrease in damage based on how much damage the tear has lost. The spark's damage also dereases by the distance covered by the spark.
* : Tears will only spawn the sparks when hitting enemies.
* : Both swing attacks and projectiles can spawn the sparks.
* /  /  / : The lasers do not spawn the sparks.
* : Only spawns the sparks when hitting obstacles.

## Trivia

* This item refers to high voltage traveling arcs, which are colloquially known as Jacob's ladders. It creates a small electric arc rising between two metal rods, as the item graphic represents.
	+ The name is a reference to The Book of Genesis from the Old Testament. In Genesis 28:10-19 Jacob rested on his journey and had a dream; in the dream, he saw a ladder that served as the connection between Heaven and Earth.
* This item's new effect closely resembles  from *Antibirth*, which was added to the game with a different effect.
* was originally named Jacob's Ladder in *Antibirth*. It was renamed when being ported to avoid a naming conflict.