Joker? BALATRO know her!

Apologies for the tortured title.

So far I've beaten the 8th ante for 4 decks, and IIRC they've all been flush-oriented (which has been a pretty reliable strategy). I did find a Joker that creates a stone card every time you pick a blind and I realized how well those can work (e.g. synergizing with Jokers that give bonuses to deck size).

However, the black deck has been a pretty significant difficulty spike, and you have to get your engine going in the first couple antes if you're going to make a decent run. I'm starting to think that buying vouchers for it isn't a great use of money UNLESS it's the one that gives you a +1 to hands.

I'm gonna have to get those aren't I? You're going to make me

There's a compelling argument to make in favor of NOT getting the game, it's not too late for you.

Cosign

Real talk: flush decks boring. Pair and pair adjacent desks far more fun

I agree on both counts!

I finally beat ante 8 with the black deck -- basically followed the tips from this post. The joker set that I had was chip bonus for face cards, the joker that makes all cards a face card, chip bonus for pairs, Supernova, Fortune Teller (which I think was enhanced with an XMult), and an XMult for pairs, and I spammed pairs as much as possible. I also picked up a voucher that rerolls the boss blind (which I used on the extra big boss blind) and still just squeaked through it.

Black deck is a challenge that I just don't enjoy as much as some of the other decks. I keep cracking away at it just to finish up the basic difficulty level but it's kind of a drag to play by comparison.

Flush-focused runs make a lot of sense to get through the lower difficulties but you really need to pump up their hand level to make a dent with flush on ante 9+. I've had winning results for ante 1-8 from pairs or two pairs if I get the right jokers. Blueprint and Brainstorm jokers seem to be key for the highest scores.

black stake even worse than black deck imo

I beat the black stake a lot more quickly than I did the deck, but maybe that's because I've internalized the basic strategies better.

Also it'll be 2 weeks tomorrow since I bought it and I've put 61 hours into the game.

my condolences

big patch incoming

You can opt into the beta to get the patch early, which is what I did, and may have been what helped me beat the purple stake. Orange stake still kind of sucks right now, though.

I bought this a few days ago. Does winning get easier when you unlock more? Because it took me quite a while to win a single game (with the blue deck).

Current strategies I'm using are having a single-suit-heavy deck for flushes and getting the shiny jokers for free chips and mults.
Planet cards seem like they cost too much to be worth it until I am getting the maximum interest every blind.
I'm also not skipping blinds unless the the tag is really good, like a negative joker.

The higher level jokers and vouchers make a big difference but you'll still lose if the cards don't fall your way.

Doing a seeded run can be instructive... playing the same setup multiple times can make it obvious what you should have done in that scenario if you had perfect knowledge

100,000,000 chips in a single hand and finally reached ante 13 today, beating black stake in the process. Ended up with all multiplier jokers. A glass card broken, steel card in deck, campfire and blueprint.

The secret is multipliers and rare cards! Also, check the collection to see how to unlock specific jokers. There are unlocks you won't get unless you are intentional (i.e. discard a royal flush, play four 7 of clubs etc.) those unlocks are pretty essential if you want to go big

Also, check the collection to see how to unlock specific jokers.

I'd already known about that but this was a good reminder -- unlocking some of these specific jokers has reintroduced some fun into the game.

I'm so pissed, I had a deck with like 12 jacks in it last night and could have got the "discard 5 jacks in a hand" joker but forgot it was a thing! Definitely good to keep going back and reminding yourself

Where are your priorities?!

I fell into one of those dazed stupors playing this last night. Even when I called it quits at 2am, lying in bed all I could hear was "dun dun dun dun, dun, dun, dun dun, dun *synth line rises*."

Okay so I wanted to see how people get those silly ante 40 decks and found this. I was so close on a real run! But the blasted observatory wouldn't show up :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3G5NhnfI1Y

Plasma deck a little silly broken

wow, that's nothing like what my games look like. amazing that this game is only 60 MB.

The music in this sounds like a balearic cover of "Nutshell" by Alice In Chains

Anywhere, I got this on Switch in the recent sale. Only just started playing, but j can see why people are feeling it

i think my favorite card is Ceremonial Dagger -- the one that kills the joker to the right for an increased multiplier.
on the other hand, madness (the one that eats random jokers) might be the worst card? it's madness. madness.

i got smeared joker yesterday and that's a crazy card too.

working my way thru the challenges, beat half so far
just tried that madness joker and it was an absolute disaster lol

I beat the orange stake with the ghost deck.

madness pretty terrible sadly. Ceremonial dagger would be an okay card if it ate the joker on the left. I find it pretty garbage in its current state

smeared joker great (except that it makes you play flushes which are kinda boring ngl)

Madness is a great early-game joker imo. It gains .5x every round even if you have no other jokers to feed it with.

I got it first round and thought I was finally going to unlock the "win with under 4 jokers" joker, but it doesn't scale well enough for the late rounds at higher stakes.

I also play primarily plasma deck where it's not as big a buff

Why does it matter which direction the Dagger eats? If it's because of Swashbuckler, they changed its behavior in the patch so that it can be anywhere.

I just had a run with Egg + Swashbuckler, that was an easy win.

xp Because you typically want to put your multipliers on the right, and they're your most valuable jokers.

I had egg + bull + a bunch of money generating jokers with the plasma deck and it weas the easiest win i've had. Game played itself. Also how I finally got the $400 joker!

By multipliers I mean the Xtimes mults. Not the standard multis

It's okay if you always have a buffer joker before you hit the Xtimes on the right. But the best decks have Xtimes on Xtimes. A good run beating higher stakes for me is normally a stock multi followed by as many Xtimes as possible. maybe a big chip generator on the far left. By the time I'm past ante 4 on a winning high stakes run, Dagger has become more of a hinderance than a help in my experience

Oh, I didn't know that the order mattered for scoring. I think there was a tutorial screen about that and then I forgot about it. Luckily I was usually putting the red X cards on the right anyway.

Likewise it took me a while to realize "first played card" was the leftmost one and not the first one I clicked on.

thinking of making a clone of balatro but using cribbage rules. i get excited when i get hands like 8876.

The only placement tbat matters is having your xtimes on the right. You want to multiply the multi when it's at it's biggest number. Can also matter for poly/glass cards in the hand if your jokers are adding multi to cards played. I place my glass/poly's on the far right when playing out of habbit even when it doesn't matter.

One more voucher to unlock (stupid playing card one) and I'll have a 100% completed collection of everything. I really went overboard with this one

Wait, you can move the dagger to the left after the round has started! of course i'll eventually mess up and have it eat a legendary.

That's exactly what's happened to me every time I've had it with a decent XMult, which is 2-3 times now.

how often are folks skipping blinds? i've probably only done it once so far.. should i be taking advantage of this mechanic?

True abanana!

I only skip with the higher stakes where you get no cash from the small blind. Do love me a free shop in the early game or a negative joker tag when it comes up

yeh definitely worth checking the tag to see if it is worth it to skip - sometimes you get a lot of money or a free mega buffoon pack when you have no jokers

Yeah skipping really only becomes essential with harder stakes where you feel the money constraints the most (I've been playing the beta, which gives you the joker for free instead of making you pay for it). In the lower stakes, you can earn enough just playing blinds to buy what you need.

I am skipping more often now. There is a great joker called Throwback that gives you more red multiplier every time you skip a round.

I find a lot of the details on the various packs quite hard to read when playing handheld on the Switch. I switched off the CRT effect though, and that has helped a little. I recommend

balatro!!

quick q, longer explanation. the q: can ya'll recommend some good videos/channels for maybe...intermediate players?

longer explanation: it's easy to find beginner strategy and tips, and it's easy to find people who can make it to ante 16 and rack up quadrillions of points who will show you how to do the impossible. i'm somewhere in the middle i think. i've logged about 95 hours, 127/150 jokers unlocked, have defeated almost all of the decks. i still need to finish zodiac deck, i haven't gotten past green stake yet, and i've only done a couple of the challenges.

example of what i keep finding and don't want:

https://i.imgur.com/akyAgKo.png

it's not the clickbait headline, it's the 44 minute length of video, and knowing that the one secret i need is splintered into hundreds of little secrets that he's going to haphazardly mention throughout the video. i just can't do it. i've never clicked on it, i just can't do it.

is there a youtuber out there who is like "here's a really fun and helpful trick - i'll tell you all about it 2 minutes"

actually a texts guide recommendation is what i'm looking for i think lol

(ok, maybe i can just let this guy be my guru: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7cBL6MvZyw)

The videos aren't short, but I've learned a lot from this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn-z2hdH1Co

gotta make videos longer to get more ad breaks
it sucks

For folks who've beaten the gold stake: How quick are you to start a new run if you don't get certain Jokers in the first ante?

mult bonuses on cards are also good since the x mult from the steel cards applies PRIOR to any bonuses dealt by jokers

It took me forever to beat my first deck, and then I beat the next one first try

Out of iOS today. Wondering how long I should wait to ruin my life.

I’ve ruined so many great runs by doing something careless. Like forgetting that I need to play 5 cards on a boss blind. Or hitting discard instead of play.

I started playing as soon as it hit iOS. Been too lazy to actually install it off steam.

Several days later... I have logged many, many hours of Balatro

Jeff, don't feel too bad about that. I had the Joker that allows you to skip cards but still have a flush and then... thought I had it the next game

duh, on a straight. I meant a straight!

now we know why I'm flubbing

I just did it again!!!! Only play one hand type, I play a flush, as those are pretty easy to replicate. But I didn’t realize that it was actually a straight flush!!! Impossible to get again.

Why am I playing this again I need to stop before the spiral happens.

Just popping in to say the more I see the pun in the title of this thread, the more I appreciate it

You flatter me but thanks.

That feeling when you spend an hour trying gold stake and failing, I'm not sure there's a worse feeling in gaming.

I'm deep into this again, and have been trying to beat additional Gold Stakes (Plasma, done). That said, I've been banging my head against the Checkered Deck because the flush build is such a siren song that can leave you SOL -- e.g. if you get a Supernova, then you feel obliged to keep playing flushes. That said, I FINALLY beat Orange Stake (my highest for Checkered), with a Wee Joker (that I got up to +376 chips), Supernova (+50 Mult for flushes), Perkeo, Burnt Joker, and Hologram (X2.5). Perkeo turned out to clutch because it creates a NEGATIVE copy of a consumable -- I think I got a third of my deck to be Magicians, then once I got the Death card, I was able to continuously duplicate my 2s.

I cleared gold stake for the Painted Deck (bringing me to 10 decks now), and it was a lot of fun. You start of with -1 Joker slot, but +2 hand size, which makes higher base hands a sustainable strategy: in my case, I buffed Full Houses and Straights to levels 10 and 4. On my winning run, I got a Madness (and a rental, to boot) early but managed to eventually buy some decent Eternal Jokers: a holographic Banner (+chips) and a Shoot the Moon (Queens in hand give a +13 Mult), and never got a typical scaling Joker like Ride the Bus or Green Joker. Lots of planet cards and deck manipulation of course but it was a novel way to play for me.

Still working through everything, up to gold stake on blue deck. Really hate rentals.

Yeah rentals can really put a stink on your favorite Jokers. However, I'm up to my eyes in the hell of the Black Deck -- completely running headfirst into a wall on Purple Stake.

Took down Black Deck, Purple Stake with a frankly obscene setup. I got an Immolate early, which gave me 8 Queens.

Jokers:
- Smiley Face (+Mult for face cards)
- Scary Face (+Chips for face cards)
- Bloodstone (1/2 chance of xMult for hearts)
- Hanging Chad
- Sock and Buskin (retrigger all face cards)

I didn't even get a scaling +Mult until AFTER I beat Ante 8, and I think I broke the million chip payout with an unleveled high card at one point.

I beat Gold Stake with the Black Deck, now to never play this again.

I was pretty mercenary by immediately starting a new run if I didn’t get a good Ante 1 tag; I got the one that made all items in the next shop free, and I was able to use that to survive the early rounds until I got a Bootstrap + Bull combo, and then I got a couple other economy Jokers (one of which was also polychromed) to feed them, topped off with a Hologram.

Completionist+ done!

Now to never play this again!

This game is awesome. Finished my first run with a yellow deck. Jokers used included the Baseball card, Walkie Talkie, and the epic Obelisk Cavendish combo, which was the key to victory. Early on I used the Ouija spectral, which converted all my cards to 10s, which was perfect with the Walkie Talkie. After abusing that I was able to take advantage of the Obelisk, as I had so many 2 pairs played (8), I could play any other hands long enough to start ballooning my scores to about 100,000 per hand as long as I avoided going above 8 for each hand played. In this way, with all those 10s and a high number of discards, it was trivial to get full houses, four of kinds, and then fall back on a pair or high card if need be. Obelisk had over X6 mult in the final boss blind. Ended up blowing it post victory in the 26th round because I ran out of hands to play before the Obelisk reset. Alas, but still felt like an epic win.

I dropped like 500 hours into Picross the last 2 years hopefully this will scratch a similar itch without having to buy 9 variants of the same game.

Xps nice Leee! But there's still completionist++....

Nearly done all the challenge decks, then it's just + and ++ but don't think i have it in me for that grind

Spoiler alert: I've been going after Completionist++ since my last post and I'm at the low 800s (out of 1200) for Joker stickers. But now I feel completely fed up with the game, and I think it's affecting my sleep again so I'm taking another (real) break this time.

I think I done for real this time, especially after dreaming about it (I knew it was a dream because I had a great synergetic set of Jokers on gold stake.)

i was trying not to read a bunch of info about how to win the game its more fun figuring it out but got frustrated trying to get to ante 12 so i looked up how to do it i tried a baron build and got there first try even tho i never got the baron my deck was just all steel kings so it worked out anyway, def a totally different approach than i was taking

lol i was trying to make that spoiler not strike dont read the struck text unless you want to learn leet strats

think im done now this game is too good for me to play anymore, was still missing a couple planet cards i got the hands but they hadnt shown up in the packs yet oh well que sera sera

apple arcade free trial is running out anyway im not trying to live the apple arcade life

ha what happened one month ago that made me want to play video games

balatro is this thing that consumes you until one day you're like FUCK i LOVE it i'm DONE FOREVER what an unforgettable time <3 DAMMIT

The dumb thing that pulled me back in was the new Dave the Diver and Slay the Spire decks.

completely missed the Slay the Spire II news, stoked for the madness

balatro is this thing that consumes you until one day you're like FUCK i LOVE it i'm DONE FOREVER what an unforgettable time <3 DAMMIT

― z_tbd, Wednesday, December 4, 2024 6:49 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Got completionist last night after some voucher fishing, and I think I'm done. Only one gold stake win, but I'd really been getting the sour-taste-in-mouth tiredness when my ratbrain was insisting on new run, new run.

You are a marvel, Balatro. Goodbye for a while - maybe we'll meet up and do some chill yellow deck, white stakes runs next year.

I started playing this the past couple of weeks and it’s been fun. I am not good at it at all but tonight I had a run where I was suddenly getting over ten million a hand for certain hands. It was a combo of retriggers and face cards with not just +mult but also doubling mult multiple times in a single hand. I don’t know how easy that would be to reproduce. Anyway it was wild to go from a best hand of just over 100,000 to one of nearly 19,000,000

Nice! Were you able to reach/beat Ante 12 with that hand?

I lost at ante 11. The type of hand I needed didn’t come out during round 31. But 18,822.440 is still a pretty nice best hand to have

Reason I asked about ante 12 is that if you care about unlocking stuff and earning achievements, it's a prerequisite for unlocking a new Joker.

And to answer your implicit question, hands with re-trigger synergies are extremely powerful but fairly difficult to set up -- really impressed you got one so quickly!

Thanks Leee that's good to know. After some digging it seems the vital joker for the scores I was getting was a legendary called Triboulet that I got off a spectral pack. That was the one doubling the mult every time I retriggered a King or a Queen. The two jokers with retrigger meant the first card in the hand was being played 3 times anyway and another retrigger each for all face cards so if it was a two pair (at level 15) with Kings and Queens (and I had turned most face cards to being mult or bonus cards) I'd get this massive cascade in the score

im back baby

https://i.imgur.com/7rdguV1.png

https://i.imgur.com/2t7TQN6.png

Very nice!

tyty

good lord!

i just watched a video of a guy playing a baron build and copied him tho not as well, its not that hard once you get the pattern tho youll mostly fail think i tried like fives time before i got that one, basically do normal jokers at the beginning while trying to get a lot of money so you can roll for the rare jokers you need and start filling your deck with as many steel kings as possible or steel kings with red seals are even better hope you find the baron and mime and jokers that copy them once youre set play high card and watch those kings trigger baby

you can also do a similar low card build with the hack instead of the baron

think it was this one if you like watching two hours of a guy play video card game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrElMqWDfGM

lol i have watched way too many of that guy's videos, and the balatro university videos

The Balatro University guy is apparently a math PhD?

its crazy to have a whole university devoted to balatro i guess thats just how things go these days

3.2e17 in student loans

lol