Joker? BALATRO know her!

yeah, i couldn't figure out why matador doesn't work sometimes. a disappointing card.

https://balatrogame.fandom.com/wiki/Matador_(Joker)
hands that are illegal
hands with debuffs
The Ox (most played hand sets money to 0)
The Arm (decrease level)
and for some reason i can't understand, The Flint (chips and mults halved)

I just got to ante 12 for the first time by using MADNESS. I got it to X6 and then duplicated it. Skipped every possible blind so they wouldn't eat each other. X36 then picked up some more X mults. a mad game indeed.

Beat my first gold stake! Ghost deck, first Joker I got was Green Joker, which I immediately Hexed, and just avoided discarding. Eventually I got a combo of DNA and was able to permanently rent Hologram (fortunately I'd gotten enough money (mainly from hitting Lucky Card 1/20 jackpots) that the $3/round didn't put a dent in my cash), and then got a Hack and started buffing the low cards.

Now I never need to play this game again (we'll see how this goes).

Reading balatro posts full of balatro vocab is almost as fun as actually playing balatro. Almost

lol after trying to get through the orange stake with the yellow deck and failing miserably, I think I'm finally done with this game. THIS time I mean it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmyEsLlXfZ8

it really is a bangin' tune

i turned off the music. got tiresome.

i also turned off the music within a few minutes. i'm a notorious game music hater, and i will say that the biggest problem with mario kart is that it doesn't allow you to mute the music and keep the rest of the game sounds up

I BEAT GOLD STAKE!!!!

Now what to do with my life?

Think I'll go for a walk outside

I'm up to blue stake. Anaglyph deck is the easiest deck yet -- just save those doubles and cash out when a good tag pops up. All jokers unlocked, 149/150 found.

Hanging chad in the beta version is one of the best common jokers, up there with Cavendish. Triggers first card twice more instead of once more. Great with Blueprint and Brainstorm.

so I went for my walk, then came back and did this.

https://i.postimg.cc/VvMXHHHb/Screenshot-2024-04-28-225211.png

unseeded, just running through stakes I hadn't done on decks. Got observatory early and thought "hey, why not get it, who knows, i could run into perkeo later". Got Baron early and thought "hey, who knows, maybe I can make a king deck work". Then ran into playing card to dump my deck. DNA to replicate a gazillion kings. And finally, Perkeo in a random tarot pack. Oh and I got brainstorm early and duplicated it twice with invisible joker. one in the early game, and one in endless.

One of the most unreal, beyond lucky runs. Here's a little clip if you want to see the bonkers.
https://streamable.com/z9mrfc

You can use the seed as well if you want to give this a go.

https://i.postimg.cc/rmfHwz89/Screenshot-2024-04-28-230557.png

I think this run could have potentially gone further than ante 19? I didn't focus on high card until I got perkeo.

Amazing!

i also turned off the music within a few minutes. i'm a notorious game music hater, and i will say that the biggest problem with mario kart is that it doesn't allow you to mute the music and keep the rest of the game sounds up

― z_tbd, Friday, April 26, 2024 3:14 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

a controversial music opinion!

i've watched my roommate play this game for hours bc i love the music. gonna download the soundtrack so i can add it to my writing playlist

I don't like music on casual / "second screen" type games. Only one I liked was in Last Call BBS and I still turned it off after a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUrKDMk_yHc

And finally, Perkeo in a random tarot pack

i'm still a bit of a n00b but how are the consumables giving mults?

nvm i see that's the observatory perk!

Yep! The perkeo/observatory synergy is the strongest thing I've found on the game so far.

Also little tip I found a few games ago. Blueprint/brainstorm work with burglar! I had perked on the left out of the shop to get my cards. Burglar on the left picking a blind to get 13 hands. Then my multi on the left during the actual game. Lot of joker shuffling, but vry worth it.

fantastic game, small thing that's driving me crazy though, the shades of red for diamonds and hearts are slightly different, which is nice! but the shades of black for clubs/spades are (i think) the same. can be hard to discern the difference quickly on the small switch screen.

i don't know if this is a colorblind guy problem or if it's a slight design oversight. the latter seems odd because otherwise this game is basically perfect- they thought of everything!

There is a setting that makes the clubs blue and the diamonds orange. It helps me because II have trouble distinguishing clubs and spades on the steam deck.

yep, high contrast mode. excellent!

i love how the long awaited balatro update is 3MB :)

I beat the gold stake for my second deck (yellow), and it turns out you can get by with sub-S-tier Jokers. Big driver was my Glass Joker, which I managed to get to X4.75, with just Hanging Chad (foil), Greedy Joker (+mult for diamonds, also holographic), Blue, and Fibonacci.

hanging chad is amazing now.

flushes: boring but powerful
https://i.ibb.co/LQ5RyBG/image-2024-05-01-204956014.png

Hanging Chad really makes Lucky Cards viable.

I just found out that you can put red seals on steel cards. :o

FINALLY broke the 100 million chip threshold. That's all the jokers unlocked, and just 3 voucher unlocks left, only 1 of which seems tricky.

just got this seed: L9CNC8ZD
skip the first blind to get a free DNA joker. after the boss, open the 2x spectral pack to make it negative and duplicate it. i couldn't find a legendary unfortunately.

i ended up with most cards being glass aces.

Okay, I'm addicted! Thanks ILX

I haven't been able to beat a deck yet though. I usually manage to get to around the fifth ante fairly easily, then the boss blind just wipes me

Gotta get jokers that scale! That's the ticket

Managed to get to my 7th ante yesterday. I heard that Joker order is important. I wasn't sure how planet cards worked, but I think I understand now

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

This is way upthread, but I'm not sure what it means? Where can I see this?

dunno about the switch, but it's an option on the opening screen on pc

ahhh, maybe it's not on there

also in the options menu

I heard that Joker order is important.

So there are +Mult an XMult jokers, the former which adds the Mult value and the latter which multiplies the Mult value (I needed a long time to tell the difference). So, you want to add all of your +Mults together before you multiply them.

Card order matters sometimes too (glass cards, polychrome) but I don't usually sweat that too much.

Beat the X-ray challenge, which can be a bit of a pain. The key for me was buffing high cards and getting Odd Todd and spamming 9s when I could.

i finally redeemed 10 blank vouchers ヾ( ˃ᴗ˂ )◞ • *✰

ヾ( ˃ᴗ˂ )◞ • *✰

Discovered every voucher to finally get 100% of collection. I think I may be done now. These challenge runs look painful

I'm stuck on orange stake. I think I just need a lucky run.

I spent a few days banging my head against the wall trying to get gold stake, getting to the very last boss bind a few times before looking up a guide. Read this, and got it after a couple runs. Would recommend

https://www.reddit.com/r/balatro/s/hpbWg6iTIs

Honestly the biggest change came from not skipping any blinds (even though there is an incentive to in the first blind). Greater chances of getting a good joker = greater chances of winning. That and changing to high-card builds instead of putting all my eggs in a 5-card basket (full house, flush, straight) that would often not hit and kill my run

Yeah, I've learned a couple basic things lately:
- Decks built around high cards, buffed well enough, are almost fool-proof, unless you have some unlucky boss blinds.
- Mults are important in the early antes, but so are economy cards, ESPECIALLY jokers that get you a consistent income. No money = no purchases, which is duh, but it was a lesson that took a while for me to embrace. Delayed Gratification is probably one of the better ones, particularly because it synergizes well Green Joker.
- Red seals are great, even for cards you keep in your hands. They'll proc for gold cards AND steel cards (the latter of which, combined with Add a Mime joker (retrigger held cards), is essential to getting to ante 12 and/or breaking 100 million chips in 1 hand).
- An alternative approach that I've seen is to start hitting Tarots earlyish, because you want to start weeding out the cards that don't help you ASAP. However, I haven't had much success here, as I don't usually have enough money to get jokers that are good enough to sustain me through even the middle antes.

I've also just finished my collection, though I see there are achievements for Completionist+ (beat gold stake with every deck) and Completionist++ (add a gold sticker i.e. beat gold stake with every joker). No idea if that's something I want to do, though honestly this game transcends want and drives me towards reptilian need.

Lol last sentence otm. As a general rule, I don’t touch booster packs of any sort until I’ve got to the $25 threshold where I’m getting that max interest coming in each time. Happily go down to $0 for a joker that’s going in the early run, but I can’t see a situation where it’s worth it any type of booster pack (unless you get a hermit card! But then again, best to just save your money and not risk it)

it is a general rule though i.e. probably break it every 2nd run for a context appropriate buy. Joker booster packs not counting to this idea either.

Reptilian for sure. Just got "tiny hands" achievement. Now there's just three left: "complete every challenge run", "win with every deck on gold stakes difficulty", "Earn a gold sticker on every joker". The first two seem within the world of possibility. Don't even know how one would go about the last; that's just an insane ask

I'm sure I'm doing something wrong as I can't even beat blue deck. Last night I managed to get a Joker combo that felt totally OP for the first 6 antes, then the Boss Blind totally destroyed me on Ante 7 - couldn't even get close.