Joker? BALATRO know her!

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.

There's still a lot of luck involved, even for us Joker-brained folks! Keep at it!

Something that I've noticed is that if you have a blue seal in your hand when you beat a blind, the planet card that gets created is for the hand that you just played.

Yeah I wonder if that got changed in the patch? I only recently noticed it as well, and had a memory of the blue seal creating a random planet

I thought it was random too

Changed Blue Seal - now creates the planet card of the final poker hand played during the round

https://www.ign.com/wikis/balatro/Balatro_1.0.1_Patch_Notes

Nice, thanks!

I do like the change! Makes the blue seal more powerful

Yeah, I thought blue seal was the weakest of the three before this patch. Good balance

Oh these patch notes are making me feel like an idiot. I thought I was having some insane luck getting a buffoon pack to start every run since the patch lol. duh

the upcoming blinds visible from the boss shop is helpful. Few times it annoyed me not being able to plan that in the previous version. Making joker tags free is also great; so annoying to take the tag and then not be able to afford it because you didn't think it'd obviously cost like $200000000000 dollars to get it.

I should have read this. I didn't realise magician could be used on two cards now (still been using it on one). The midas and madness changes have really nerfed those cards. to-do list change actually makes it potentially useful now.... I won't comment on all these changes but damn, there's a lot of good fixes here!

I was playing plasma on one of the intermediate stakes and got a decent chip deck going, with an eternal Astronomer to try to buff the smaller hands. Then I got an Invisible Joker, and when I sold that, it cloned the Astronomer, eternal sticker and all. Died pretty much immediately after that, sad lulz.

Still can't quite seem to break the Ante 7 barrier, even with some fortunate builds. The Ante just goes through the roof and I get obliterated. I'll keep trying!

you'll get a build when you suddenly start hitting 100k per hand, then you'll be away. Keep looking for those stacking multipliers!

You don't want to get too attached to your deck: some jokers are viable only through the middle antes, and you'll want to replace them eventually, usually in favor of ones that don't have a cap on them, and for the really big hands, as many XMults as you can find.

Madness is pretty good fun, keep feeding him those other joker cards and watch your multiplier build!

dog latin do you have a certain kind of hand you're leaning on in these runs?

also, small comfort but as you play the game you'll keep unlocking more jokers and vouchers and other stuff, many of which make the game a little easier

dog latin do you have a certain kind of hand you're leaning on in these runs?

― z_tbd, Thursday, May 9, 2024 3:45 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

ummm... not especially.. doesn't it all depend on what cards and boons you get? or am i missing an essential mechanic? I think I shut the game down halfway through the tutorial when i first booted it up, so i only learned about half of it

Madness doesn't need to eat other jokers to build. It's possible to win early stakes with a madness joker and some high hand levels.