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?

just shift+tabbing over to say:

oh nice, just realized Matador (get $8 whenever you trigger the boss blind ability) pairs really well with the Tooth boss (lose $1 for ever card you play) :)

i'm now at the point where i will sabotage a run just to buy an undiscovered card

oh nice, just realized Matador (get $8 whenever you trigger the boss blind ability) pairs really well with the Tooth boss (lose $1 for every card you play) :)

5 minutes later update: uh, no that doesn't work? weird! i played 4 hands against the Tooth, each time triggering the boss' ability, and the Matador never gave me any money, or gained sell value, or gave me anything when I cashed out? down with the Matador!

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.

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.

Just finished a plasma deck run on the purple stake:

https://imgur.com/a/g2kkMmK

Bull + Blueprint + Brainstorm + Mail-in Rebate early on carried me very quickly through basically all the antes since I could triple my chip stack at any time. My only other Joker was Supernova, which I used to Mult high cards.

i can't believe i'm still playing this game. i'm way behind most people who have put in the time i have (about 120 hours), but i just beat blue stake with Abandoned Deck, so i suppose i'm trying to at least take down purple, orange, and gold stakes before i throw in the towel.

i haven't really used the madness card too much, but it really starts to come in handy once the eternal cards come into play! in my last run i had 4 eternal cards + madness, so every blind it would just gain X0.5 without destroying any of my (pretty weak) other jokers

Got all the way to the boss blind on ante 8. But it was The Wall (the one with the extra big ante). I got surprisingly close to beating it but alas...

Trying to complete gold stake with every deck (in my case plasma) has entirely killed my desire to play anymore.

Finally beat the red deck! Wahoo!

I think in this case I concentrated all my celestials on pair but using the joker that scores all the cards you play.
I also had the joker that gives you a bigger hand and no discards, which is pretty underrated in fact.
Then I had it retrigger face cards while adding a bunch of boons through steel and glass cards.
Well, it worked. It also meant that playing was a doddle - I just had to have a pair in my hand and I could just play my strongest cards next to them without having to think too much

This game is most fun when not having to think much imo. High-card build with bonkers jokers the best way about it

i finally started playing this instead of just watching my roommate play it. could not get past ante 6 with any deck... until last night, when my combo of jokers was so good i got to ante 12 with the red deck

my hand of choice was straight, which i upgraded to a ridiculous extent thanks to the space joker

I find straights the hardest hands to get consistently. I only bother with them on the deck with no face cards.

straight is pretty dang good if you get Four Fingers and Shortcut

i dunno, i seem to get straights more than things like four of a kind

straights are more likely than 4 of a kind, the hierarchy of scoring is in order of the probability, so flushes are slightly more rare than straights, full houses more rare than flushes etc. etc.

in poker, but not in a game where you can edit the decks

yes v true

The spectral card which changes all the cards to the same rank is very helpful for 4 and 5 of a kind, and potentially flush five as well

ok this game is ruining my life but i finally beat gold stake (with abandoned deck). that's the first time i ran across a Wee Joker (add +8 chips every time a 2 is scored) early on, and i combined it with DNA to create many, many 2s, and the Ride the Bus joker is perfect for abandoned deck so the mults were crackin

Wee Joker was adding 650+ chips by the end of ante 8!

sorry. this game...it's not right

This rocks so dang hard pic.twitter.com/xckNR6yvG7

— localthunk (@LocalThunk) May 15, 2024

Yeah the game was literally breaking my sleep cycles -- I'd wake up super-early (4-6am) without being able to go back to sleep because I *had* to play. I'm kind of glad gold stake turned me off because now my sleep has gotten loads better.

I finally won gold stake. Madness on ante 1, plus 3 eternal X-multiplier jokers. More luck than skill.

https://www.gematsu.com/2024/08/balatro-friends-of-jimbo-update-now-available

I'm going to try to resist playing this again, however.

new 'meta' according to balatro reddit is high card/or pair builds + blue seals and held-in-hand effects. jokers should mostly focus on + and x mult. building up chips should be done with tarot cards on your deck

quite fun, and esp with the mime joker i finally see how a build centered on steel cards works. even got the baron joker which effectively turns all kings into steel cards! quite fun

previously felt blue seals were nice to have but not 'OP' as the redditors claim. but think i get it now. hoping to find the voucher that gives you more consumable slots for my next game w/ this build

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

Beat all the challenges! Jokerless was last, and my general strat was to focus on good old straights, and find as many ways to level them up through planet cards. To that end, I ended up with 3-4 blue seal cards that I would dig for so that I'd average one straight level per round, and in the end I was able to one-shot the final boss blind. I also pared my deck down from the ends so that I could concentrate on straights from 4-Q or so, and added a few glass cards that I didn't play till the boss of Ante 8.

All that's left is the Competion++ slog.

nice

What else is nice is that I'm 69% of the way to C++.

ayye

I’m a bit behind. I only just unlocked challenges.
I’m annoyed at myself because I was on a near certain ante 12 and managed to play a high card instead of the straight I meant to play

what is completion++? what does it add that original completion doesn't have?

Whoops, that's supposed to be Completionist++.

Anyway, Completionist is for unlocking everything in your Collection menu, Completionist+ is for winning on Gold Stake with every deck, and Completionist++ is for beating Gold Stake with every Joker.

this game is MSG

Completionist+++

you must work the word "Balatro" into your gravestone epitaph, with a pre-paid receipt from the gravestone manufacturer

You become a Balatro at that point. It is your being. Your existence. Your universe.

balatro fever has swept the country as hundreds of fans race to the grave to become balatros

god, this is like highlander

balatro: origins

this is how balatro began - i mean, how THIS balatro began

*in therapy, later*

sometimes i feel like a glass card

Was out at dinner in a fancy restaurant with my parents recently and was explaining to my father some Balatro strategies (he just picked up the game) I could feel half the room start looking at us as I was explaining the differences between +mult and xmult Jokers.

Sickos unite.

I regret to inform everyone that I've gotten a few more gold stickers and am now at 71%.

You want to talk about a bad beat, I'd managed to get a 5OAK with Jacks going powering Supernova, with a Sock and Buskin to retrigger them. I'm down to my last hand because I'm digging for a card with a blue seal, and as I play my Jacks, I actually played a FLUSH Five instead, which was the first time I'd played it so I didn't get much out a Mult. Naturally I end up 10k chips short of the blind.

I have some catching up to do. Just golded my first deck (checkered) and now trying to unlock the few remaining jokers so I can commence with golding more decks do the challenges with as many options as there are in the game. How the f do you get 100,000,000 in a hand for the Stuntman? Also creating 30 clubs and diamonds is going to be a pain too. At least discarding 5 Jacks and playing 4 7 of clubs feels doable with a couple well timed tarot cards.

How the f do you get 100,000,000 in a hand for the Stuntman?

Lots of steel cards and/or glass cards, preferably with red seals.

Should I get the switch or the iPad version??

ipad imo

(I have both)

iOS version surprisingly playable on iphone too, if your screen is big enough

you can only get it on apple products via their arcade subscription which is pretty annoying so id go switch unless you just want the arcade subscription in order to play many casual titles

is that true? I don’t think I have their subscription but I still have iOS balatro. unless I unwittingly have their subscription somehow

No you can buy it for $10 outside of Apple Arcade.

oh its just on the mac computer that you can only get it through the subscription thats nice

sigh
i bought this game because everybody says it is good
but every time i try and play a video game it just reminds me of how stupid i am
i can't figure out how to play this game

Is this free game similar-enough in game mechanics, or is it a completely different thing?
https://krajzeg.itch.io/solitomb

I found it pretty addictive!

Kate, best to not get into it in the first place particularly if you have an addictive personality. I need to quit the game cold turkey because it's starting up my sleep, again. If there are people who can play this casually I envy them.

Screwing up my sleep.

Kate, I had to explain the game to my father over Christmas as he was having a bit of trouble with it, but he also expressed concern that this game was starting to take up his entire free time. Gotta definitely ration it, I keep it to 2-3 runs a day at most.

Every joker unlocked except Stuntman! Was easier than I thought... or maybe I just got lucky. I'm thinking I'll put this game down with the equivalent of Completionist+, no way I'm going to gold stake every joker... my god

I also thought Completionist++ was way more work than I wanted to put in but when I got Completionist+ I was already more than 60% of the way there. As it stands now, I think I’m close to 80% now.

95% now and fewer than 60 stickers left, but some of the ones left expire all on their own so it's going to feel like an asymptote, I expect.

I'm having the worst times playing gold stake for some reason. Seems like I need to go at it 20-30 times... anyone got some videos of players playing gold stake that kinda show a better way of going about it?

Stuck on red deck, still only have checkered deck golded. Trying to get the others up there in the meantime.

Never skip a blind, shops are too good.
Get at least one of each chip/multi+/multi×/utility joker.
Don't buy bad jokers (there are bad jokers, check out a tier list)
Don't buy cards (planetary or tarot or card packs) till you hit $20. Exception for spectrals.

That's kinda how I play, works out well. Lee probably has much better advice

Never skip a blind, shops are too good.

― H.P, Sunday, January 19, 2025 5:55 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

not even for da money cmon gotta get that money baby

if the very first blind is free polychrome joker I’m slamming that skip button

for plasma deck specifically i found ignoring mult and just focusing on chip jokers was successful for gold stake. chip jokers like bull, hiker, runner etc can scale up the score much faster than investing in mult. only works with plasma deck because of that decks mechanics.

I'll sometimes take free shop (def on first blind) and sometimes free rare early on.

I've got gold on red and yellow - the latter took a lot of runs & I think, yes, my main mistake was spending money early (always a temptation with yellow deck).

HP mostly has it right, but I'll fill in some edge cases.

You can definitely skip blinds, but far less often than you want to.
Either or even both blinds can be skipped in ante 1 if you get one of these tags: uncommon, rare, investment, holographic, polychrome, coupon.
Other scenarios are:
you see a mega buffoon pack or top up and you don't have good Jokers that'll help you with the upcoming blinds;
you absolutely have no other way of dealing with the upcoming boss blind and you get a re-roll;
You get a 3- level upgrade for the hand you're playing;
It's late game and you get the one that gives you $5 for every hand you've played;
Negative tags are a trap lol on gold stake.

Try not to buy anything until you have $25, because that's the default interest max. You can actually beat Ante 1 without any scoring Jokers.

Chips, +Mult, and xMult is the basic template, but chips is definitely the one to toss if you come across another good xMult. In this case, you should start pounding planet cards to build up chips that way, but the xMult is going to be carrying you more.

Along those lines, xMult card enhancements like steel or glass are also powerful, but you'll need to have a fair number of them to really see dividends. This is more of an endgame concern IMO. Lucky cards aren't as good but really benefit if you play them a lot given how the expected value math works, so effects that allow you to re-trigger cards (Chad, Hack, Photograph, and their ilk) make Lucky cards a decent strategy. And all three of these enhancements will let you see their associated XMult Jokers which all scale well, too.

(I've actually been able to win gold stakes without +Mults, because of of re-trigger builds worth card enhancements. It takes a lot of setup so I wouldn't normally recommend going in this direction or of the gate, but it definitely illustrates the power of repeated x2 effects (like if you play full house with all glass cards, then you're increasing your base mult 32x, which is huge).)

Early to mid game, you want to focus on good scaling +Mult: Green, Ride the Bus, Supernova. Opinions are less unified about Red Card because of how expensive it is to scale, but if you've got the money, it basically makes planet cards irrelevant for most hands.

Currently my favorite xMult is Constellation, because basically you double dip on buffing your hands. Hologram is more situational, and it's better suited for high card or pairs.

Straights are powerful because they scale with planet cards really well, but to get them consistently you need to be aggressive about thinning out your deck. Thin or starting at the ends and concentrate on keeping cards in the middle, i.e. connecting cards. Abandoned deck is actually really great for straight runs but still takes some deck shaping.

If you've got a build that can get you through the next few blinds, don't chuck your economy Jokers at the first opportunity. Money is incredibly important to being able to pivot if a bad boss comes along or buying packs or, most crucially, re-rolling. I used to just sit on my money if I had over $50, but you want the chance to buy as many of the thing(s) you want as possible, and that means not being afraid of sinking $50 on re-rolls in a single shop if you can afford it.

Buy spectral packs when you can; if you see an Immolate, 90% of the time you should get it, because you get $20 back for thinning or your deck. Other spectral card to go for are:
blue, red, and gold seals
Cryptid if duplicate a great card (this is where a smaller deck is important too, because you need the right card to show up in your hand so that you can copy it).
Aura

Ectoplasm is obviously very tempting but you need to be playing small hands to avoid kneecapping yourself.

As for good videos, if you've got 90 minutes, Balatro University's "Balatro every day" playlist helped me a lot. I don't have nearly as great of a win rate as them or any other really good players, but I don't think I'd be sitting at 3 Jokers from C++ without seeing them in practice. BU is great about explaining their reasoning with every decision, but also gets some of the most obscene luck at the same time (which has become a meme).

ZainoTV's tier list videos are shorter but also insightful. Someone posted a card tier list as something of a joke but Zaino does a good job explaining why e.g. you should delete 6s before you delete 2s, and why Kings are considered OP (I'm traumatized by the Boss that debuffs face cards though so I still prefer Aces).

If I can highlight one thing you've said which I would count as the most important for an amateur: get scaling jokers and get them early and hyperfocus on them.

Also, pick a hand that you're going to go for (almost) exclusively that run. Something your early game jokers point to. For instance, if I get supernova within the first two ante's (hell, maybe even later) I'm going for a high card build 99% of the time. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but it just helps to focus your planetary cards and to give you a direction in synergistic your jokers. It's very much a judgement call thing.

I'm big on going for easy hand builds (high card, pair, two pair) because I like the security of it. It's less risky, and you've only got your bad shop management/luck to blame rather than screaming because you didn't get that one card you needed for the flush which loses you the game at ante 8

Good points!

From what I've heard leaning hard on high card/ pair is sufficient for normal gold stake runs (provided you use Planet cards to level them up). You'll also want to get into the habit of checking the upcoming Boss the instant you reach the small blind, because if you run into the "only 1 hand" boss, you could be in trouble. (This is really hard and I'm only now getting better about it, because this game is so mechanically smooth that you feel compelled to keep speeding through blinds because we're CHASING THE FIRE.)

Whereas 4OK, 5OK, and flush 5s (which to be clear takes a lot of work to reach, and just as much work to make sustainable) are geared towards Ante 9+.

Yeah following a lot of this advice already, but really need to refine things. Thanks so much for the tips, Lee!

All about simple card hands, scaling jokers, getting $25 early. Just need to be more precise in my decision making. I probably skip more small blind than not and perhaps that is crux

got my highest score yet. hologram + DNA + marble joker / triboulet + sock & buskin. swapped out the marble joker for brainstorm and applied that to sock & buskin.
would have gotten a few antes higher, but i wasn't paying attention and failed to reroll the boss blind that debuffs face cards.

Game has been trolling me. Gros Michel is one of the Jokers I need to win with, and twice now I've gotten it in Ante 8, and twice now it's gone extinct after the first blind I played, one of which was the final Boss Blind.

I see Gros Michel as a great early joker. Use it for the first 3-4 antes and let it die. Then hopefully you get Cavendish later on and that's one of the best jokers in the entire game.

Yep that's the general strategy, but for me to specifically get Completionist++, I need to beat Ante 8 with GM intact, which is proving elusive. If I don't get it in a late ante, I'm hoping to see a perishable version so that it doesn't try to extinguish itself, though I'm not sure it won't try to go extinct even when it's already expired.

Similar thing with another Joker, Turtle Bean, which is one of those that only lasts 5 hands before it destroys itself, so the perishable thing won't even matter.

I've had a perishable Gros Michel die on me fwiw. But yeah I get it now.

(Hopefully this embeds.)

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/56958675954193135/83DFB0BCAEE5DB31CA774213DD4FFE164904920C/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

Now I never have to play this game again (on gold stake).

Impressive skill and dedication

Not sure about skill (my gold stake win rate is pretty bad, probably 5% or so), but yes, I've definitely been stubborn/addicted.

You dog. Holy hell that was insane. I'm sure the win rate drops when you're trying to win with specific Jokers - if you didn't need to worry about that I bet it would be higher.

The Balatro University vids are insanely helpful. Watching that dude play gold stake is simultaneously mesmerizing and educational. Seeing the decision making deviate so much from what I would have done in the same situation as recently as a few days ago is wild. Makes sense he's a math PHD, he calculates hands and alterations to his set of Jokers immediately and can quickly understand the value proposition of choices very quickly.

My purple/orange/gold win rate is already way higher (maybe 25+%?) and I understand certain critical tactics better like avoiding tags, utilizing blue seals, removing cards, and the importance of money jokers in the midgame. If anything, I'm losing a bit more frequently at the lower stakes as I'm more sloppy without the difficulty level forcing me to consider every decision so deeply.

leee da balatro god bow down

I think the single biggest lesson for me is that a hand at level 15+ essentially replaces the need for a chips joker to win. So jokers like Spaceman, Burnt Joker and the blue seal are now instant buys whereas before I'd probably pass on them.

Leee how many hours did you spend to get to C++?

I'm at 54% after 125 hours.... feels like it will take 500 for me to just get to C+

I'm sure the win rate drops when you're trying to win with specific Jokers - if you didn't need to worry about that I bet it would be higher.

You'd think lol but no -- the basic strategy is the scaling +Mult with a scaling XMult, focus on leveling one hand, have some good economy so that you can keep re-rolling for missing jokers, and I would consistently shoot myself in the foot with dumb/impulsive decisions as well as mis-clicks.

What I've learned is that I'd been consistently undervaluing economy, specifically gold cards, and how well they synergize with high card/pair runs, because all that extra money can always be used somehow.

xps lol 566 hours to C++. I've still got one achievement left and then I swear I'll be done with this game unless the I catch the high score bug.

Aaaand got the last achievement (play 5 wild cards at the same time). I can finally play other games!

Amazing achievement Leee. I'm limiting myself to one run a day at the minute to prevent it taking over my life

Congratulations Leee! I’ve got three or four gold stake wins and I just cannot imagine the perseverance needed for c++. Incredible.

Yeah economy is a huge lesson I learned from Balatro U.

Just had an insane run, had a Sock & Buskin, Pareidolia and Lucky Cat going with a Blueprint on the S&B and an Oops all 6s doubling odds and a deck totally loaded with lucky cards. Each card was triggered four times and each lucky went off about half the time or more which built up Lucky Cat to over 20x mult by the time I got to the 12th ante. In the late antes I began moving the Blueprint to the left of Lucky Cat to double the xmult.

Got my new high score of 64 mil but not enough for the Stuntman to unlock. Alas. If I had focused more planet cards on Uranus I might have unlocked it without needing to use The Baron but alas. Had no negative jokers for this one... all with only 5. Best part is this combo rakes in money with the lucky cards cashing in $20 a few times each hand.

can't believe I was balling so far on a round only to reroll and get the blind that hides your jokers on ante 8

embarrassing bag fumble

lol guess who's put another 20 hours into this??? This time I've been trying to beat Ante 12 for the first time, which I finally did (after several other boneheaded moves), though I didn't quite reach the scientific notation hand scores yet.

My build, L-R:
Baron, Green, DNA, Gluttonous Joker (negative that was just there for decoration), Brainstorm, Steel.

Managed to make a King with a red seal, and so whenever I drew it, I'd move DNA to the left-most to copy it twice, feeding Steel. In the subsequent hands, I'd move the Baron to the left, and that's when I'd get billion-level scores. TBH I was definitely hunting this and pre-optimizing my deck with this specific build in mind, which led to a lot of failed runs, but AFAIK this is basically one of two ways to beat Ante 12 (the other being Sock & Buskin + Tribouchet and possibly red-sealed glass kings/queens, but you can't really bank on pulling a legendary).

i beat my first deck too just the other day.

it's a drug

lol oh god LocalThunk is adding more Jokers for v1.1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYlh8bEURQY

gimmie da jokers bb

for the deck i beat the jokers i had were pretty unstoppable.

Four Fingers:All Flushes and Straights can be made with 4 cards.

Shortcut: Allows Straights to be made with gaps of 1 rank.

(those two together are strong asf)

Constellation: Gains X0.1 Mult per Planet card used. (this one is awesome!)

Baseball Card:Uncommon Jokers each give X1.5 Mult. (all my other jokers counted)

Luchador:Sell this card to disable the current Boss Blind. (never had to use it)

got those all pretty early then just bought every planet card i saw.I didn't really add any cards to the deck at all

Article referenced:
https://archive.is/20250207194015/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-02-07/maker-of-smash-indie-hit-balatro-talks-about-what-s-next

xp that's a great set of 4 for the painted deck (minus the Luchador)

Yeah I only kept it because it counted an an uncommon I nothing else good came up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJJ2GcvlOZY

Nice to see that I'm not the only one capable of dumb mistakes.

Never tried to unlock stuntman so used red deck - more discards to hunt for my wincon - on white stake. Managed to get some red seal glass kings, Chad, photograph, the 4x for 4+ of a kind, blackboard, blueprint and brainstorm (my lucky day I guess). Maxed out at 1.2 billion. Might have kept going but red glass cards shatter lol. DNA would have been nice but didn’t get that one

https://www.eurogamer.net/balatro-wins-formal-appeal-to-reclassify-poker-game-as-pegi-12

TIL:

Aura has a 50% chance to make a card Foil, a 35% chance to make a card Holographic, and a 15% chance to make a card Polychrome. These are the same odds that The Wheel of Fortune has when upgrading a Joker when it triggers.

Definitely jibes with my experience, as when either of those hit, I feel like most of the time I'm disappointed that it merely creates a foil effect.

https://localthunk.com/blog/solitaire

lmao "jazz solitaire"

Yeah I get that - there is a big design/play difference with the two and it's iteration. Balatro cycles through blinds and antis whereas Solitaire has a continuous flow to it. I do love how self contained the experience is though.

https://localthunk.com/blog/balatro-timeline-3aarh

Did I find this dev diary after googling "sexy balatro cosplay"? Who can say.

https://bsky.app/profile/easily-thrown-imp.bsky.social/post/3lk52djsv5c2q

Cursed.

I thought this version was better:

https://i.imgur.com/L1KmwHf.png

That timeline was a great read! Good lord I can't imagine the anxiety that dude was going through - seems like he was having daily panic attacks from August to launch day.

I have decided to buy Balatro as a reward when I finish writing my college papers this year. 9000 words, only four weeks to go, can't wait. Looking forward to that lovely unuseful game-playing time.

in vegas for work so thought i know ill download that game everyone’s on about and fill my jetlagged brain downtime. get in the mood.

mistake. big big mistake. whoever said reptilian upthread otm. reptilian jet lag joker multiplier, vegas fucked head joker multiplier.

best my first deck Day 1 (blue, four card only joker mult accumulator and that one that just accumulates chips if you don’t discard, two pair joker - towards the end it didn’t really matter which cards i played because the two accumulators were so powerful).

Day 2: now exploring *options*.

big mistake.

Finally beat black deck gold stake. Took forever.

Ugh on black deck orange stake and not looking forward to having to revisit it one more time only 20 more deck stake wins and the Stuntman from C+!

i have won all the gold stakes but i dont think ill try for gold stickers its too much

Just have black deck left to gold stake. Not going for C++ Isn’t there supposed to be some new content at some point?

Yes, Thunk has said he's working on a new patch (including new a Jokers), though I'm not aware of when it might release.

I watched a two hour video of two guys discussing how to beat gold stack

*stake

Ok completed gold stake with black deck. Got a polychrome Vagabond from a buffoon pack after first ante. Just silly amount of value

I see the value in it, but I get more satisfaction from accumulating wealth. ALL THE MONEY

cash is king baby

i got sufficient cash from gold cards, hermit, temperance or just selling useless tarots so i could shop at will after most antes. first time i'd seen vagabond work that way, i'm a believer

Only way I was able to get orange stake on the black deck was nabbing Canio and Blueprint. You really need to get something good as well as epic early to win quickly in 3 hands and scale quickly as well.

Not excited to come back and go at it on gold stake.

Anyone play the multiplayer mod yet? Watched a few streams and the meta is quite a bit different.

da high scorer

https://i.imgur.com/eOyLcOv.jpeg

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

Nice work! Is this your first "e" score? I need to do this at some point to unlock the stupid Stuntman, but I feel I need to finish all the damn deck stake wins first for some reason.

naw i got hella e scores this is just a big un, tho i could gone a little bit higher if the cards drew better or maybe i was more attentive to the draw

an old e22, how naive i was back then three months ago Joker? BALATRO know her!

Nice goon, any interest in trying for NANEINF that the cool kids are trying?

BTW MLB is now a thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8mhaH7Pq1A

What's your highest score leee?

idk about the naneif it does seem right its NotANumberEIF

doesnt seem right

i need to stop playing this game tho

https://i.imgur.com/mggxyAi.jpeg

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

So is the plasma deck the best to pursue e scores?

ya seems like thats what everyone does

My highest score is E31, FWIW.

xp more I think on it, it makes sense - it's the easiest deck to survive the early rounds with so you can be more picky with Jokers

also had my fastest/easiest gold stake run this weekend. picked up stencil right away, hexed it, then got a copy via ankh and a copy via invisible joker, all running at 5x. then got DNA and copied some blue chips and lucky red chips and leveled high card up to like level 30. topped out pretty early, something like 100m, because my joker setup was so fragile and pivoting was tricky. but got to endless very quickly.

plasma deck is easy in the first rounds, and if you get mult to pop off in the late game then you effectively square you score (i.e. you double your e relative to multiplying some chips by your mult, if you're up in the e's).

feel like this build is pretty close to maxed out really couldve used that second voucher that gives you an additional slot prob shouldve been on the lookout for voucher tags

https://i.imgur.com/Rml97wN.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/sArK1o0.png

Have you C++'d this game already? Or you just trying to see how high of a score you can get? Would figure this is a way of playing that would get old after a while.

FWIW I'm having the roughest time getting orange/gold with that damn plasma deck

Maybe try other decks for the time being? Yellow deck is probably one of the best for being through higher stakes because of the extra money you start with.

Getting, not being.

Also some 1.1 previews:

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

Maybe try other decks for the time being? Yellow deck is probably one of the best for being through higher stakes because of the extra money you start with.

I've been rotating decks at each level. Only the plasma and erratic left for orange and about half the others are at gold, I completed the yellow deck already (along with red, green, blue, checkered and abandoned). Plasma and black give me the most fits, so it's unavoidable at this stage.

Plasma at high stakes is very frustrating because the scores you need are absurdly high and few Jokers will scale properly for you if you can find them without them expiring.

yeah i finally finished plasma deck.. got a bull early then shortly thereafter drew a invisible joker and a few draws later another invisible joker so ended up w bull x3 and just stacked $

My last Bull joker was perishable, and honestly I should have never bought it, all it did was get me addicted to it, and then needing to find a replacement that was never going adequately make up for its loss quickly. I lost the very next ante after it expired.

If you're willing to watch a 2-hour playthrough, Balatro University coaches the Handsome Conan O'Brian of Balatro streaming on how to approach gold stakes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqU1IvCW-XA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNqRo6p5ZzM

Balatro U lore drop, along with them asking viewers to donate to a trans right charity.

Finally. I have finally beaten the Plasma deck on Orange Stake. Holy hell was this one a toughie for me. I finally broke through because of mults, actually. The nuclear combo of Photograph, Hanging Chad and either Blueprint or Brainstorm (duplicating Hanging Chad) ended up pushing me over the top. I still had two great scaling chip jokers in Castle and Square, which on their own, even with Brainstorm, might not have pulled this off. It really required help with xMults to push my scores over the top, along with pairs and two pairs leveled up significantly. Good god.

I'm officially more worried about getting Gold Stake on this deck than the Black Deck now. Only have the Erratic Deck to clear Orange now and ten others to beat on Gold to get C+. Then I can finally relax and not play this game nearly as much.

Good luck on that last sentence, says someone who knows.

Just bought this on iPad and got addicted within about 2 hours. It's fun! Man the time goes quickly when I play it.

I've played lots of ioS games that were addictive but shit. This is probably the first addictive-but-actually-fun mobile game I've played in a long while, maybe since Cinco Paus or 1,000,000

Whelp, I had a perfect setup to unlock the the Stuntman without using the Baron: Had Perkeo, Spare Trousers, and Observatory setup to keep adding Uranus cards exponentially pushing the score up. By the 8th round boss blind I was hitting 10 million. By round 11 or 12 I'd hit 100 million. However, I ended up ending the run accidentally instead of playing on in endless mode. NOOoooooooooooooo. Well, at least I beat the Nebula deck on Gold Stake.

However, I ended up ending the run accidentally instead of playing on in endless mode.

Did you start another run after this one? If not, you can just continue that run.

On switch it won't let you back into the game if you select new game. B button won't go back. Can't even go to the main menu without rebooting the game. I was crushed

Beat all stakes through the Abandoned deck, currently working on Checkered. Still enjoying.

Switch hardware can't support a back button truly Switch 2 cannot come out fast enough.

i only have black deck on gold stake left for stakes and i find myself wondering does this count as "done"

119/120 aint bad

i finally unlocked the 100M in a hand, my build wasnt even that great, none of the duplicating jokers; couldnt get to exponents but got a 770+M hand

So what jokers did you use?

the core was photo/chad and sock and bushkin

Nice! If you had Triboulet as well and a deck full of glass facecards and Splash I could see that maybe getting up there...

Started playing gold stake again and boy, I realized I'm not good at this game!

black deck is killing me

Well I finally did it! Unlocked the Stuntman and got my first e score! Hit the 14th ante, and could have kept going but ran into the The Plant. I had an insane set of jokers: TWO Barons, a Blueprint, and Brainstorm. Had some amazing ones to help transform the deck, including DNA and Trading Card. Really necessary because I think the Stuntman is going to be essential to beating Plasma on Gold Stake, which is I think the 2nd hardest deck behind the Black deck to win at that level. The end is nigh!

nice!

i have been strugggling w the jokerless challenge… i like how hard it is but boy is it also frustrating

My jokerless run relied heavily on buffing straights.

Red tags steel cards and deck thinning was my way. Few blue tags for high card buffing. Didnt take as long for me as the challenge before it (forget the name). That was the hardest imo

Had a nice Madness run on gold stake where it got up to 7.5x, and the only other scoring Joker was Square -- others were Hallucination, Merry Andy, and Hack. (They were all eternal of course.) Madness was enough to let me play pairs, which I managed to level up to a pretty high amount, then the Hack came up and I started focusing on making lucky 2s, and from there I aimed to only play pairs and 4OAK.

Lots of fun. Got today, have unlocked as far as the green deck and about ten jokers.

19 Jokers. I like Fibonacci a lot.

Lost on the 8th Boss Blind of a Black Deck gold stake run. Bloody Crimson Heart. Closest I've come yet to C+.

..aaaand finally did it! With a pretty odd ball combo of jokers to boot, had the Stencil @ 3x, a Blueprint duplicating it, a holographic Ramen, and Four Fingers playing straights leveled up to 10. Only voucher was a paintbrush.

Basically was stress playing the last few hours after hearing about LA.

This is tough, haven’t managed to get past the seventh ante

80% of my attempts seemed to die before the 4th stake! Maybe half didn't get past the 2nd. Such a frustrating deck/stake

bit disappointed not to really pop off into the high e's the other day.

got a deck that was 80% magic 5s, flush five leveled up, idol, blue print and two hanging chads. scored less well than I expected, and 4/5 rounds were without help from the idol which caught up with me in the end around ante 14 or so.

s/magic/lucky.

fwiw I thought this game was impossible until I figured out the order you arrange the jokers in makes a big difference after losing badly for a week.

There we go, first complete run. I think I’m actually on the tenth ante now

Beat Cruelty first try, amazingly enough. Won with a Stuntman, Blueprint and a Cavendish. Played pairs.

Now just need to beat the Jokerless challenge and I put this game aside.

i finally beat jokerless yesterday

Now just need to beat the Jokerless challenge

You can do it, I believe in you!

and I put this game aside.

I highly doubt that.

I'll probably pick it up again when Local Thunk drops the update but I'm looking forward to playing some Blue Prince

Have been chipping away - finished runs on all colour starting decks plus Nebula, highest score in one hand so far over $2m. Constellation & Blueprint combo were really big for me this past run.

My bf got this with his Playstation pass thing and I've been dabbling - won with the first three decks so far. I think if I was playing on laptop, switch or phone I would be fully addicted, but having it on his console means I'm just dipping in and out every so often. I do feel like I'm maybe not the best at strategising my plays, but eh, fuck it, it's still enjoyable.

Yeah it took me a while cos I wasn’t reading this thread or any tips to work out the best way to stack multipliers but once I did that and stopped wasting money on vouchers I was golden. Can confirm the phone version is addictive.

Speaking of Balatro on the phone, I watched a dude boot it up on the train with his foldable phone, watching some talk show highlights from the previous night up on the top half balatro on the bottom. Dopamine deficiency perhaps? Jeez.

Oh yeah, I've seen more and more Balatro players in the wild on the bus. Always check out their jokers.

This was a fun build:

https://i.imgur.com/WoZreBA.jpeg

New non sucky wiki!

https://balatrowiki.org/

leee have you done C++?

Yes, though mostly through brute force. I've also gotten every other achievement in the game (some of those Challenges are vicious).

I've played a few high-score endless runs, but haven't bothered trying to get NANEINF. Right now, I'll occasionally dip into gold stakes to try to get better at the game (spoiler: I haven't), but mostly I'm watching streamers and waiting for the new patch.

dang. c++ seems like a bridge too far for me.

Managed to unlock the "12 rounds or less" joker yesterday using an erratic deck, they can be surprisingly easy to work with if you get a good spread of cards

it honestly never occurred to me to just keep reusing the good seeds ive discovered to beat other decks/stakes.. I am still not doing that, i like the randomness of starting each stake anew

If you're trying for unlocks and achievements, I don't think seeded runs count towards them.

It is done! Beat Jokerless this morning. Definitely done with this game until the next patch. 240 hours to 100% everything but stickers, which holds at 66% (799/1200). Total is 91%. I'm at peace now.

FWIW while Jokerless was super hard, Black Deck on Gold Stake was still the most painful challenge I faced. White stake runs with pretty much any deck are just ridiculously easy now.

Def think I hit my highest planet card level with flushes at 50+ too. Highest Jokerless score was around 300k

Nice, octo! I definitely support you putting the game away, as C++ is an achievement only for the Jimbo-pilled masochists.