Joker? BALATRO know her!

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.

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.

little some thing daddy cooked up las t night pic.twitter.com/eCYqx6DtvV

— Will Sennett (@Senn_Spud) July 12, 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NlfgQieTaE

Nb I'm not about to watch analogue Balatro for 50 minutes (sez the person who watches 90 minute runs).

https://localthunk.com/blog/im-slow

I'm bereft! (Thunk sez 1.1 isn't coming out this year and isn't going to give a release date.)

https://localthunk.com/blog/im-slow🕸

I'm bereft! (Thunk sez 1.1 isn't coming out this year and isn't going to give a release date.)

but what a great update.

am working slowly, but I like it that way. I love getting sucked into rabbit holes and I don’t like trying to force things creatively.

you love to see it

Honestly this is great - I dumped like 200 hours into that game last fall/winter/spring, and I am quite happy to avoid it for a while longer and redevelop that hunger to play it again. No doubt 1.1 will be a big deal when its done, even adding a dozen new jokers could have significant impacts on how you play the game and I recall LocalThunk mentioning he had like 30 or more in mind? Take your time!

https://www.threads.com/@jamesgunn/post/DLLQ1xVPFhT/this-is-important-got-over-a-billion-on-a-single-hand-of-balatro-for-the-first-t

James "Jimbo" Gunn

i got a canio up to like 33x w the joker that makes all cards face cards and lots of hanged man

I'm going for a second C++ on a new profile, this is a cry for help.

Ditto but just aiming for C+. Playing on an iPad is a revelation

But yeah this game is straight up brain cocaine or something

1QBRKK88

this is an insane seed i found.. played it randomly, unseeded and effed it up but midgame you can get to 3 polychrome perkeos & it gets crazy from there

I'm taking a detour and working on C+ (so that I can take get good stickers for random jokers) but I'm actually finding that grind to be worse than C++. The ease of beating a lower stake using the meat and potatoes Jokers (scaling chip, scaling +mult, etc.) has really been boring, especially because I'm mostly going for pair builds. I should probably play around with more interesting builds, like the polychrone flush five queens I was playing on abandoned deck (yes, the one without face cards).

my favorite seed is WEEJOKER because it gives you a wee joker

Second C++ done! Thunk please release the new patch before I try a third.

very impressive ... i've been playing slay the spire 2 while waiting for the new Balatro patch

What deck do you all complete your C++ runs on? I only ever went up to C+ (and I'm also playing again and have no plans for C++ but now I'm reconsidering)

Also - how's Slay the Spire 2? Kinda got bored of the first one after beating the runs for the three main character classes

Yellow and Ghost were my mains. Having money is extremely important to both survivability and having enough money to buy jokers that need a sticker especially if you see it early, and Ghost gives you the option to ensure that your first joker will help with scoring.

I still need to get STS2 (I promised a friend I'd play multiplayer with him), but I had the exact same response to 1.

I never played STS1 so I'm finding STS2 lots of fun. Currently 4 characters and 10 ascensions each so good amount to explore

xp ohh yeah Ghost is a great idea for adding utility to jokers you might need to sticker. Figured as much with the yellow deck, I used that to unlock the other decks exclusively this go round, but also felt the red deck would be useful due to the extra discards for the higher stakes.

STS2 is early access still huh

balatro obsessives should check out cursed words, which is boggo-as-balatro which turns out to be a much better starting point than poker

I just 100%ed my second profile. THUNK PLEASE RELEASE THE NEW PATCH.

Either you have played the game too much or you are too good at it.

I was just looking at my hour count on the PS5 the other day and was like "that seems like too much". I have not come close to 100%ing

It's insanely addictive. I'm slowly moving through my second play through. Didn't 100% the first time though. Might try on this run

I'm currently working on the PS5 trophies. Last night I got the trophy for having a deck with 80+ cards in it.

The alternate one where you remove a lot of cards has been harder for me to come by.

Either you have played the game too much or you are too good at it.

Steam sez I have 999.5 hours in it.

:o