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?

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.