Balatro: I suck so much at this game and cant stop playing

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Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Balatro is out! Go buy it now!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2379780/Balatro/

Introduction

The first game of solo indie developer localthunk, Balatro, named after an old Latin word for a jester, is by its own words...

Steam Description posted:

Balatro is a deck-building roguelite where you must play poker hands and earn chips to defeat enemy blinds. Enhance your deck of playing cards, buy Jokers to modify each hand you play, and discover new and wild synergies to win!

Basic Mechanics

Unlike most of the other poker-based roguelikes, where the mechanics of poker are used in service of what is functionally a monster slaying game, Balatro is about as purely about poker as you can get while still being a roguelike. Pick a deck, choose a blind to beat, and play several hands of poker until you get enough points to win or fail the run. You get the ability to discard up to 5 cards at a time per Discard to try and make perfect hands.

How do you get points? Each poker hand gives a set number of Chips, or base value, to which the value of each individual card used to complete the hand is added: For instance, if you have a Two Pair made of two nines and two fours, you get the base Chip value of a Two Pair, followed by adding 9+9+4+4 = 26 Chips. Face Cards are worth 10 Chips by default. Aces are worth 11 chips, but are not Face cards and can be high or low as necessary but only as the starting/ending card of a Straight-based hand. To be noted: you can play as many cards as you want between one and five, but only cards that actually contribute to the hand are counted for chip value. All of the Chips are then multiplied by that poker hand's Mult value to get your final point total for the hand.

A run consists of 8 levels of increasing difficulty or Ante, which jack up the number of points you need to win. Each Ante consists of a Small Blind, which gives a moderate amount of cash if you win, a Big Blind, with a higher point requirement and a slight increase in cash, and the Ante's Boss Blind, which gives a further increase in cash and is necessary to progress to the next Ante, but comes with a special condition that limits your ability to play the game.

As of more recent versions of the game, including release, you can skip either the Small Blind or the Big Blind in exchange for a Tag - a power that either activates immediately or once you reach the next shop. These can be pretty busted in certain combinations, but keep in mind that skipping a blind also means you miss out on the money from that blind as well as its shop. And of course, you can't skip the Boss Blind!

Shop/Jokers/Vouchers

So far, so simple, right?

Once you complete a Blind, you get Cash. Apart from the Blind's Cash value, there are a few other factors that add into this, the primary basic ones being how many hands you have left over and Interest from having multiples of $5 left over from previous Blinds. Cash is used to buy several things.

First and foremost among them are Jokers, which are your primary source of bonuses. Each one has its own unique abilities which alters the field of play, like giving you a random number of Mults to multiplying all previous Mults that you've collected if you play Four of a Kind. Joker abilities can combo with each other, but are order of operations-specific. The more rightward you go in your Joker Hand, the later the Joker acts, so typically you want to have additive ones early on near the left and multiplicative ones later on near the right. I think abilities that affect Chips also usually trigger before ones that affect Mults, following the regular order of play. By default you may only have 5 Jokers in your Joker Hand at Maximum.

As seen on the more expensive Joker in the shop here, Jokers can also randomly generate with alternate Editions which add an extra bonus to the card, though these notably do not synchronize with other abilities and just do whatever they say first based on the Card's position in the lineup. These are as follows:

Foil: Add 50 Chips
Holographic: Add 10 Mult
Polychrome: x1.5 Mult
Negative: +1 Joker Hand Size

Vouchers are permanent abilities that affect the rest of the run. They tend to not be quite as direct as Joker abilities, although their effects are pretty plainly seen. All of them are pretty good, though some are more powerful than others.

Finally, there are Booster Packs, though for ease of discussion those will be given their own section.

Booster Packs

Booster Packs can be subdivided into providing cards from one of four categories: Tarot Cards, Planet Cards, Spectral Cards, and Additional Playing Cards. Usually the cards are sold in packs that you can choose individual cards from, but circumstances may mean that you just end up seeing a singular card available for purchase in the shop. These will be in the Joker section rather than the Booster Pack section.

Keep in mind that you can stockpile Tarot Cards, Planet Cards, and Spectral Cards depending on how you acquire them. Additional playing cards are just added to your main deck.

Tarot Cards

Tarot Cards are the most basic way to alter your deck that doesn't involve shoving more cards in, or alternatively can give you a bunch of money for free. The effects are typically limited to 1-3 cards or a bunch of money, but with multiple applications of Tarot Cards you can do some wacky stuff like: "all of these cards are now the Jack of Spades, which are worth several times a normal Jack of Spades."

Tarot Cards are as follows:

The Fool: Recreates the last Tarot or Planet card played this run, and adds it to your Consumable stockpile.
The Magician: Enhances a card into a Lucky Card, which has a 1/5 chance to give +20 Mult, and a 1/15 chance to give $20.
The High Priestess: Creates up to 2 random Planet Cards if you have room in your Consumable stockpile.
The Empress: Enhances up to 2 cards into Mult Cards, which give +4 Mult when you play them.
The Emperor: Creates up to 2 random Tarot Cards if you have room in your Consumable stockpile.
The Hierophant: Enhances up to 2 cards into Bonus Cards, which give +30 Chips when you play them.
The Lovers: Enhances a card into a Wild Card, which counts as all suits.
The Chariot: Enhances a card into a Steel Card, which grants a x1.5 Mult as long as it stays in your hand.
Justice: Enhances a card into a Glass Card, which grants x2 Mult once it is played but has a 1/4 chance to be destroyed after playing.
The Hermit: Doubles your Cash or gives you $20, whichever is less.
The Wheel of Fortune: 1/4 chance to give a random Joker any of the Editions except Negative.
Strength: Increases up to 2 cards by 1 rank.
The Hanged Man: Destroys 2 selected cards.
Death: Pick two cards, the one of higher value (or if equal value, the leftmost) becomes a copy of the card of lower value/rightmost.
Temperance: Get the sale value of your current jokers up in Cash, or $50, whichever is less.
The Devil: Enhances a card into a Gold Card, which gives $3 if it's in your hand at the end of the round.
The Tower: Enhances a card into a Stone Card, which has no suit or value, but provides 50 Chips.
The Star: Converts 3 cards into Diamonds.
The Moon: Converts 3 cards into Clubs.
The Sun: Converts 3 cards into Hearts.
Judgment: Creates a random Joker, if you have room for it in your Joker Hand.
The World: Converts 3 cards into Spades.

Planet Cards

Planet Cards let you upgrade your poker hands so that their default values for Chips and Mults are higher. If you find yourself playing a ton of Two Pairs for instance (or have deliberately built your deck around doing so), you'll want a lot of the planet that does so. There are 12 Planets, and they are as follows:

Mercury: For every level, add an additional +1 Mult and +15 Chips to the results for getting a Pair.
Venus: For every level, add an additional +2 Mult and +20 Chips to the results for getting Three of a Kind.
Earth: For every level, add an additional +2 Mult and +25 Chips to the results for getting a Full House.
Mars: For every level, add an additional +3 Mult and +30 Chips to the results for getting Four of a Kind.
Jupiter: For every level, add an additional +2 Mult and +15 Chips to the results for getting a Flush.
Saturn: For every level, add an additional +2 Mult and +30 Chips to the results for getting a Straight.
Uranus: For every level, add an additional +1 Mult and +20 Chips to the results for getting a Two Pair.
Neptune: For every level, add an additional +3 Mult and +40 Chips to the results for getting a Straight Flush.
Pluto: For every level, add an additional +1 Mult and +10 Chips to the results for getting a High Card.
Planet X: For every level, add an additional +3 Mult and +35 Chips to the results for getting Five of a Kind.
Ceres: For every level, add an additional +3 Mult and +40 Chips to the results for getting a Flush House (a Full House, but all in the same suit)
Eris: For every level, add an additional +1 Mult and +40 Chips to the results for getting a Flush Five (Five of a Kind, but all in the same suit)

There's been some changes since earlier editions: As far as I can tell, Royal Flushes are still just counted as a variant of Straight Flush and boosted by Neptune. However the unique hands allowed for by card manipulation now have actual planets associated with them. You can't unlock their associated planet cards unless you've managed to trigger the play in a particular run though. Black Hole, despite being a Spectral Card, can rarely show up in a Planet Card pack because of its effect. It will boost even hands you haven't unlocked yet, but this does not itself unlock them.

Spectral Cards

The biggest addition since earlier versions of the game, Spectral Cards are kind of like more powerful/rarer Tarot cards that have a greater one-off ability to mess with your deck. They're a bit harder to control though.

Familiar: Destroy 1 random card in your hand, add 3 random Enhanced face cards to your hand.
Grim: Destroy 1 random card in your hand, add 2 random Enhanced Aces to your hand.
Incantation: Destroy 1 random card in your hand, add 4 random Enhanced number cards to your hand.
Talisman: Add a Gold Seal, which gives $3 every time a card is played, to a selected card in your hand.
Aura: Gives any of the Editions except Negative to a random card in your hand (not a Joker).
Wraith: Gives you a random Rare Joker, resets your Cash to 0.
Sigil: Converts all cards in your hand into a single suit.
Ouija: Converts all cards in your hand into a numerical value. -1 Hand Size.
Ectoplasm: Adds Negative to a random Joker. -1 Hand Size.
Immolate: Destroys 5 random cards in your hand. Gives you $20.
Ankh: Create a copy of a random Joker. Destroy all other Jokers besides these two.
Deja Vu: Add a Red Seal, which repeats play once when a card is played, to a selected card in your hand.
Hex: Add Polychrome to a random Joker, destroy all other Jokers.
Trance: Add a Blue Seal, which creates a Planet Card if the card is in hand at the end of the round, to a selected card in your hand.
Medium: Add a Purple Seal, which creates a Tarot Card if the card is discarded, to a selected card in your hand.
Cryptid: Create 2 copies of a selected card in your hand.
The Soul: Creates a random Legendary Joker.
Black Hole: Upgrades every poker hand by one level.

Additional Playing Cards

There's not that much to add here. You can buy extra playing cards, which helps if your deck is centered around certain plays. The one interesting thing to note is that some of the playing cards from Booster Packs can start with Enhancements/Editions/Seals, so it can be a quick way to frontload some extra pizzazz. This is also a good place to note that while even regular cards can have all of the various modifiers listed, each card can only have one Enhancement/Edition/Seal each.

Metaprogression/NG+

It's not a Roguelike in 2024 if it doesn't have metaprogression, right?

A whole bunch of shop purchasable stuff/alternative decks are locked to start with. You do get a lot of things that you can buy and just don't know about until you purchase them for the first time, but a bunch of stuff will not unlock until you complete certain achievements. You don't need to play a lot before you make sizeable progress/win though. Decks are half locked by achievements/half locked by winning with the already unlocked decks. The game does allow you to just turn off the collectible part of the metaprogression system on a given profile though, as long as you're okay with not having achievements recorded.

Winning the game (aside from, y'know being the goal) allows you to keep on playing in Endless Mode until you lose. You also unlock the ability to play with an additional penalty modifier for that specific deck, with there being a total of 7 additional levels of modifier beyond the default experience. Apart from that there are 20 Challenge scenarios, some of which are real jerks to beat.

Mod Repository

Apparently the modding community mostly operates via code injection into the game folders/files by a nonintegrated third-party modloader? If you're okay with braving the wonders of files downloaded on GitHub, here you go:

https://github.com/jie65535/awesome-balatro

Kuros posted:

Relyssa posted:

A couple fun mods I've been experimenting with:

Card Sleeves - See pic below. Clear a high enough stake with a deck and get a corresponding sleeve. It's sort of like mix and matching decks. Red sleeve is +1 discard, yellow is +$10 starting cash, abandoned sleeve is no face cards, etc. If you use the same deck and sleeve it will amplify that deck's ability. For instance, if you use abandoned deck and abandoned sleeve you now cannot get face cards in that run at all. Double erratic will randomize hand count, joker slots, and other things. Double anaglyph means you get a double tag after every blind. Sure it makes the game a LOT easier, but that's no bad thing.

Pokermon - this is a doozy. Balatro University was playing this one. All gen 1 pokemon have a joker (that's 152 jokers), plenty of new consumables, a new seal type, evolutions, it adds a lot. There's options to play with just the pokemon jokers which I would probably recommend. It feels like an entirely different game, in a good way. Balance-wise it's definitely a lot more forgiving than the base game.

eta: Not posting a link as it's through discord and that's a pain but someone has made a mod that among other things changes Black deck to start with Hieroglyph instead of just having a -1 hand penalty. Honestly seems like a really good change.

Ariong posted:

Congratulations! I'll get there too, someday. If you're still hungry for more Balatro, here are a few mods I'd recommend, which I can confirm are all compatible:

Betmma Jokers and Vouchers
Bunco
Mika's Mod Collection
Card Sleeves - This one is good if you want a sense of progression again.

Finally, Cardsauce is one of the highest-quality mods, but it's entirely themed around in-jokes and running gags from the streamer Vinesauce Vinny. I'm not sure how obtrusive that would be if you aren't already a fan. However, it does have its own kickass soundtrack.

NOTE: Modding Balatro requires the usage of the Lovely LUA injector and a mod loader. Both of those have wrinkles. Lovely is a code injector which alters the code of another program (balatro.exe) at runtime. This is something that legitimate programs almost never do and malicious programs do a lot, so basically every anti-virus software is going to flag it. You'll need to follow the install instructions carefully to make an exception for it in your OS's antivirus. The wrinkle with the mod loader is that there are two different ones, Steammodded and Balamod, which are incompatible. Most mods only work with one. All the mods I recommended use Steammodded so that's the loader I recommend.

Tiny Myers posted:

Thanks for sharing my mod! I just released 2.0, which does horrible things like put boobs on Cavendish for no reason.

If you want to see all the cards, it's at the bottom of the readme on Github.

https://github.com/prettypinkpansy/jimbos-big-naturals

Conclusion

I've tried to be as comprehensive as possible for in-run mechanics without spoiling literally every surprise that the game has in store, although with the ability to unlock everything immediately from the start, that is sort of a losing proposition. Balatro's really more about your own journey through the tools you've been given anyway, figuring out how they fit together and create devastatingly overpowered combos. May you all be merry and have much luck in your blinds!

Guides

Kuros posted:

Short form: Early on you need very little in the way of mults/chips to hit thresholds so typically you want one or two economy jokers to build up your funds. From there you slowly change from economy jokers to score/utility jokers to make the blinds. The only reason to keep an economy joker in your pool late game is if it's polychrome, negative or it's actively helping your mult due to effects of other jokers.

As for building the deck itself, typically you build around the jokers you get, not build in anticipation of the jokers you might get. If the game is tossing flush jokers at you and you're building the deck for straights you may lose pretty quickly. All hands can win a run with the right build and foresight.

Long form: Here's a good vid from Haelian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eby9Eva03zU

Kuros posted:

One thing to put into the guides part, hands and jokers are tallied up from left to right in order in MOST cases. Conditional triggers from jokers will trigger first before triggering other effects in the joker pool from left to right.

Example:

Your jokers are in order: Campfire (+.5x mult per sold card starting at 1x mult), Scary Face (face cards get +30 chips) and Joker (+4 mult)

If you play a three of a kind of Kings and Campfire is at 1.5x, you will trigger the Scary Face first per king, then the Campfire and finally the Joker. The Campfire is mostly wasted due to it going first in front of the +4 mult from the Joker. So you end up with a 7.5 mult as you would get 3 from the hand, then 1.5x from Campfire then +4 from the Joker.

If you switch the Joker and Campfire you get: 3 from the hand + 4 from the Joker which is 7 then 1.5x which is 10.5 mult.

Adding the chips which would be 150 (30 for the hand + 30 for each king + 90 from the Scary Face) you would have 1125 chips in the first example, but 1575 in the second example.

Typical rule of thumb is: +Chips or +Mult goes on the left, anything that does xMult goes on the right. These rules apply to cards/jokers that have Foil, Hologram, Polychrome, Mult, Enhanced, Lucky, or Glass.

Arcanuse posted:

Let's start with a basic Glass card.
That's a 2x (2x) Multiplier, simple enough.
Now let's make it a Polychrome Glass card.
Now it's 2x/1.5x (3x). A little better.
And let's give it a Red Seal. Red Seals cause a played card to trigger an additional time, and both the above effects are applied on trigger.
So, this would give it 2x/2x/1.5x/1.5x (9x)!

But we're just getting started.
Say this cards a king and you have, yes, Triboulet.
Now it's 2x/2x/2x/2x/1.5/1.5. (36x) Juicy, powerful, liable to explode don't worry about that.

Now let's put a Blueprint left of it, for another 2x/2x.
2x/2x/2x/2x/2x/2x1.5/1.5. (144x)

And lets add... Oh, Sock and Buskin. Now, this ones special, giving another trigger to face cards. So that (144x) becomes...
2x/2x/2x/2x/2x/2x//2x/2x/2x//1.5/1.5/1.5 (1728x)

and what the hell, we're this deep in lets slap a Brainstorm on the right (still keeping Blueprint and Triboulet neighbors), duplicating Sock and Buskin.
2x/2x/2x/2x2x/2x/2x/2x/2x/2x/2x/2x/1.5/1.5/1.5/1.5 (20736x)

now that's a big multiplier! except no, it's just one card. You get up to five.
[1]: (20736x)
[2]: (429,981,696x)
[3]: (8,916,100,448,256x)
[4]: (184,884,258,895,036,416x)
[5]: (3,833,759,992,447,475,122,176x)

and let's not forget steel cards for an extra 1.5 each, or a joker to trigger those again or planets buffing base multiplier and chips-
Look, you get the point.
Even under actual, non-theoretical limits, triggers are important and if anyone would actually reaches nevermind clears Ante 16 without severe trigger abuse I'll be shocked.

the holy poopacy posted:

Broadly, in order to score well you need:

1. A way to add chips
2. A way to add multiplier
3. A way to multiply multiplier

Playing big hands and leveling them up is a decent source of chips, but a poor source of multiplier. The difference in multiplier between playing something like a level 4 flush and playing an unleveled high card is less than a single mediocre joker, the biggest thing you're getting from the flush is chips.

Jokers are a great source of multiplier. Lots of jokers add multiplier and a lot of them are not even particularly specialized (which is good, because if you're relying on base hand scoring then you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket unless it's a really really good basket and a lot of the basic "+chips/+multiplier for a specific hand" jokers are not really worth it unless they have something like permanent scaling or multiplicative multipliers.) There are also ways to add chips from your jokers, but these are not as common as you need to keep an eye out for them. If you have a lot of chips from jokers and a lot of multiplier from jokers then the actual hand you play doesn't matter much, but if you only have multiplier from jokers then you need to be scoring good 5-card hands to get any reasonable score at all. At this point a joker that helps you get those good hands more reliably starts to look pretty useful, but again, just hitting the big hand every hand probably isn't enough if you don't have some added multiplier.

Suppose for example that you have 5 jokers adding an average of +10 multiplier each (a fairly mediocre build.) If you play a single ace, you score 16 chips x 51 multiplier for a little over 800. If you score a level 4 flush with decent card values you might score something like 120 chips x 60 multiplier = 7200. So you better hope that you can use enough tarots/spectral cards that you can reliably score that flush.

On the other hand, if you have 3 jokers adding +10 multiplier each and 2 jokers adding +100 chips, then your single ace now scores almost 3600 and your flush scores 8800. The flush is still obviously better but the gap is much smaller and it's not as immediately fatal if you miss your flush.

(If you only have chips from jokers and no real multipliers, you're probably gonna die barring Shenanigans, because even leveled up hands have very low multiplier compared to what you get from jokers. If you had +250 chips from jokers with no source of multiplier, the same flush is now only scoring 3700, about as bad as a level 1 high card from the more balanced loadout. Also, since chips are less common on jokers you're probably not even going to get to +250.)

These aren't very high scores, but these are pretty low bonuses for jokers, equivalent to the modifiers on holo/foil cards. Which means that if you get all shiny cards you can have a set of jokers that gives one of the sets of chips/multiplier above in addition to the actual bonuses on the joker! So go for those shiny cards, the skip bonus that guarantees one in the next shop is very good unless you have a rock solid joker build and/or no money. (Which is another important point: try not to be broke. Holding onto cash between rounds earns you interest, unless you're playing with the Green Deck. Don't go below $10 unless there is something amazing for sale, like a shiny joker with a big value ability.) Similarly, the voucher that makes shiny jokers more common is extremely valuable.

Even then, that only goes far. A reasonably strong joker base chips/multiplier joker build with 2 foils and 2 holos might see something like, I dunno, +270 chips and +90 multiplier. At this point you're clearing 25k on a high card and 39k with a level 4 flush. That probably gets you over the finish line, but you still might get sunk by a particularly nasty boss blind. After a certain point you need to stop looking at things that add multiplier and start looking at things that multiply multiplier. The worst joker in that build might only be adding +20 multiplier, which is only about 25% of your score. If you swap it out for a joker with x1.5 multiplier, you're going to get a much bigger boost.

And that's equivalent to a polychrome joker that does absolutely nothing else for you, there are much better multipliers available. There are also never any diminishing returns on multiplicative bonuses: if you play a level 4 flush and have a single joker that gives +20 multiplier it just tripled your score, but a second +20 multiplier joker only increases it a further 40%. But no matter how many x2 jokers you have they will always double your score, which racks up very quickly. The only caveat is that you still need a reasonable base score for the x2 jokers to fire off, if you get too greedy fishing for polychromes and big multipliers then you will hit the wall pretty quickly--you still can't neglect the need for base chips/multiplier.

tl;dr:

1. Pick up some jokers that add chips
2. Pick up some jokers that add multiplier
3. Pick up some jokers that multiply multiplier

roomtwofifteen posted:

Extraordinary stuff.

Also a tip for new players, you can turn up the speed of cards in the settings, it's a nice feature once you're bored of seeing everything tick slowly.

Infinitum posted:

I did find out that holding R will restart your run which is a much quicker way of restarting a run rather than going through a menu

Alkanos posted:

I watched this the other day so I might be remembering it wrong, but the changes aren't to the scoring. His move only takes effect between scoring and calculating the additional money collected. So when it start scoring it "locks" the joker order for that purpose, but reads the new order when calculating funds. Unless I read that completely wrong while I was watching.

Color Printer posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pQznnrzeBk

what the gently caress

Heavy_D posted:

Twitch streamer Roffle was going for an unseeded naninf on Friday
https://twitch.tv/videos/2375109528
He aimed for a similar baron/mime build, with these changes that avoid the need for Perkeo:
* Using plasma deck
* Getting Antimatter and Ectoplasm to have one more joker slot
* Getting a extra copying joker (x4 copies) and burglar instead of Perkeo
* Completely reshaping the deck to contain nothing but steel red seal kings
* Get Retcon, and rerolling to The Serpent
* Copy burglar four times to get a huge number of hands
* Play just one card on the initial hands with jokers not set up to score, to generate a massive hand size
* Then play a final hand with the jokers reordered like the TAS

Being on plasma deck means you only need to hit the square root of the naninf threshold in xmulti, and having one more copy joker makes each king in hand contribute more. So you need 50-60 kings in hand.

Further insight here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=4034530&perpage=40&pagenumber=198#post545292088

Casino Roguelikes

There was enough interest in games which are either Balatro-likes or at least vaguely themed around gambling later on in the thread, such that I am adding a category for them to the OP. If nothing else, you can find something mildly amusing to play while you're taking a break from the game because you're tilted at Gold Stakes/Black Deck/Jokerless/Golden Needle.

Aotenjo - Balatro, but Mahjong. Probably the better of the two available offerings.

ULTIMAHJONG - Mahjong-based casino roguelike. Less slick than Aotenjo, less immediately from the same school of design. But does notably have arabic numeral accessibility options whereas that game does not.

Bingle Bingle - Balatro, but Roulette. Bingle Bingle is apparently highly variable even at the best of times, and quality seems to widely vary between updates/patches.

Luck be a Landlord - Slots-based casino roguelike. Predates Balatro but has a lot of the same gamefeel, unlike a bunch of games mentioned later which also involve casino game mechanics but don't feel anything at all like Balatro. localthunk cites it as one of Balatro's biggest inspirations.

Cat God Ranch - Slots-based casino roguelike. Heavily inspired by Luck be a Landlord, to the point where I would say it's almost like the dev just isolated the parts that they particularly enjoyed in LbaL (mostly chicken management) and turned them into their own game. The dev knew what to grab though, so it's fun.

Dice Player One - Dice/Yahtzee-based casino roguelike. A bit hesitant to say it's "Balatro but Yahtzee", although the demo gave me that experience. Seems pretty good, unless I've missed something utterly egregious.

Ballionaire is a pachinko-based casino roguelike. localthunk likes it, but for some reason I seem to dislike every game that Balatro's developer recommends, so your mileage may vary.

Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers - Blackjack-based casino roguelike. The start of the roguelikes that just happen to involve casino theming and maybe a couple of bits of card manipulation. Notable for technically predating Balatro but releasing later, and has a shoutout from localthunk.

Poker Quest: Swords and Spades - Poker-based casino roguelike that isn't Balatro. Part of an older generation of games that happened to involve poker as a core mechanic. Arguably falls outside of the genre, but if I'm including Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, might as well include these ones too.

Aces & Adventures - Poker-based casino roguelike that isn't Balatro, part 2. Same deal as Poker Quest, a little bit closer to Balatro, but still mostly in the older style of poker-based roguelikes.

Spin Hero - Not out yet. Slots-based casino roguelike deckbuilder that isn't Luck be a Landlord. Take the commentary for the last couple of games but apply it to slots instead.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Mar 11, 2025

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# ¿ Mar 22, 2025 07:16

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Keepers of the Third Vow

Amitābha, Buddha of the Pure Land posted:

Provided I become a Buddha, if in that country of mine the beings who are born there should not all be of the colour of genuine gold, then may I not attain the enlightenment.

Power of Pecota posted:

85 completed gold stake runs and I've got Completionist++! Chicot was the last one to cross off.

For most commonly used jokers:

20+: Supernova, Stuntman (da goat), Blackboard
15-19: Square Joker, Hologram, Vampire, Green Joker
10-14: Blue Joker, Card Sharp, Ride the Bus, Abstract Joker, Baseball Card

Glad to answer any questions~

Tonetta posted:

finally, I'm free to do white stake zoomies runs. goodbye maybe forever gold stake, I'll miss the rent tag but that's about it

the holy poopacy posted:

And there goes Completionist++ Last 3 to go were Pareidolia, Satellite, and finally Seltzer. I'm surprised that there was only one "dead" win in between those last 3.

_{maybe someday I'll do completionist and completionist+}

Kuros posted:

IT HAS BEEN COMPLETED!

195.4 hours, C++ and with that 100% achievements has been completed.

I started on June 23rd and have been mostly playing Balatro since to grind for the gold stickers.

Thoughts and strats on getting C++:

1. Pick a deck that's highly consistent in the early game or provides advantages that will make getting stickers easier. Blue, Yellow, Checkered, Ghost or Anaglyph are good choices. I got 60-70% of my gold stickers on Anaglyph.

2. Very very important, your only major goal is to complete Ante 8, you DO NOT CARE about endless when going for gold stickers.

3. With #2 in mind, you will need to play around Perishable and Rental stickers on purpose and take strategic skips when necessary. Example: If you're in Ante 7 you can clear 400k and a key joker expires in 3 rounds consider skipping rounds so it lasts until the Ante 8 boss.

4. Holding onto consumables in order to guarantee high scoring hands to clear higher antes is important. Having a Justice and Death card in pocket can help in a pinch.

5. Creating certain builds really helps with getting gold stickers, one very good one is Photochad (Photograph + Hanging Chad). Sure it loses to plant, but it's an 8x mult on your hand. Build up High Card/Pair and with another xMult joker it can carry you and leave you room to take a dud joker so you get the sticker on it. Also, being able to use a pocket Justice turns that 8x into 64x.

6. Anaglyph does make it easy to get a few stickers at a time, it's high risk and reward. Plus if you have a negative dud that you already have a gold sticker on, it's an easy choice for Verdant Leaf.

7. Focus on getting Rare & Uncommon stickers first if you can, having an open spot for a dud joker to sticker is much more valuable if you can put something like Campfire, Stone Joker, Glass Joker, Obelisk, etc. into that slot instead of a common. You can get commons easily to sticker from Negative tags.

8. Speaking on tags, skipping early on for Investment is typically worth it. Skipping for Coupon can be good as well. When using Anaglyph, sometimes you may need to forgo trying for the Negative tag and skip for something like Buffoon, Ethereal, Economy, Standard (If you're rocking Hologram), etc. If you're going into Ante 7/8 and there hasn't been any Negative tags to take, just take something good if you can by Small Ante 8.

9. Lastly, I highly suggest tracking your progress, here's a google doc sheet I found, make a copy and tag the jokers as you win with them: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jya_esAK7qQWNBN_ny7ihhVOS27LovcMGHwDvbW1G3w/edit?gid=1018042583#gid=1018042583

If there are any other questions I can answer them.

Notable runs where I got multiple stickers or hard stickers.

Matador was the last sticker to get.

Stats:

@Jossar (Tagging if you want to add anything into the OP)

Unormal posted:

My watch is over.

Final stats in thread: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:n4765ftlk5sxhgd5low6rqbd/post/3lc6sac25js2n

Jossar posted:

And then it was literally the next run, what perfect serendipity.

Completionist++ complete.

GoutPatrol posted:

301 hours.

I forgot to get a screenshot of the real final hand. I needed to complete another run before the trophy popped. Shame because was a really interesting deck, relying on 4ok wild card kings, a negative eternal flowerpot, and a negative eternal rental blueprint.

I did almost every gold sticker from 50-150 on anaglyph deck. I think that was the right move, and not just because of getting several negatives. Looking for an ante 1 25$ was the way to go, and hopefully getting a good economy tag in ante 2/3 was usually enough to save any run. Anaglyph deck turns any lovely economy tag into a passable one. It turns the "upgrade a hand by three levels" into an auto-win if you're getting it in ante 4/5. Like erratic deck, you get to do broken things when the extra tags create so much value. Draw over half your deck for the final boss using the hand size voucher? Free Chaos the Clown for the next six shops? And then I truly learned to appreciate the re-roll vouchers, not just to find the missing jokers, but in how much money they saved after 1-2 shops.

Final jokers totals:

An extra 100 hours and there wasn't a big change, except egg finally going down. I think Odd Todd would be next on the line. Card Sharp being the only uncommon, something which I started always picking up like Hanging Chad. I enjoy building up on one kind of hand (usually pair/two pair) during a run and don't like to pivot out, and Card Sharp played well with that. Easiest way to win with a normal run was finding a mult joker that scored on hands which got pumped up through Chad, then finding another xMult (probably a Throwback or Hologram) and then the final x3 from Card Sharp would beat most antes in 2 hands.

Chamale posted:

I have beaten Balatro. I got Yorick from a Charm tag in Ante 1, so he was up to 8x Mult by the end of Ante 8. I wound up doing a spade flush build, with Bull and a couple of interest vouchers giving me all the chips I needed.

mfcrocker posted:

And after 233 hours, you can add me to the sacred halls of Completionist++. Just got a ridiculous run with constantly retriggering polychrome queens that also allowed me to carry (and find!) my final 2 jokers.

E: just for fun I've carried the run on and I've just hit a new high score. On my very final run for C++. Perfect.

Scholtz posted:

Matador was my last one. I had several runs make it to the end, but it never showed up in late-game shops for those runs.

Old Doggy Bastard posted:

I finally beat Completionist++ and set out to try and get naninf. Does anyone have advice on what to do here? I've gotten to Ante 14 a few times, and Ante 16 once... but this time I think it's possible to go further if I make the right move from here.

Jezza of OZPOS posted:

got my last gold sticker and now I have golden needle and jokerless to go and I've done everything on my mobile game. probably not gonna try to force it too much for now just cause I already did all the challenges on PC and switch

WhatEvil posted:

Huzzah!

My final run:

Basically didn't get any use from Astronomer since it showed up late. Just had enough scaling with my three red jokers.

I took Hieroglyph and Petroglyph to get more scaling in, and wasn't hurt by losing the hand/discard because of burglar. I was honestly getting sick of banging my head against the wall but that was a fun run to end on.

Don't know what I'm going to do now. Take a break? Start speedrunning?

RBA Starblade posted:

Because I have a problem I can now say I've gotten C++ without any taint lol

High Roller Runs
(The condensing process continues and the scientific notation runs are next - check them out in the individual posts below!)

Wooper posted:

Arcanuse posted:

Onmi posted:

studio mujahideen posted:

TastyLemonDrops posted:

Sparticle posted:

Dr. Mantis Toboggan posted:

MagicBoots posted:

Elman posted:

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

The Postman posted:

Chadzok posted:

Alkanos posted:

Lemon posted:

Irony Be My Shield posted:

uPen posted:

quiggy posted:

pumpinglemma posted:

RBA Starblade posted:

PoundSand posted:

Relyssa posted:

Sockser posted:

Eschatos posted:

godogg posted:

Gangringo posted:

GoutPatrol posted:

Necronomicon posted:

LifeLynx posted:

Panic! At The Tesco posted:

WhiteHowler posted:

Tonetta posted:

DaveWoo posted:

AlphaKeny1 posted:

Perry Mason Jar posted:

Furious Lobster posted:

Devo posted:

Jossar posted:

Nucular Carmul posted:

Popete posted:

WhatEvil posted:

Zoracle Zed posted:

oddium posted:

Tsietisin posted:

Detheros posted:

Chamale posted:

Aggro posted:

FPyat posted:

GaiaShell posted:

Kuros posted:

cirus posted:

Combo posted:

Heavy_D posted:

brugroffil posted:

HazCat posted:

That Dang Dad posted:

EconDad posted:

Good as Gold
(Unfortunately the post is running out of room and Gold Stakes runs are the best return on investment to cut out word-wise. Click on the post quotes to go and explore each goon's individual Gold Stakes story!)

No Wave posted:

the holy poopacy posted:

Onmi posted:

Detheros posted:

TastyLemonDrops posted:

Doltos posted:

Relyssa posted:

Jossar posted:

Barry Shitpeas posted:

MJeff posted:

instantrunoffvote posted:

Elman posted:

cerious posted:

Aggro posted:

LifeLynx posted:

babypolis posted:

roomtwofifteen posted:

The Postman posted:

super nailgun posted:

PostNouveau posted:

Popete posted:

PhysicsFrenzy posted:

DaveWoo posted:

overeager overeater posted:

Arzaac posted:

Panic! At The Tesco posted:

WarEternal posted:

Level Seven posted:

apophenium posted:

Aipsh posted:

Leon Sumbitches posted:

Nemo2342 posted:

Scholtz posted:

Desdinova posted:

Whistling rear end in a top hat posted:

Devils Affricate posted:

TaurusTorus posted:

Jezza of OZPOS posted:

RBA Starblade posted:

PhoenixFlaccus posted:

WhatEvil posted:

Alkanos posted:

Furious Lobster posted:

Hotel Kpro posted:

Paul.Power posted:

Power of Pecota posted:

ZepiaEltnamOberon posted:

Gertrude Perkins posted:

Zoracle Zed posted:

PringleCreamEgg posted:

WaffleACAB posted:

delfin posted:

Ariong posted:

Chamale posted:

El Jeffe posted:

Old Doggy Bastard posted:

AweStriker posted:

woke kaczynski posted:

GaiaShell posted:

MadFriarAvelyn posted:

GoutPatrol posted:

Sarcastro posted:

The Ninth Layer posted:

HazCat posted:

Natural 20 posted:

siriuslysomething posted:

Scallop Eyes posted:

mp5 posted:

Gangringo posted:

Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:

Blackbelt Bobman posted:

On Terra Firma posted:

Adhesive Gamin posted:

gvibes posted:

Phone posted:

Just For Fun

Infinitum posted:

This game is going to consume me

TwoStepBoog posted:

The wheel of fortune is not happy with me--that's okay, I'll still keep buying that garbage.

Veryslightlymad posted:

This card's effects broke me.

It has Holographic, so I definitely want to play it, yet it has a purple seal, so I definitely want to discard it, but it has steel, so I definitely want to hold onto it and not play it or discard it but it has holographic so------

FutonForensic posted:

Pwnstar posted:

The get murdered by casino security deck

WarEternal posted:

Well that was a close one.

e: jesus, blueprint+burglar is absolutely busted.

Darke GBF posted:

Like it or not, this is what peak performance looks like, ladies.

First shop had the card that gives you three dollars and deletes the card if your first discard is only one card, and well, numbered cards can basically get hosed. By the end of that run, Erosion had +124 mult, and I had a 100% chance of playing the card my Idol joker pointed to that round. But that's only an X2 multiplier so deck topped out at ante 10 on red stake. Fun though.

Infinitum posted:

Jossar posted:

You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

Veryslightlymad posted:

Listen to me.
Never let anyone tell you what you can and cannot be.
Never let anyone tell you who you can and cannot be friends with.
It's all an illusion.

Onmi posted:

I continue to have extremely dumb Balatro runs.

Quantum of Phallus posted:

Check this poo poo out:

https://cohost.org/plumpan/post/4775485-me-having-grown-up

Waffle! posted:

This plays all the time in my head, might as well get funky with it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJi6m7R8ADY

mystes posted:

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

Necrosaro posted:

InstrumentManiac just released a great cover of the Balatro theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx0jTGd7urs

Elman posted:

I finally came up with a really strong deck for endless!

I got another duplicate right after this pic so that's 6 cards with steel and red stamp which also get retriggered by the negative Mime. At the same time all of my J's (many of them glass) get retriggered too which means a lot of base mult before the steel kicks in (and very high chip value from the +chips joker). If I can get more glass/steel and hand size and a good multiplier joker to replace my +chips joker, then we'll really be in business!

Anyway I just started endless let's see what's ne--

lunar detritus posted:

I made a balatro simulator, for those times when I have no idea how to order my cards and it's my only hand left.
https://buffoonery.online

It's still a work in progress so please let me know if it's too broken. I have mostly tested it with early saves so I'm really curious if it holds up for high level hands.

Paul.Power posted:

Sure, here you go. Not sure if it's downloadable from Dropbox, I might need to host it somewhere else or fiddle with the link a bit if you can't do that.

Paul.Power's excellent Deck tracking spreadsheet

Scholtz posted:

This screenshot has a lot of funny aspects.

Kuros posted:

Sockser posted:

Blueprint? Brainstorm?
Who needs 'em?
Not me.

And then one ante later,

Jezza of OZPOS posted:

its so funny to me that ff7 rebirth came out, I threw 130 hours into it, wouldn't shut up about it, cried a couple of times, felt incredible catharsis and joy from playing it, and I'm still probably going to give my GOTY to the poker game that looks like it was designed to run on a VGA monitor with absolutely no story whatsoever

Kuros posted:

Veryslightlymad posted:
Did you know
Luchador has to be sold at the boss. Either that, or there are bosses it won't work on.

El Jeffe posted:

Was watching the X-Files and

https://i.imgur.com/ubyKr7d.mp4

Tsietisin posted:

I decided to make my own challenge to see if I could beat the game in 8 hands.

I did

See the follow up, where Tsietisin repeats this on Gold Stakes: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=4034530&perpage=40&pagenumber=162#post543732856

DaveWoo posted:

Good news, I found a way to make Space Joker work:

Edit: Seed LT78VPFC if anyone's interested. It's actually possible to get a fifth Blueprint in this run, if you can squeeze it in.

Tonetta posted:

speaking of double legendary, this seed offers negative trib and perkeo in ante 2:1 by buying both the packs. it's currently the most broken (found) seed in the entire game and you can do crazy stuff in it like make 2k money a round and go to ante 40 with the right joker choices.

2k9h9hn

RBA Starblade posted:

oddium posted:
fun fact. you can't tell which one is hanging chad when jokers are flipped even though you can do this

For the love of God Montresor!

Relyssa posted:

Scholtz posted:

Also, one extremely good thing came out of Balatro's GOTY nomination at TGA: the orchestral theme

https://twitter.com/NorthernIion_LP/status/1867436074504692071

Power of Pecota posted:

It's pending verification, but I just broke the Speedrun.com skipless gold stake random seed world record (previously 11m25s) with a sub-10 minute one.

Behold, autopilot high card exodia

repiv posted:

FalconImpala posted:
Something about the jokers makes me deeply uncomfortable

does this help

https://x.com/JacobJanerka/status/1869728343572287880

mfcrocker posted:

Someone edited this to be even better

haveblue posted:

Jossar posted:

Balatro is Something Awful's Game of the Year!

MMAgCh posted:

Thanks! As suggested earlier I slightly sped up/smoothed out the animation, and I guess it does look a bit better like this? And finally, here's an alternative version featuring subtle yet cheeky eye movements.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Mar 21, 2025

# ¿ Jun 18, 2023 13:21

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

DACK FAYDEN posted:

Aces can be low, I did a A2345 entirely out of curiosity. They still give ten chips, too.

Duly noted! Edited into the OP, along with several other things I found from playing for a little bit longer.

Everybody loves stupid runs! Here's my latest. The Jokers are out of order due to the Boss Blind that negates your rightmost joker (the optimal order is Blueprint, Onyx Agate - with the Die on either side of those two, then all the multipliers, ending with the Polychrome Acrobat) but this got really crazy in the postgame once I replaced the Tarot Joker with the one that multiplies 3 of a Kind. I probably could have made it extraordinarily far into postgame Antes if I hadn't tried to push my luck against a Boss Blind for which the deck was poorly suited and rerolled it. Should have just gone with that, even if the Boss Blind was postgame only, there's more chances to find it for collectible 100%ing than a run to Ante 20.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Jun 19, 2023

# ¿ Jun 19, 2023 04:16

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Artelier posted:

who's your favourite joker and why is it yorick (i still haven't unlocked every one but this guy is a beast)

My favorite is the Blueprint because of its versatility. It never makes a winning build on its own, but it makes a lot of builds that would otherwise only almost work into insane powerhouses.

Among the Legendaries, my favorite is Chicot. He helped me win a run, but mostly it's just vibes.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2023 04:46

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Countblanc posted:

could someone explain Stone cards to me, as if I was a particularly slow child? i've read the description like a dozen times and still don't fully get what they do and don't do.

Stone Cards do not count as anything except for being a card in the most generic possible sense, except for when the text of another card specifically refers to Stone Cards. They're just always playable and count towards the hand (unless you would otherwise be prevented from playing any card at all, like the 5th card in the Arm ruining the hand), 50 Chips straight. They don't count towards poker hand status because they have no suit or number, so if you were trying to set up a flush and only had 4 clubs and a Stone Card, then you're screwed.

I'm a bit less certain on how the weird edge cases that are supposed to apply to literally all cards work on them. My guess is that Stone rules override literally everything else except being a generic card, so if you have the Joker that says all cards are now Face cards... well, a Stone Card still isn't. Because it CAN'T have any kind of classification other than being a Stone Card. But if it just refers to a card existing at all (I don't think this is a real example, but: if you play a valid hand, get extra chips for every card played in the hand), then a Stone Card would still be considered a card. But again: this is a guess and not complete certainty.

I feel like unless you have a really good Stone Card Joker setup, it's useful to have a few Stone Cards early on, but in the long term they become a trap precisely because they don't synchronize well with anything else.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Jun 26, 2023

# ¿ Jun 26, 2023 05:02

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2379780/Balatro/

Demo's back up for those interested in taking another poke at it. Not limited to 50 rounds this time, although supposedly capped in other ways.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2023 22:53

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2379780/view/3868093712830336689

Well, it's some kind of new content, right?

Presented for your amusement is Balatro: Jimbo's Invitational, starting January 19th at 10:00 AM PST, in which 6 Twitch streamers are locked in a room for 24 hours (okay, probably not literally) to play for the best hand score possible.

Mostly noting it because the winner gets 200 Steam keys of the game (and the runner-up, 100 keys) to hand out as they see fit.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2024 23:41

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

MJeff posted:

Top score is currently 145 mil. I think this one might be over.

Beautiful. :allears:

# ¿ Jan 20, 2024 16:10

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

But more importantly, the Demo's back on, starting January 25th!

...that is a pretty sweet combo, though.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2024 19:16

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

I think I got spoiled too much by the playtest, so after one round of playing the demo just to have some fun, I will go back to eagerly awaiting the release of the full game, especially when it's so close!

EDIT: Of course this is a lie, and I'm already getting sucked back in.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Jan 26, 2024

# ¿ Jan 26, 2024 00:53

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Popete posted:

Cha-ching!

I really have to learn how to use the blind-skips. I feel like that's part of why I keep making it to the end and then faceplanting right at the less second against the Bonus Blind.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2024 13:39

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Victory!

But yeah, I've just been sticking with the Blue Deck for the moment. Wanted to get a win with that before moving on to the others.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2024 00:32

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Tried out the other two decks, and they both seem pretty feast or famine to me. To be fair, at least part of that was RNG and could have been beautiful if I'd been able to rig my deck a little more, which is always the case for Balatro. Especially for Anaglyph: getting a level 16 Straight from Double Tag spam doesn't matter if the deck refuses to cooperate in one really bad round/you don't have Four Fingers that run.

EDIT: Finally managed to win with both decks, so all three available to the demo and I stand by this.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Jan 27, 2024

# ¿ Jan 27, 2024 14:37

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

DalaranJ posted:

Well, I won the demo thanks to popcorn showing up before boss 5.

Seems like the winning strategy is to build your deck towards a specific archetype. Multiple times I've gone too strong into spare trousers to the point where full house became worse than two pair.

Yeah, you can be a bit flexible early on, but long term you definitely want to build so you can hammer out a specific hand as much as possible. Especially if you go really heavy into Planet cards, it's ridiculous how big the difference can be. In that failed Level 16 Straight run (which even with bad luck was still just on the verge of sustainability if I'd had the Four Finger Joker), when it worked, I could get tens of thousands of chips just from the hand alone even before counting the cards, let alone Jokers.

You do run into the potential problem of getting screwed over by a boss blind specifically geared to break your deck. But unfortunately, by the time that becomes relevant you'd be damned anyway from otherwise-impossible chip requirements.

Although Spare Trousers should still upgrade even on a Full House. It contains a Two Pair, after all, and even independent of that the already accumulated Mult always triggers. Unless you mean having gone all-in on Uranus cards to pair with it.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Jan 27, 2024

# ¿ Jan 27, 2024 19:21

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

The "counterplay" is that if the selected card is really awful you just discard it along with as many bad cards as possible, to try and refresh the select. It's not great, but it is an option.

Which is to be expected from a final-boss blind. You made it this far, surely you must have something in your arsenal to deal with a last second curveball, right?

# ¿ Jan 27, 2024 20:37

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

I was able to win with a Flush, Straight and Full House/Two Pair build once each, but Four Finger was pretty much necessary for those first two. It's just so crucial to the Straight/Flush build. I really hope there's a deck that just lets you start with it in the full game, or people might end up doing a lot of early rerolling.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2024 19:35

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

It's definitely a case where it's a must buy unless you already have something better, yeah. At least in the demo.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2024 22:56

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Thanks to frytechnician for pointing out in the February Chat Thread that we now have a definitive price for the release: $14.99

Pretty happy to see, that's about as cheap as could be expected without banking on sale-by-volume.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2024 15:57

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Tried, but apparently those tags are locked to a specific forum/subforum, so couldn't post the thread with them.

If the mods are willing to switch the tag to the Poker one though, would not be amiss.

Also, I do plan on updating the OP, just waiting for the game to come out in full.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2024 23:35

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Well we'll see, keeping a tab open to hunt this down when it ends up in the middle of the LP subforum again.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2024 00:21

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

It's possible to get +15 levels all at once if you keep accumulating double tags and then cash them all in on a "+3 to hand level" tag. Presumably this involves using Tarot cards to manipulate the deck first to the point where it's possible to get a Flush Five and then cashing in.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2024 23:01

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

MJeff posted:

I have to go into the office tomorrow so the game better not come out until 5 PM.

Alas and alack, the official release time for tomorrow is 10 AM EST/7 AM PST/3 PM GMT on PC, and an hour later on consoles, unless you're playing on a Switch in the Asia region, in which case *shrug*.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2024 14:12

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

I don't think there are literal hundreds, but I recall from earlier versions there being something like 100-200 ingame achievements as part of the metaprogression if you choose to play with that on. The Steam page does describe 8 different difficulties or variants alongside challenge/daily/seeded runs though.

EDIT: Looked at a video with a release copy of the game and I may have been lowballing it. Looks more like 340 proper Collections, with a whole bunch of other stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqtsUX38HmE

Jossar fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Feb 20, 2024

# ¿ Feb 20, 2024 03:47

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

DarkMatt posted:

This game's best selling point is how great all the joker card arts are. Making ridiculous decks that can get you millions of points is great sure but I just love seeing how far you can stretch the definition of "a card with a clown on it".

Ah yes, can't wait to see this joker variant:

# ¿ Feb 20, 2024 12:59

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

It is us, we are the balatros, making fools of ourselves in our anticipation for the game.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2024 13:17

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Finally got to play the full game, and man am I getting owned! Still love it though, just have to figure out how to make an organized deck around the mid-game transition point.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Feb 21, 2024

# ¿ Feb 21, 2024 00:54

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Hooray, first proper win!

Hearts and Clubs mixture deck, just spam flushes over and over again. Not the neatest or most elegant trick, but it works.

Anyways, still got a lot more to do, even in endless mode for this run, but gonna start thinking about that OP revise now... except that means I'm not playing the game! Argh!

EDIT: Aaaand got owned in Ante 10. Doesn't scale that well, apparently!

Jossar fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Feb 21, 2024

# ¿ Feb 21, 2024 01:48

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

A little bit better this time! This was a crazy run where I had no idea what I was doing, so I just let myself accept where Madness took me (it was a combination of Fibonacci, Throwback, and Madness for big mult).

You gotta have a real cracked deck to make it to Ante 12 or better though, sheesh. Grats to Terper who's already done it!

# ¿ Feb 21, 2024 03:20

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

As promised went and redid the intro post for the release version. Not 100% satisfied with it, especially with regards to how much info I should be leaving in vs. allowing people to discover, but there it is. The reserve post is probably gonna be saved for guides/people's super-incredible runs, unless people decide to start making fanart.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2024 05:48

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

This is a win with the Black Deck, although I'm not really sure if I should count that for or against it, as I got super lucky in finding a whole bunch of Polychrome Jokers. Otherwise, this thing was built around spamming Three of A Kinds, preferably Aces when I could grab them. This is the run that made me think that I've been underestimating Steel Cards. A couple more of those and I might have won this Ante after all (or at least died on the Boss Blind instead).

EDIT: From my Blind log collection I'm glad to see that (unless I'm truly mistaken), LocalThunk got rid of all those Boss Blinds that in at least one version of the pre-game playtests ONLY showed up if you were 12 Antes deep or something.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Feb 21, 2024

# ¿ Feb 21, 2024 14:20

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Wooper posted:

Had a ridiculous build playing flush five of a kind Kings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqxSRicCZ70

Yeeesh, that's going in the highlight reel. Also added some of the guides to the first page.

Gonna see if I can finish out White Stakes tonight! Or at the very least a couple more decks, since there's so many other games asking to be played as well.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2024 23:05

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Y'know, I'm always pleasantly surprised when High Card works out this well. I never expect it to, but this is probably the best run I've had yet.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2024 01:24

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Doltos posted:

What did you do did you stack a ton of stone cards?

I did not! I mean, I had a couple of stone cards, but they weren't really critical to the whole thing. Part of it was an early game Burnt Joker which let me discard single cards so I ended up with a Level 16 High Card, even after eating the Arm at one point. But the other part was just spamming a ton of high times-mult jokers. I want to say Card Shark, Constellation, Blueprint and Hologram? Kind of hard to read the postgame here, but the last one definitely explains the 70+ card deck. Supernova was moderately helpful, but the Negative Swashbuckler was entirely useless. Indeed, overall I'm finding that I'm usually ending up with a lot of otherwise useless Negative jokers that stay in the Joker Hand because there's no reason not to take them and they'll otherwise clog up the shop pool.

Optimal strategy was to throw a second-best enhanced card down hand 1, and set up for a second-hand Glass card for millions of points to take advantage of Card Shark. Having all those extra cards from booster packs and no particular inclination to use any more than one at a time meant that I was spoiled for choice.

Getting through the rest of the White Stakes only decks might have been a little bit too ambitious, but I am making steady progress, having polished off the Green and Magic tonight. Might get one more done before I go to bed, but ehhh.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Feb 22, 2024

# ¿ Feb 22, 2024 04:31

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

TwoStepBoog posted:

The wheel of fortune is not happy with me--that's okay, I'll still keep buying that garbage.

__________________________

A couple more runs before bed, after all it's only 1:30 AM, right? That marks the completion of Nebula and Spectral. Only two more to go, and then that's all the decks you can get at basic level difficulty done at basic level difficulty!

This run is not particularly noticeable except insofar as it was my 5 Jacks discarded run, right at the very last discard. It was also meant to be my $400 run, but in wanting to win, I took my eyes off the prize. Definitely getting to the point where unlocking the final 20% of the collectibles (well, more like 10-15% after I grab the remaining low-hanging fruit) is going to take specialized runs where getting the unlock at all costs takes priority over, y'know, winning.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Feb 22, 2024

# ¿ Feb 22, 2024 07:31

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Game ate my win screen, but this was one of those runs that felt bonkers in every respect but score. Three negative Jokers and a Legendary (8 in total), constant Flush Fives in 3s of Hearts, and I still couldn't crack a couple of mil per hand. I think I'm coming around on Yorick, though he does require way too much prep time to be useful for anything but the final normal ante unless you get him really early on.

EDIT: Added Arcanuse's big money run to the front. Let people want me to add one of the Aces ones, just a little hesitant on the all-Aces ones since it was technically cheated in, although due to the Smeared Joker in play was functionally the same as unaltered. Probably going to ask for the thread rename though, if the mods will allow it, although it does look like someone might have asked for it by reporting the OP? Could just be left over from the Poker tag change.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Feb 22, 2024

# ¿ Feb 22, 2024 14:41

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

So there's a couple things here...

- That makes all of the pre-Red Stakes completion decks beaten at White Stakes.
- I lost the photo, but I got double the "Beat the Boss Blind for Cash" tags, to get $38 from one hand. :getin:

- The reason why this is a picture of beating the game and not how far I got in Endless mode is because this is a successful speed run! 12 rounds, baby!

# ¿ Feb 23, 2024 01:11

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Popete posted:

Where are my fellow discard freaks?

Just got it last run, as a matter of fact! First win on Red Stakes, too.

CJacobs posted:

Always crack a smile when he shows up in the shop. Hey pal, it's been a while!

Unironically love seeing the regular Joker show up if it's first Ante. Sometimes all you really want in those first few hands is a couple of extra Mult.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2024 02:42

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

faantastic posted:

Egg joker makes me ugly laugh every time it comes up and I have no idea why.

I've been clearing everything using two pair decks and saving glass cards until the last blind.

The egg is an inherently amusing object:

# ¿ Feb 23, 2024 05:07

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Veryslightlymad posted:

This card's effects broke me.

It has Holographic, so I definitely want to play it, yet it has a purple seal, so I definitely want to discard it, but it has steel, so I definitely want to hold onto it and not play it or discard it but it has holographic so------

Pfft. Putting that one in the screenshot reel.

External Organs posted:

Is anyone else playing the meta game where you get to freak out your family members by saying you're "addicted to a poker video game"

I tried telling a coworker about it, but generally speaking as long as it isn't visibly ruining my life nobody really seems to care one way or the other. Unfortunately I have a similar but distinct problem, where I can't even get people I know who like poker or gambling to be interested in the game because they're mostly interested in the social or money-making aspects, not the risk-taking or make number go up ones.

Harlock posted:

Disappointed if wheel isn't your #1

I don't have any catastrophic Wheel failure stories, but it does seem to disappoint me more often than not. As I should expect!

Otherwise not much progress. Just spent most of the morning doing/failing at card unlocks. With just under 90% of the collection want to try and getting as close as I can to 100% before making serious progress on pushing new deck completion/stakes again.

Jossar fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Feb 23, 2024

# ¿ Feb 23, 2024 14:35

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# ¿ Mar 22, 2025 07:16

Jossar: Apr 2, 2018; Current status: Angry about subs

Bleh, I think I won 1-2 new stakes tonight, but if so it was White Stakes for new decks, and not much progress elsewhere. Oh well, always tomorrow!

# ¿ Feb 24, 2024 04:44

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Balatro: I suck so much at this game and cant stop playing

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