Balatro

Getting Riff-Raff as my first joker activates all my dopamine receptors.

• Updated version of Love2D (the engine) - this fixes an issue on Windows and Steam Deck causing poor/stuttery performance for some players

• Added VC++ 2022 redistributable as an installation requirement

• General performance improvements

• Added toggle for 'Reduced Motion', removing the swirly background, gyrating card motion, much of the 'juice' in the game

• Changed default fallback tarot from Fool to Strength (when all tarots are on screen)

• Banned top-up tag and Antimatter on Jokerless Challenge

• Changed Gold Stake random seeds - now ensures that the first Legendary Joker on that seed is a Joker that you have not won with on Gold Stake (For Completionist++ hunting)

• Changed ante scaling in white stake:

  • Ante 3: 2800 -> 2000
  • Ante 4: 6000 -> 5000

• Changed ante scaling in green stake:

  • Ante 2: 1000 -> 900
  • Ante 3: 3200 -> 2600
  • Ante 4: 9000 -> 8000
  • Ante 5: 18000 -> 20000
  • Ante 6: 32000 -> 36000
  • Ante 7: 56000 -> 60000
  • Ante 8: 90000 -> 100000

• Changed ante scaling in purple stake:

  • Ante 2: 1200 -> 1000
  • Ante 3: 3600 -> 3200
  • Ante 4: 10000 -> 9000
  • Ante 6: 50000 -> 60000
  • Ante 7: 90000 -> 110000
  • Ante 8: 180000 -> 200000

• Changed Orange Stake

  • Scrapped increasing pack cost
  • Added new 'Perishable' mechanic, Jokers have a 30% chance to have a 'Perishable' sticker, disabling them after 5 rounds

• Changed Gold Stake

  • Scrapped -1 hand size
  • Added new 'Rental' mechanic, Jokers have a 30% chance to have a 'Rental' sticker (stacks with eternal/perishable), making them cost $1 up front and $3 every round

• Changed eternal to apply to Jokers in Buffoon packs

• Changed Eternal/Rental/Perishable sticker location to be in the top left corner

• Made some non-retroactive scaling Jokers incompatible with 'Perishable' (Ceremonial Dagger, Glass Joker, Hologram, Ride the Bus, runner, constellation, green joker, red card, madness, square joker, vampire, rocket, obelisk, lucky cat, flash card, spare trousers, castle, wee)

• Changed the first shop in every run to always include a normal Buffoon pack as one of the pack options

• Upcoming blinds/tags can now be seen in the shop immediately after defeating a boss blind/cashing out

• Some Blinds are now be banned on challenge runs - banned Crimson Heart, Verdant Leaf and Amber Acorn on 'Jokerless' - banned Verdant Leaf on 'Typecast' - banned Verdant Leaf on 'Non-Perishable' - banned The Plant on 'Mad World'

• Buffed Saturn

  • Now gives +3 mult instead of +2 mult for Straights

• Buffed Neptune

  • Now gives +4 mult instead of +3 mult for Straight Flush

• Buffed Eris

  • Now gives +50 chips instead of +40 chips for Flush Five

• Buffed Ceres

  • Now gives +4 mult instead of +3 mult for Flush House

• Square Joker now has a square sprite

• Blue Joker sprite was fixed (2 out of place blue pixels)

• Changed Uncommon tag - Now makes the uncommon joker free

• Changed Rare tag - Now makes the rare joker free

• Negative, Polychrome, Holo, Foil tags all make their respective joker free

• Changed Investment to give $25 instead of $15

• Changed 8 Ball - scrapped old effect, new effect -> 1 in 4 chance to spawn a tarot when any played 8 is scored

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

• Changed both Mad and Clever Joker - scrapped 'contains 4 of a kind' effect, now applies instead to any hand that contains a 'Two Pair'

• Changed Yorick - scrapped old effect, new effect -> gains X1 mult every 23 cards discarded (starts at X1)

• Changed Magician Tarot - now applies lucky to 2 cards instead of 1

• Changed Midas Mask - now only applies Gold enhancement to scoring face cards, costs $7 was $6

• Changed Vampire

  • now only removes enhancement from scoring cards
  • gives X0.1 mult per enhancement instead of X0.2 mult

• Changed Madness - now only applies on small/big blinds, not on boss blind selection

• Changed To Do list - poker hand no longer changes on payout, always changes at end of round (won't get stuck on Straight Flush)

• Changed description of Shortcut to include a more apt example (10 8 6 5 3)

• Changed Ancient Joker - the selected suit is no longer able to repeat between rounds

• Changed Swashbuckler - Now adds sell value of all other Jokers to Mult, not just the Jokers to the left

• Changed Hanging Chad - Now retriggers the first played card 2 times instead of once

• Changed Runner - now starts at +0 chips and gives +15 chips per straight, was +20 and +10 per straight

• Changed Flower Pot - Now includes the base suit of debuffed cards when determining if it will trigger

• Changed Bootstraps to include current mult bonus in description

• Changed all 4 Sinful Jokers (one for each suit) - they now each give +3 mult per suit instead of +4 mult

• Changed Banner - now gives +30 chips per remaining discard instead of +40 chips

• Changed Fibonacci - costs $8 instead of $7, because Fibonacci

• Changed Square Joker - now starts at +0 chips, was +16 chips, now costs $4, was $5

• Changed Wee Joker - now starts at +0 chips, was +10 chips

• Changed Steel Joker - Now gives X0.2 mult per Steel card in full deck instead of X0.25 mult

• Changed Odd Todd - Now gives +31 chips per odd ranked card instead of +30 mult

• Changed Sixth Sense - Now uncommon and $6, was rare

• Changed Hiker - Now gives +5 chips to every scoring card played instead of +4 chips

• Changed Gros Michel - Now has a 1 in 6 chance to go extinct instead of 1 in 4

• Changed Seance - Now uncommon and $6, was rare and $7

• Changed Riff-Raff - Now $6, was $4

• Changed Vagabond

  • Rare, was uncommon
  • $8, was $6
  • Applies when you have $4 or less, was $3 or less

• Changed Cloud 9 - Now $7, was $6

• Changed Mail-In Rebate - Now $5 was $3

• Changed Reserved Parking - Now common, was uncommon

• Changed Lucky Cat - Now gains X0.25 per lucky proc, was X0.2

• Changed Trading card - Now costs $6, was $5

• Changed Campfire - Now gains X0.25 per card sold, was X0.5

• Changed Smily Face - Now give +5 mult per face card, was +4 mult

• Changed Golden Ticket - Now payes out $4 per gold card played, was $3

• Changed Bloodstone - Now has a 1 in 2 chance to proc, was 1 in 3, gives X1.5 mult, was X2 mult

• Changed Onyx Agate - Now gives +7 mult per club card, was +8 mult

• Changed Glass Joker - Now gives X0.75 mult per glass card destroyed, was X0.5 mult

• Changed Stuntman - Now gives +250 Chips, was +300, is now rare, was uncommon, is not $7, was $6

• Changed Invisible Joker - Now requires 2 rounds and costs $8, was 3 rounds and $10

• Changed wording on most scaling jokers to refer to 'this joker'

• Fixed bug where opening a booster pack with hand size of 0 was unskippable

• Fixed bug where the card generated by 'Certificate' was not being debuffed by the boss

• Fixed bug in the rate at which eternal/perishable Jokers were being generated

• Fixed bug where Buffoon Pack could show up in Jokerless challenge

• Fixed bug where debuffed negative Jokers being sold doesn't reduce the number of available joker slots

• Fixed bug where sticker seeding was shared between shop and booster packs

• Added localization to new content in 1.0.1
• Made some non-retroactive scaling Jokers incompatible with 'Perishable' (Ceremonial Dagger, Ride the Bus, runner, constellation, green joker, red card, madness, square joker, vampire, rocket, obelisk, lucky cat, flash card, spare trousers, castle, wee)
  • Removed more motion from the 'reduce motion' mode Changed Runner - now starts at +0 chips and gives +15 chips per straight, was +20 and +10 per straight
• Changed Square Joker - now starts at +0 chips, was +16 chips, now increases by +5 chips, was +4 Changed Bloodstone - now gives X1.5 mult per heart card, was X2 mult
• Changed Wee Joker - now starts at +0 chips, was +10 chips
• Changed Stuntman - now Rare and $7, was Uncommon and $6
• Changed Vampire - now Uncommon and $7, was Rare and $8
• Since the margins are no longer as razor thin on higher stakes, I have also slightly increased ante scaling for mid-late antes:
• Changed ante scaling in green stake:
  • Ante 3: 2400 -> 2600
  • Ante 4: 7000 -> 8000
  • Ante 5: 18000 -> 20000
  • Ante 6: 32000 -> 36000
  • Ante 7: 56000 -> 60000
  • Ante 8: 90000 -> 100000
• Changed ante scaling in purple stake:
  • Ante 3: 3000 -> 3200
  • Ante 4: 8000 -> 9000
  • Ante 5: 22000 -> 25000
  • Ante 6: 50000 -> 60000
  • Ante 7: 90000 -> 110000
  • Ante 8: 180000 -> 200000
• Changed Eternal/Rental/Perishable sticker location to be closer to the top right corner
• Banned top-up tag and Antimatter on Jokerless Challenge
• Fixed a bug where perishable Jokers were still giving their effect when debuffed
• Fixed bug in the rate at which eternal/perishable Jokers were being generated
• Fixed bug where Buffoon Pack could show up in Jokerless challenge

How to get started

To create your own fancy art of Waifu's we are going to need a few things:

1. 7-zip, a free archive extraction tool https://7-zip.org/
2. Image editing software that respects transparancy backgrounds like photoshop or Gimp
3. Very basic image editing skills, which could be supplemented by Youtube. Search for removing backgrounds.
4. Pixel art
5. Coffee

Extracting the necessary files

Navigate to your Balatro local files

Now right click on Balatro.exe and choose to open archive as a 7-zip archive

Go to folder Resources\Textures\2x (*)

Extract all the files to a temporary folder on your desktop where you will them (8BitDeck.png is the main image that we are going to work with, but if you're ambitious you could also alter Joker or Tarot images, and basically any icon in the game)

• Check your settings in Balatro if you are using "Pixal Art Smoothing" if yes choose 2x. If no choose the 1x files Thanks for User R, in the comment section, for pointing this out

Time to start editing

Open 8BitDeck.png and the pixel art file in your image editing software

Remove the background from your own art, select that layer and copy it to the 8BitDeck.png file

You have to delete the original art. Resize your own art in the available space for the each card

This is how it looks like before making any changes

This is what it will look like after removing the original art and placing your own. Use the numbers or letters of the cards to determine the maximum size of your art for each card

Replacing the original deck of cards with your own

Navigate to Balatro's local files and use 7-zip to open Balatro.exe as an archive just like step 1

Now copy your new made deck 8BitDeck.png to folder Resources\Textures\2x, replacing the original file

Close the archive and let's start up Balatro to see if it works. Just start a new run and open your deck preview in the bottom right corner.

(If you're unsure if you got the right file or are going the right direction, just change a color of 1 card from the 8BitDeck.png file and replace the original. Open Balatro and check if the color changed.)

And there we go

Congratulations!

My build was 4 of a kind. Why? You get +3 mult with each mars planet card used and +30 chips. Any lower hand (full house, flush, straight and so on) only gives +2 mult, so you need a lot more of the planet cards in order to achieve a score of 100 000 (and beat the boss blind of ante 8).

Ante 1+2

This build relies heavily on getting a mars planet card during ante 1. If you dont get one, reset the run. Beat ante 1 however you please (flush, full house or straight is pretty consistent).

With a single mars planet card, you get a base score of 90*10 = 900 which is enough to beat all the blinds in ante 2 with a single four of a kind. This DOES require SOME luck, but with a death or strength tarot, it should be pretty achieveable.

• Big blind needs 4’s or better.
• Boss needs 8’s or better, or just get a flush in addition to your 4 of a kind.
• An Empress, hierophant, or second mars planet card is enough to disregard the requirements above.

This allows you to save up money while you beat the two first antes. My favourite voucher early on is the x2planet cards in shop voucher, as these are more important early on to build up a nice base mult.

Tarot cards you are looking for are:

• Strength - improve consistency in getting the 4 of a kind
• Death - improve consistency in getting the 4 of a kind
• Empress - improve your mult if you see that your base mult is not enough to clear the blind
• The hanged man - If you see it in the shop, and you have cash: Buy it. Destroy the cards you have the least of in your deck, but try to avoid destroying the cards that are one below the cards you have the most of - we want to strength those.
• The hermit - Duh doi
• The devil - Buy it for 3 gold and use it on a random card before you score your ante winning hand. It costs 3 and gives 3. This is fairly low on the list of priority, but it's strictly a positive gain to your deck. Always spend all of your discards looking for gold cards if you know you have a game winning hand.
• Justice - Glass cards aren't too important early on, but super important later on.
• Chariot - gives a 1.5x to mult. Use it as a boost before playing your game winning hand. as a rule of thumb, 2 steel cards in hand = one glass card in played hand.

Buy the tarots in the shop and use them during the round. Don't get exited and spend them during an arcane pack. 4 of a kind is pretty inconsistent to get early on, but with a death in hand, you only need to get a 3 of a kind. Aces are technically the best, but it doesn't really matter what rank you go for (although i recommend going for 6's or better - see math below). Face cards can be a little sketchy because of the boss that debuffs face cards, but if you happen to have 7 kings in your deck, and 4 of everything else, i would say go for it.

Ante 3:

To beat ante 3, you need 3600 chips for the boss. In the beginning, your 4 of a kind level will vary depending on your luck. Look for specific tarot cards to clear the blinds depending on your level. Achieving 3600 score can be done with a single 4 of a kind at level:

• 5 (with 3’s or better)
• 4 (making one of them a mult card with empress)
• 3 (one of the cards are a glass card, and you need 5’s or better)

Ante 4:

The Boss blind requires a score of 10000.

Here are some ideas on how you can get a score of 10000 in a single 4 of a kind, depending on its level:

• 10 hand will clear this by itself
• 9 6's or better
• 8. two cards are mult cards and cards are is 6's or better
• 7 one card is a glass card

Ante 5+

Do the math on what you will score before leaving the shop. Save deaths in order to improve consistency. Strength should pretty much be useless because you should have already strengthed the cards below the one you have the most of in your deck. Try to focus on making more glass cards of a single rank, and making copies of them with death. Try to not play more glass cards than necessary, because if they break your deck becomes less consistent. The hanged man is great to thin your deck, but deaths are better imo.

Standard packs are nice, and try to get a card with a red seal on it. Make it a glass card and copy them with death. A single red seal glass card should hopefully be enough to clear most blinds. Red seal cards are not strictly necessary, but they help immensely. They are also great to transform into steel cards, and having one in hand is essentially the same as playing an additional (regular) glass card.

Ante 8:

4 of a kind level:

• 11 - 2 glass cards will score over 50k
• 11 - 3 glass cards will score over 100k
• 16 - 2 glass cards will score over 100k

Skipping:

I would often skip blinds if i had leveled up 4 of a kind to level 11 or 16, and KNEW a single 4 of a kind would beat any boss with a couple glass cards (even the ante 8 boss). This is because you have so many glass cards at this point that playing the ante would more often than not decrease the consistency of my deck. Just watch out for the tags that rerolls boss blinds. Play these blinds if the boss blind is easy. (This mistake is why i haven't cleared jokerless twice, huehuehue.

Tl:dr:

Get an early mars card and play 4 of a kind from ante 2 and onwards. Do the math before every round. To get a score of 100k, level up 4 of a kind with mars planet cards to level 11 (hand scored needs 3 glass cards) or level 16 (hand scored needs 2 glass cards).

Original Post by u/Swimming_Security_27

Attempts per Deck/Stake

I was playing through each stake with all the decks, and when I hit Purple stake, I decided to log the results of all of my games as this is when the game really ramps up. I’ve read some Gold Stake guides which recommend a lot of restarting, but I wanted to see what it would look like if I gave every run my best shot. A couple of clarifications: First, this is only trying to “win” a run which means to clear ante 8. High score builds are super fun but that was not the goal here. Second, I never reset once and played every run to the end. Here is the table showing the number of attempts it took me to clear each deck at each stake. I also included my personal game log which has the data from every “You Win”/“Game Over” screen. Below are my observations on the data and strategy tips.

Game Log: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K4GBcFfgu_6N7YxWqDX25AlPaVGfPZtELVkrkrA23-A/edit?usp=sharing *Note: There are a few missing entries, mostly due to accidentally leaving the end screen with a couple due to rage quitting. I still added them in as part of the W/L record which is ultimately what I wanted to track.

Hours Played: 104

Cavendishes lost: 1

​

Observations

• Non-Black Deck Win Rates:
  • Purple Stake: 48.3%
  • Orange Stake: 33.3%
  • Gold Stake: 17.5%
• Overall Black Deck Win Rate: 3.1%
• Purple, Orange, and Gold are relatively the same when you shoot for High Card builds. The biggest hurdle for Gold is getting through the early game with -1 hand size, but that’s about it. Even though my win rate was a lot less for Gold, the amount of time to grind through was about the same as a lot of runs die in ante 1/2.
• Thoughts on Resetting - This game is awesome and it’s so fun to navigate a run with what you’re given instead of resetting for the perfect joker to start your run. You will also improve immensely as a player when you’re forced to deal with a run where you’re barely surviving every round. Plus when you leave a run up to RNG in the beginning, you’re less likely to depend on your own piloting skill. This all being said, it does feel bad when you’re hanging on for 4/5 antes with tempo jokers only and can never get anything going. If you want to save yourself some time, I think looking for a solid joker in ante 1/2 and resetting if you don’t find one is pretty reasonable.
• The most difficult deck is Black deck by far. Missing a hand makes the early game much harder to navigate, and long-term, the -1 hand size takes 25% of your points away. Not to mention your scaling mults have one less hand to trigger on. Not to mention less money from extra hands. Not to mention Hieroglyph is near unplayable…I have no idea how I spiked a win on my first attempt at Orange stake but I guess that’s what happens with a low sample size. I think the 43/52 attempts on Purple/Gold stake are more realistic.
• The second-most difficult deck IMO is a tossup between Zodiac and Painted. The reason Zodiac is difficult is a bit nuanced. You get Overstock which gives you an extra slot in the shop. However, you also get the Tarot and Planet Merchants so your shops end up littered with non-Jokers which makes things a lot more difficult. This difficulty is more apparent in Gold stake (took me 21 attempts) as you have a really hard time finding an early joker to get you off the ground. For Painted deck, having a missing Joker slot is huge. Painted deck is one where you can play around with other builds with the increased hand size, but limiting to 4 jokers is a big deal and I always felt strapped when playing it. This is one deck where I go for the “Negative Joker in the next shop” tag as spiking a decent fifth joker is a big deal.
• Plasma deck takes a bit getting used to. Things are scaling so fast that you kinda have to go with chips to get the big “Balanced” scores. There’s not much time to transition into a big mult + multx setup so I always felt like I was forced into big chip builds with this one. I remember one of my runs had 2 Arrowheads, Brainstorm, and Seltzer to get through. Once I switched my mindset to “chips only”, it was a lot easier to pilot.
• The other decks are all basically the same. Blue deck is probably easiest but also Yellow/Green are also comfortable to play due to the better econ. Ghost was nice too as the 1.5x mult gets you going early.

​

Tips For High Stakes

• Learn how to play the first ante well. Point requirements go from 300 to 450 to 600. 300 can be cleared in a single hand by flushes, straights, or full houses. Flushes are the easiest to get and you need 40 chips from the hand to get to the 75x4=300 to clear the Small Blind. Be willing to discard aggressively to find a 300 point hand. Having an extra dollar for the first shop can be huge. 450 is a lot simpler as you usually need to do this in two hands meaning they can average a lower amount (225). 600 can be cleared in two hands, but likely will require three as it’s not trivial to find two 300 point hands. Playing the first ante is key as you need to get the money to buy jokers from the shop as soon as possible. This leads to the next point which is…
• Skipping blinds is severely overrated. Shops are incredibly valuable as they give you access to jokers which are the main way to win. Here are some examples of when I might skip: - Mega Buffoon pack on a Small Blind since the money received is minimal and I’m getting basically a better shop through the pack. This is especially true if I’m low on money and need a good joker ASAP.
  • Rare joker in next shop if my current build is tapped out and needs some juice to get past ante 8 - Negative joker in next shop if my build is tapped out and I’m not going to clear ante 8. This happens mostly w/ Painted deck - Anaglyph deck can do some fun things with skips as you get the double tag so pay a lot more attention than normal for these. Mega Buffoon packs or money are the best ones here. - A good way to think about it is to look at the money received from the blind and the shop access together as it’s own “tag” and make a decision on whether you’d want that or the skip tag. - There are strategic reasons to skip besides looking at immediate rewards. I had the Plasma deck I mentioned above (two Arrowheads, a Brainstorm, and a Seltzer) with 4 antes to go so I just skipped straight to the final boss to make sure seltzer was still up and running. Totally unique situation but something to keep in mind.
• Don’t hoard money early. It’s nice to get up to $25 for the interest, but don’t do it in lieu of picking up a joker in the shop, even a meh tempo joker. Going down to $0 if it means you’re going to survive one ante is totally fine. If you try and hoard your money early, you’ll find you will be fizzling out early on in runs. High Stakes Balatro is a lot about just surviving until you get more juice in your setup, so just try and stick around.
• Hoard money when you are comfortable. Once you have a build that is clearing rounds easily, save up to $25 so you get a “free” reroll every turn to dig for more jokers.
• High Card setups are the most consistent. Here are some reasons why: (1) you’re not dependent on the luck of the deck draw (2) points are more consistent so it’s easy to see where you stand (3) most bosses you just ignore (4) it makes a lot of jokers better (Stuntman, Blackboard, Card Sharp) and (5) It mostly ignores Orange/Gold stake restrictions. For those who are unaware, the High Card pieces look something like this:
  • Tempo Mult Joker early on - this will be something like Misprint, Lusty Joker, Fibonacci, etc. Basically something to get your points off the ground for the first few antes. And feel free to add multiple of these as you need them to keep surviving..
  • Chips Joker - Chips are the other side of the mult equation. If you don’t have a chips joker, your hands will be doing the heavy lifting to fill this void. The absolute goat of chip jokers is Stuntman but finding a scaling chip joker is also very great. Something like Square Joker, Castle, or Bull will be sufficient to fill your single chip joker slot. However, even a simple Blue Joker or Banner can carry you to the end
  • Scaling Mult - thinking Green Joker, Ride the Bus, Supernova, Burnt Joker, Bootstraps etc. These jokers gain mult as you go which is key to keeping up with the point ramp up without having to rely on good hands to get there. These are the crux of any High Card build so make sure you understand how they work and how to use them efficiently. The instant you first find a good scaling mult is a crucial part of a run. You need to find a way to get this joker off the ground and try and trigger it as many times as possible. The first few triggers are the most valuable. Going from 5 to 6 mult is way more valuable than going from 30 to 31 mult. This is where your tempo jokers will hold you over until the scaling mult takes over at which point you’re free to dump the tempo jokers for something better
    • As I said before, you need to trigger these AS MANY TIMES AS POSSIBLE. This often includes nerfing your joker ordering to make sure you get the maximum triggers. If you don’t know how many points you’re scoring from different configurations, take a second and calculate it out. I’ve had quite a few runs where I’m optimizing my scaling jokers to the max and I get to ante 8 and barely clear the final boss. Without optimizing, that probably ends in a loss, so make sure you’re maximizing this.
  • MultX Jokers - This is your end game to clear ante 8 although this does not mean you don’t take these early. Some examples of these would Ramon, Vampire, Blackboard, Cavendish, and Campfire, but there are plenty other great ones. Also I would think of a card like Burglar as a 2X Mult in most cases as your hand points should be consistent if you’re running High Card. Obelisk can go insane in this build as well, especially if you were using another hand like flushes or two pairs to get going early on. In a standard High Card run, you ideally will have a single Chip Joker, a single Scaling Mult joker, and then the best possible MultX Jokers you can find.
  • All this being said, you are not locked in to playing High Card. I had a run where I got Bloodstone from a joker pack and immediately got Lusty Joker in the next shop. I found Oops All Sixes later and cruised that for a win. Take what the game gives you, just know which long-term strategies are more solid if you come to a crossroad.
• Know the value of pacKs. If you’re late-game cruising on a High Card setup, don’t even bother with packs. Not to mention they go crazy expensive in Orange+ stake. The best packs are the Buffoon packs. These are almost an auto-pickup if I’m looking for jokers (depends on the price too). The main time I’ll go for Arcane packs is if I hit some tempo jokers early that steer me towards a hand like flushes or three of a kind, in which case tarot cards can help out. Although even then, it’s usually better to use your money to find better jokers than it is curating your deck. Same thing goes for Spectral packs, only go for them if you have an idea of what you want (Ectoplasm goes hard, also Wraith is great). At the end of the day, make sure you’re focusing on jokers first before jumping into packs.
• Always think in terms of Mult difference when choosing/swapping jokers. When deciding if you should swap out a joker for another one, you should know what your mult and/or chips are for a current hand. You can then figure out what the mult change is of adding/swapping a new joker. Here’s an example, let’s say I have a Green Joker at 20 mult and a Banner (usually 80 chips). Im at a shop and can choose between a card that gives me 40 chips on average or 5 mult on average. The correct play is to take the 40 chips as it 1.5xs your chips whereas the 5 mult is only 1.25xing your mult. When looking at these comparisons, also make sure to take into account scaling. So Green Joker is 20 mult now, but it’ll be 30 multi in a few rounds, so the 5 mult pickup is even worse than the 1.25x estimation. These calculations are usually simple although they can increase in complexity when there are more moving parts, thinking like Baseball Card on multiple cards that could be swapped out as an example. Also including editions on jokers can make it a tougher decision. But again, the main takeaway is you can usually boil things down to the mult change which makes these choices easier to compare.
• Understand how the blind scaling works. When you complete a boss, you should know how many points it will take to beat the Small Blind of the next ante so you know if you need to go all-in for jokers in the shop or if you can just chill. See this page for how blinds work: https://balatrogame.fandom.com/wiki/Blinds. Early on, you’ll see a bump from ante boss to the next ante’s small blind, although for late game (last 4 antes), this is not the case and the small blind is equal to or less than the previous boss. It’s very important to keep this in mind. If you know you’re screwed at the next level, GO ALL IN rerolling for jokers in the shop. Otherwise, it’s usually better to just chill and get the interest off your money.
• Vouchers
  • Great Tier:
    • Grabber - Basically 1.25x w/o needing a joker slot. It also gives you an extra $1 per turn, very good.
    • Overstock - Since we want jokers, increasing your shop efficiency by 1.5x is a big deal. - Director’s Cut - The biggest obstacle to winning a late game High Card run is hitting one of the two nasty end game bosses: Violet Vessel or Crimson Heart. These can totally wreck a run and picking up a $10 Director’s Cut is completely worth it to mitigate the 2/5 chance of hitting one of these. And if you happen to face one of them and reroll into the other, then I guess you win the 1 out of 10 lottery. Notice how the other three bosses are fairly trivial when running High Card. For the regular bosses, ones like The Wall, The Ox, The Needle, or the Eye can be nice to reroll as well.
    • Reroll Surplus - Can be nice if you have the econ for it. Rerolls happen a lot with High Card builds.
    • Hieroglyph - First thing is I rarely take this with Black deck as you’re basically losing 1/3 of your point output at a minimum by taking the -1 hands. With normal 4 hand decks, I usually take this early on, but if it’s late game and I can see that my point output trajectory is such that I don’t need it to win ante 8, then I’ll just skip. The extra nice thing about getting this early is you get access to Petroglyph which usually has no downside (-1 discard instead of -1 hand).
  • Situational Tier:
    • Clearance Sale - usually too much of an econ hit to be justified. Although if you’re doing things like Campfire, it can be really nice. Again, most of the time we’re just buying jokers so you won’t get your money back.
    • Wasteful - Can be nice with things that synergize with it like Banner or Delayed Gratification. I would say you probably want to have a good reason to take it.
    • Seed Money - Slaps with econ based jokers like Bootstraps or Bull. Otherwise it’s usually not worth it.
  • Trash Tier:
    • Blank Card - I usually don’t bother with this, it’s just too much of a econ hit for a chance to get Antimatter which honestly isn’t needed for getting a standard win
    • Hone - Only thing really worth hitting from this is Polychrome and still, just not worth the econ hit.
    • Crystal Ball - No need for an extra slot
    • Telescope - Definitely not worth for Orange/Gold stake due to expensive packs and even in purple, its pretty slow.
    • Tarot/Planet Merchant & Magic Trick - Not what we’re looking for
    • Paint Brush - This is probably the best one in this tier, but when running High Card, you usually don’t care about hand size. It even makes Blackboard worse. Can be nice very early on if you’re still trying to get established and stay alive with a flush setup or otherwise

Original Post by u/jjthejetplane2468

Just wanted to share my most insane win with people who may appreciate it.

So incredibly excited to see this community! I haven’t played Balatro yet because isn’t currently on a platform I have access to, but I found out about the game from a Youtuber I like who talks about heat indie games.

So excited to see this community grow and hope one day the game will come to iOS.

What fun idea do you have for Balatro ? It can be anything: a joker, a game mode, a challenge, a card...

My random thoughts:

• New secret hands: Flush Four, and Flush Pairs (A flush Two Pair). You can only play them with the Four Fingers joker.
• Otherwise, Flush as a modifier rather than its own hand. For example, playing a Straight Flush would give you the chips and mult of both a Flush and a Straight.
• Card themes, basically skins for cards (or even jokers). It could work like minecraft texture packs.
• A deck that uses tarot cards as playing cards. Each tarot card you use is added to your deck. They would count as their own suit, their number is their rank, and give mult instead of chips. Some are face cards, but it's related to the symbol rather than the rank (The Emperor...).

Jokers

Jokers are the most important for getting an engine going to crush the game. There are some jokers which are very strong in the first couple of antes but fall off later. It's important to invest only a minimum into the cards which are strong early so you can focus on building jokers which will carry you through the whole game.

You need a mix of three types of jokers:

• Chip Builder
• Flat Mult
• Multiplying Mult

With the right mix of these three, you don't need to buy a single planet card, your jokers ( under the right circumstances ) will be paying out 20-30k per hand even on a High card 2 without special conditions.

You can use Utility jokers to aid you, but you need these three types to win, so focus on these first. ( The exception being Smeared Joker, because that's just busted. )

If you have a deck that has 250 chips, 60 mult into 3x multiplied mult, then you score a minimum of 250 x 60 x 3 = 45k per hand, before any consideration of the hand you played or the value of the cards you played. That will easily win you the run against any boss.

Flat Mult

Flat multi are cards such as "Gros Michel" (+15 mult, 1 in 4 chance to disappear), Abstract Joker (+3 mult for each joker), etc. Some of these are only good for the first few antes, while others scale better into the later game. You can also get flat mult from holographic jokers which is generally a much more efficient place to get it from.

A card like misprint is fine to pick up in the first couple of antes, but should be sold for better as soon as it's reasonable.

A few flat mult cards also scale, these are absolutely worth building around if you come across them:

• Green Joker ( Incredibly powerful, especially with "Banner" )
• Red Card
• Erosion ( very difficult to make work, only suggest if you have a reliable way to destroy cards )
• Fortune Teller
• Spare Trousers ( Not actually great, feels like a worse version of Green Joker )
• Flash card
• Bootstraps ( Incredibly powerful )

Early on a card like "misprint" seems powerful because you one-shot everything with some luck but these cards scale much more reliably into the end-game. They should all have at least a flat 10-15 mult by the end unconditionally.

If you have a flat 15 mult, that's like having 5-10 levels on every one of your cards. In other words, one joker and some investment replaces investing into dozens of planet packets.

Chip Builders

Chip builders are any cards which give chips. Foil jokers help a lot giving a 50 chips, but there are some very powerful chip builder cards which give around 100 chips each, and are far more powerful than the conditional "30 chips if an odd number" type cards which should be avoided unless desperate:

• Banner ( Probably overpowered by a factor of 2, this gives 120 chips or 160 chips with the Wasteful voucher. )
• Ice cream ( Great early game, falls off quickly so needs to be replaced asap )
• Blue Joker ( As with banner, ridiculously good value. )

There are also some scaling chip builders, which are tricker to make work, but can be scaled to late game:

• Square Joker ( Difficult to make work unless you have a utility joker which lets you play short hands )
• Bull ( Extremely powerful, can easily scale to 250 flat alone )
• Castle ( Very fun to get going, surprisingly quick to scale if you're not reliant on non-discard strategies, but avoid if using banner. )
• Wee Joker ( Tricky to scale without screwing up and leaving yourself with no hands! )

Mult multipliers

These are cards which read "x2 Mult" or similar, and are very unpowered early while essential late. The naturally scale with the power of the rest of your deck, although there are still some which provided a fixed multiplier and some that further scale the multiplier.

It's worth having only one of these and investing in the scaling of it, although you can get away with two if you have extra joker slots. It's generally better to look to scale your chips and flat mult rather than have powerful multipliers which are multiplying a small sum.

NB: Do not get "photograph", the multiplier applies before your jokers have added their mult, it's worthless in a joker focussed build.

Some examples of powerful ones:

• Joker Stencil ( Not worth unless you're playing the deck with the extra joker slot )
• Blackboard ( Not recommended without utility, you will kill yourself trying to get the mult active )
• Cavendish ( The 1 in 1000 discard chance is a joke, this is basically a flat x3, it's a run winner )
• Acrobat ( Surprisingly useful, especially if you want to play extra hands to boost Green Joker )
• The Trio ( Make sure your deck can support playing 3 of a kind regularly )
• Constellation ( Amazing if you can support it, this can scale up to around 4x if you invest into planets )
• Hologram ( One of the best jokers in the game if you can get it early. )

Utility and Money makers

A last note about utility jokers. These are jokers which provide utility such as allowing freedom of suit or gapped straights. I've not had much success trying to get the straight based cards to work, but Smeared Joker is incredible. With a hand size increase such as from paint brush, you are guarenteed to be able to play a flush every hand without having to do any deck management whatsoever.

If you can afford a slot for a joker which makes money, and that can include doing things like generating consumable cards ( remember these can be sold too if you don't want them ) then it's worth doing so, as that money can be poured into scaling your scaling jokers, be it directly such as the bull, or being able to afford lots of packs or extra cards to boost others.

If you're happy with your joker selection based on these criteria, you're free to invest all your money into deck enhancements and deck-shaping if you need them for conditional jokers ( which I'd recommended avoiding if possible, but it isn't always possible. ).

Original Post By u/Zeeterm on Reddit