[Balatro] So I'll tell you all the story about the Poker and the rougelike

MNC Dover

Welcome to Balatro!

From the Steam page: The poker roguelike. Balatro is a hypnotically satisfying deckbuilder where you play illegal poker hands, discover game-changing jokers, and trigger adrenaline-pumping, outrageous combos.

This game is legit addictive. There's lots to unlock and each run can go in a lot of different directions. I've had runs where I was focusing on landing Straights and other runs where simple Pairs were generating lots of points. Balancing out purchases, upgrades, and saving money makes a great replayability in each run.

Trailer:

https://youtu.be/VUyP21iQ_-g?feature=shared

FAQ:
Will update later

Make sure to post some screenshots of your sweet builds and insane combos!

DarkPrimus

Managed to beat the game using the Red Deck the other day. I will have to remember to try and start documenting my combos I build for later.

I've come up with some silly combos but I have kept encountering a Boss where their ability would disrupt my synergy and/or disable enough crucial cards to break my success engines.

SLyM

my favorite build is getting the hack and the joker that buffs 10s and 4s and just trying to get my deck to be like 50% 4s.

The 7 million blind on endless mode is still my white whale though, I haven't made it past yet

Gnizmo

I have found spamming my favorites have consistently been going for straights. It is what I have found the most consistent way to keep scoring. Less so since they nerfed the planet card from the demo, but it desperately needed it. If I hadn't misplaced one hand I would have broken ante 12 wiithout much difficulty using a build built on the current system. It would have been trivial before I think.

BlitzAce1981

Just had a run pop off in a way I didn't expect:



The Observatory voucher and Perkeo did a lot of heavy lifting - those Jupiter cards were multiplying the multiplier by over 430k by the end.

MNC Dover

BlitzAce1981 wrote: »

Just had a run pop off in a way I didn't expect:



The Observatory voucher and Perkeo did a lot of heavy lifting - those Jupiter cards were multiplying the multiplier by over 430k by the end.

Having only beaten the game once, I have no idea what's happening in that picture, but I love it!

cooljammer00

Is it secretly a clicker

Mgcw

I don't like the black. I've managed to get to the 4th difficulty on a bunch of decks but it took me like 8 runs just to get 1 on white difficulty with the black deck.

Gnizmo

cooljammer00 wrote: »

Is it secretly a clicker

Not at all.

MNC Dover wrote: »

BlitzAce1981 wrote: »

Just had a run pop off in a way I didn't expect:



The Observatory voucher and Perkeo did a lot of heavy lifting - those Jupiter cards were multiplying the multiplier by over 430k by the end.

Having only beaten the game once, I have no idea what's happening in that picture, but I love it!

Observatory is a perk that multiplies your score based on the number of cards to upgrade a hand you have in a slot. In this case Jupiter for a flush. Perkeo is a legendary joker that creates a negative copy of a consumable you are holding at the end of every shopping session. The rest of the jokers are a wonderful combo that will absolutely not lead to the insane numbers seen here.

milski

I was able to clear the $7 mill small blind but fell to the big blind with a deck that was 50% Polychrome Gold Seal Aces of Hearts with the 2x on flush, 3x on triples, and 4x on four of a kind cards, but I got greedy on a spectral negative card so my max hand size was too low to churn for consistent quint flushes. Needed a better scaling tool to get past that ante overall

MNC Dover

Had a good run going where I was winning on my first hand, but I decided to pivot midway through because I felt I needed to prep for the long game. Immediately regretted my decision in the next round where I barely beat the small blind.

I learned that while Mults are important, I shouldn't be overlooking Chips either. Getting 50-100 Mults doesn't matter if you're only pushing out 40-50 Chips. Balance Dover, balance!

Jam Warrior

I have lost count of the number of times today that I’ve put down the Steam Deck, declared out loud ‘Enough Balatro! On with life!’, and then fifteen minutes later picked it back up and started another run.

WotanAnubis

First run I did pretty well. Got a Joker that turned all my cards into Face cards and another card that boosted Face cards. And then I ran into the boss that draws all Face cards face down. In hindsight, I should have sold that one Joker that turns everything into Face cards, but it was my first run, I didn't think about it.

First run I won, was with the Green deck and the Vagrant and Vampire Jokers. Green deck doesn't accrue interest, so you might as well spend all your money. Vagrant gives you Tarot cards if you don't have a lot of money. Constant Tarot cards keep enhancing your cards, which the Vampire then drains for some truly ridiculous multiplier scores. It was a smoothly running machine of turning not having any money into ridiculous value.

All the runs after that have been short-lived disasters.

milski

Beat a $300,000,000 small blind with a deck consisting of a ton of Steel Kings, 1.5x mult on Kings in hand, and two triggers of in-hand abilities, but crashed right after that because I had not turned the corner on either finding something to boost the scaling even more or finding a more consistent source of Tarot cards/fixing to consistently have a hand of nothing but Kings plus some sacrificial high card.

Jam Warrior

I managed to take a single pair based run to a win with the joker that upgrades the hand type in your first discard. Folded as soon as it hit endless mode though.

Spawnbroker

It makes me almost angry that this game was developed by a single person. It's such a simple, relatable concept, taken to the extreme.

I love that the industry is so prone to disruption like this by creative mad geniuses. Every year it feels like we get a new one of these types of games.

Tofystedeth

Just got to Ante 12 for the first time. Forgot to get a screenie of my build (and I do wish the post run screen had an option to show your general build details, though I have no idea what it would have to look like in order to make sense). But the general breakdown was:

The deck that starts with no face cards
Joker that gives +4 mult every triggered spade
Hack:The joker that makes cards 2 through 5 retrigger.
Wee Joker: Gives bonus chips. The bonus permanently increases by 8 every time a 2 triggers, and got an early polychrome on it from Wheel of Fortune
Blueprint: Copies the effect of the joker to the right of it
Foil version of the legendary joker that gives 5x mult.

Various vouchers to do things like get tarot cards in the shop etc, lots of purple and blue seals on my high cards so I could safely discard or not play them to generate tarots and planets.
Eventually ended up with something like 20+ 2s in the deck, about 19 of which were spades, and 12-15 of those were Red seal mult card that I managed to duplicate several times over.

So I used blueprint on the Hack most of the time to get my hands that were 4 or 5 2s to trigger 3-4 times each, each of increased my mult and added to the permanent bonus from the Wee joker. Then as I got towards the end of the run, moved blueprint over to the Legendary to get another 5x multiplier (also managed to polychrome the blueprint late in the run).
At the end of the run the bonus on the Wee joker was almost 1900 chips. My best hand was over 39 million, which I was really impressed by until I lost to the next small blind which was 300 million...

Crippl3

Important feature request:
When Wheel of Fortune succeeds, make it say Yup!

Peewi

The checkerboard deck is funny.

It starts with 26 hearts and 26 spades, so if you get +1 hand size you ALWAYS have a flush in hand.

With Burnt Joker I was able to get flush to over level 50. Still died to the 14 million boss, though.

Jam Warrior

Dagnabit. There’s a joker unlock for having $400 and I just died on $380.

Aioua

crossposting this from chat:

Aioua wrote: »

Anyway i was on this absolutely silly run:

Black deck, so six joker slots by default.
First shop, get a joker stencil (+1x mult for each empty joker slot, including joker stencil)
So that's a 6x mult to start
after a few more rounds, find a spectral card that dupes my stencil, so now i have 6x • 6x (they also don't count other stencils!)
keep going find a fukking baseball card (all common jokesr have +1.5x) now I'm 5x • 5x • 1.5x • 1.5x
Coming up on ante 7, get an invisible joker (copies random joker after three rounds). When it procs: another stencil 5x • 5x • 5x • 1.5x • 1.5x • 1.5x
I win getting over a mil on basically any hand
Oh and aside from this my deck is mostly aces and kings and full house is level 20+
Roll into endless

Get up to ante 10 find ANOTHER invisible joker
Ante 11 boss is the last flight before it procs but dropping down to 4x base made me just too weak

So close to being insanely broken.
This was like my forth run of the full game, too.

Tertiee

Have others started dialing up the stakes yet? Hitting a roadblock trying to beat green stake with the red deck. Figuring out if I should keep at it or swap to the more gimmicky decks and give them a try.

MNC Dover

Had a few runs stall out pretty early on, like at the first boss blind.

Any tips for new runs? My current thinking is to discard a lot of cards to get a big hand to beat the first few fights. Buy a Joker in the store that helps with scoring first (usually through Mults) before diving into economy gain. Focus on interest gains after the first boss is down, but not getting too greedy and ignoring upgrades. This sound about right?

Also, where do you find the most value in stuff? I'm usually weary of adding new cards to my deck unless they provide strong benefits. Even then, you don't always see them, so they can be a bust. Planets and Tarots seems strong, but am I overvaluing them?

Tofystedeth

Adding more cards to your deck can be really good if you add only things that specifically aid what you're going for. Like heavily weighting your deck towards a particular suit, or particular ranks to increase your odds of getting the most beneficial hand. And some things like purple/blue seals, or gold/steel cards I'll add if they're a card I otherwise don't want because then I gain something by not playing them, which I was going to not do anyway.

Gnizmo

Tertiee wrote: »

Have others started dialing up the stakes yet? Hitting a roadblock trying to beat green stake with the red deck. Figuring out if I should keep at it or swap to the more gimmicky decks and give them a try.

The gimmicky decks are the the answer for me. I have been using the checkered deck and gotten up to orange stakes which is the second to last one. Admittedly, I only beat the previous one with the dumbest of cheese. I couldn't replicate it if I tried, but it worked sooooo.

Jam Warrior

I'll try to scrape together the cash for the first voucher if I can as you can survive the first boss without a joker, then grab at any kind of score boosting joker to get me going, then just start trying to build a deck based on what jokers I find early on. It's hard to pass on multiplier multipliers, but v early game straight adding chips and multiplier will probably get you further.

I'll definitely pass on adding cards that aren't helping my strategy even if they have good modifiers. With the exception of steel which is always handy and isn't going in to your played hand anyway.

Long term you're going to need a chip adder, a multiplier adder and a multiplier multiplier and anything scaling is better than anything static if you want to try and go for the silly scores.

Surfpossum

I had a run ended that I was very sad about: had both the joker for +mult and the one for +chips based on money, was at $220ish and just got To The Moon, with xmults for 4 of and 5 of

My deck was half Aces and I was consistently hitting 5 of a kind after a discard or two, but I never saw anything to cancel the boss blind and died to the one that removes all your discards

Should've been fine with just one 5 of but I didn't see more than two Aces despite chucking five cards each hand

v upsetting, I think that one could've had some legs

Surfpossum

Also I think this is the best (ie most Slay-the-Spire-like) of these since Slay the Spire

The Zombie Penguin

I really don't know how i feel about this.

lack of the game previewing your score, how random the blinds can be, and how those interact (For instance, getting hit with "Only one hand type scores"), etc. There's a lot i want to like, but i'm feeling like i've got to dig a lot to find the fun here vs just wiping out with little control. Maybe i'm just not expereinced enough, which is totally possible. hrrrm.

cooljammer00

I think my bugbear is that I'm still thinking in terms of real card rules. Of course you want to get a straight flush all the time, right? Except if you use your planets to level up lower hands, suddenly they are now more powerful, right?

Surfpossum

Right now, for me, it feels like your run can end due to bad luck

but it will DEFINITELY end due to bad decisions

So far the choices still feel like they have enough weight that the chance of failure keeps the high of getting lucky while also letting me feel like I'm actively deciding things

KafkaAU

I had all the face card buffing jokers and the joker that made all cards be face cards. Straight into a boss blind of “face cards can’t score”. Biggest let down of the game so far.

Some of the challenges have been fun, but I usually end up beating them the same way as always, crazy mults with scaling multipliers like vampire.

MNC Dover

Just beat a run with the Red deck. Has able to transform 15 cards in my deck into Diamonds. Flushes for days!

Combine chip + mult Jokers and the copy Joker to push me over the top.

Lucedes

i made the entire deck hearts once

not because it was optimal, but because i felt a deep compulsion to finish what i had started

Aioua

Got my first run up to ante 12 where i lost.

Checkered deck, start out with basic messing around, start pushing towards hearts.

I pull a vampire early, haven't used one before. Start getting every arcana i can see to add vampire food.

Pull an spectral pack, get the "dupe one joker and destroy the rest" card. Vampire is at 3x so i take the deal.

Fyi: only the leftmost vampire will get to eat the card bonus and level up for a given hand. It's still very broken, but make sure you keep swapping them back and forth to keep their multipliers ~even, this gets you the biggest totals.

Clearing over 100k now after i get some more base jokers to fill things out. Find a 4 fingers which makes nearly every hand a straight flush as my deck has 30+ hearts in it now. Then i pull Fortune Teller which is already at 60-some base mult.
After i pass ante 8 to clear the run i get my final card, a blueprint. (Oh i also have a negative photograph hanging out but it's not really helping much)

Instantly kicking around 10 mil as by this point my vampires are both around 7x.

I never did find a good chip scaling (aside from planets, flush was lvl 20 by the end for me), and ofc missed out on the holy Grail combo of midas mask.

Still my best run so far, and my best hands so far at ~49 mil

The Zombie Penguin

I'm absolutely missing how to play this game i think, i've not yet won a single round. Usually i can get something good going and then just get hosed by a boss blind - Most recently, Water blind did me in. Frustrating! Guess i'll keep trying to learn though, but like, it's def still feeling a very random game. (and also this shit is why i don't like meta progression - would i be doing better with more unlocks? quite possibly! who can say!)

SatanIsMyMotor

Are you looking ahead at what the boss blind is? I can see it being really easy to screw yourself over if you aren't doing that.
I've also found that, unlike, StS you really need to have a contingency plan with your build in this game. Whether it's having a tarot card on hand that can pivot your strat or enough cash to quickly change your joker strategy.

Jam Warrior

Saving tarot cards in the inventory as a get-out-of-jail-free card for tough boss blinds can be very useful. Like if you're going for a flush strategy it's tempting to use that 'convert three cards to [suit]' tarot as soon as you get it, but if you keep it in your pocket it can save your ass on a boss as a way to build your flush with the cards you have in hand.

MNC Dover

I haven't played enough to find out yet, but does Balatro have Meta Unlocks? The way I understand meta unlocks, is every time you finish a run, you earn points/unlocks towards beefing up your base run. Like in Hades how you can start each run with more health, stronger boons, etc.

Balatro has a lot of unlocks, but I haven't seen anything yet that makes your base decks more powerful out of the gate. Every Joker seems to be random in the shop, so you can't guarantee them either.

Again, I could be wrong though. It feels more in the vein of StS, where you're just unlocking more diverse decks options via class cards/relics, but still have to navigate each run individually.

Tofystedeth

There's no metacurrency. Any unlocks are done by doing specific things like beating a run with a specific deck, or on a particular difficulty, or by doing things like have X number of hearts in your deck, or discarding a royal flush, etc.
And all the unlocks do is affect the pool of available jokers, vouchers, etc. No stat increases.

milski

I think the unlock cards in general slightly increase the power available, and unlocking tags is effectively zero downside extra flexibility, but yeah there's no real permanent buffs except for the more powerful decks.