Okay, that annoys me: Debuffed cards dont count for anyhting... but do count for Blackboard scoring purposes. That's just irksome
I am glad that they at least do something? If debuffed cards would become absolutely neutral as stone cards, which would prevent them from being used for even completing a pair, that would be absolutely awful. Because sometimes you need to complete a hand or make a hand full of debuffed cards in order to score anything, and if that wouldn't be the case, then any bosses that debuff cards would be even more horrible than they are.
Maybe Blackboard should be reworded like "if there are no (active) red cards in hand", because I noticed that stone cards do not interfere with Blackboard.
I do like that the jokers try to be "in your advantage", for the best result for you; like the "Club + non-club = x2" joker I mentioned earlier, when with Smeared joker it considers a spade flush both consisting of being clubs and non-clubs.
If only wild cards could be the same in the case of "Suit X is debuffed", in that they would be "nope, I'm not of suit X", but hey, we can't have it all.
It's more that in every other case of "Held card in hand is debuffed" it does nothing, it doesn't trigger any jokers relying on it - even when played, they don't trigger joker aiblites Burning Joker, Hiker, etc.
But they still exist for the purposes of blackboard, whcih feels off with every other interaction. It's not huge, it's just a werid friction point
I dunno I think it track. The debuff is meant to be purely a disadvantage to you. Blackboard isn't the only Joker that looks at debuffed cards either. Turning a penalty into an advantage feels very much against the concepts of the game to me.
Speaking of obvious but not obvious interactions - just found out on a run that Red Seal procs on Steel Cards held in hand - and any effects like Raised Fist, Baron etc.
So it's basically always potentially worth it to grab a Red Sealed *anything* you find, because you can just Chariot it and it effectively becomes a X2.25 in your hand.
Yeah that makes sense to me. The cards are debuffed, not neutral. If the blind is "all heart cards are debuffed", and all the hearts in your hand are debuffed, it doesn't make them not hearts anymore. They're debuffed heart cards. Blackboard should count them.
Yeah that makes sense to me. The cards are debuffed, not neutral. If the blind is "all heart cards are debuffed", and all the hearts in your hand are debuffed, it doesn't make them not hearts anymore. They're debuffed heart cards. Blackboard should count them.
I think the problem is it doesn't always work that way.
Like iirc DNA will not copy a debuffed card, even though it meets the requirements (you played a hand with one card).
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Speaking of obvious but not obvious interactions - just found out on a run that Red Seal procs on Steel Cards held in hand - and any effects like Raised Fist, Baron etc.
So it's basically always potentially worth it to grab a Red Sealed *anything* you find, because you can just Chariot it and it effectively becomes a X2.25 in your hand.
Do remeber that cards in hand count *before* jokers, so they're only good at pushing the multi up if you've stacked it somehow already.Though this gets werider with stuff like Baron or Shoot the Moon, where it'll score them immediately. Steel Red Seal Queens/Kings tend to be really good, though very easily hosed by boss blinds
I dunno I think it track. The debuff is meant to be purely a disadvantage to you. Blackboard isn't the only Joker that looks at debuffed cards either. Turning a penalty into an advantage feels very much against the concepts of the game to me.
I'd agree with this, except Eternal exists, and massively buffs at least one Joker (Madnesss), as well as Spectral cards (Hex is a lot less crap when you've got Eternal jokers)
The worst part of High card runs is trying to not accidentally make straights, pairs or similar. Not that two The Bulls (Meaning every dollar is worth 4 chips), a x38 Supernova (+10 from holographic), and a x5.4 Vampire really give a shit.
The worst part of High card runs is trying to not accidentally make straights, pairs or similar. Not that two The Bulls (Meaning every dollar is worth 4 chips), a x38 Supernova (+10 from holographic), and a x5.4 Vampire really give a shit.
Based on the look of it with 4 Jokers wouldn't it be safer just to play one card?
I think Vamp takes buffs off non-scoring cards, and you may want to cycle cards looking for steels still.
I'm also not sure if Vamp eats foil/holo/poly improvements; I know the Tower does not.
I think Vamp takes buffs off non-scoring cards, and you may want to cycle cards looking for steels still.
I'm also not sure if Vamp eats foil/holo/poly improvements; I know the Tower does not.
Ahh valid. I knew I was missing something.
Edit: Also I would think it would not. I seem to remember the card saying it dealt with "enhancements" which is a keyword on the game. So seals and the other improvements should be fine I believe since you can stack them.
The worst part of High card runs is trying to not accidentally make straights, pairs or similar. Not that two The Bulls (Meaning every dollar is worth 4 chips), a x38 Supernova (+10 from holographic), and a x5.4 Vampire really give a shit.
Based on the look of it with 4 Jokers wouldn't it be safer just to play one card?
There was some reason I was playing 5.i may have been trying to dig the deck to find some Enhanced cards I'd added to feed Vampire
Also I think it was actually The Psychic that made me have that comedy of errors, so I had to play 5
I'm new to this game, but I just had a sweet run going where I got the joker that makes all cards count as face cards early, and then almost immediately got the one that gives a chance of getting $2 whenever you play a face card, and eventually got the one that replays all face cards. Then the boss blind came up that debuffs all face cards.
It's been a hot minute since I've been checkmated so hard by a video game. I guess the lesson is "If you don't buy the voucher that lets you reroll boss blinds, you may just lose no matter what else you do." Either that or the lesson is "The jokers for buffing face cards are a trap, gotcha lol".
I'm new to this game, but I just had a sweet run going where I got the joker that makes all cards count as face cards early, and then almost immediately got the one that gives a chance of getting $2 whenever you play a face card, and eventually got the one that replays all face cards. Then the boss blind came up that debuffs all face cards.
It's been a hot minute since I've been checkmated so hard by a video game. I guess the lesson is "If you don't buy the voucher that lets you reroll boss blinds, you may just lose no matter what else you do." Either that or the lesson is "The jokers for buffing face cards are a trap, gotcha lol".
As above, there is a challenge that forces you into the 'all cards are face cards' mode.
And I managed to push past the debuffed face cards boss (at 40K) by being able to stack Planet cards on the same hand, and having a bunch of 1.5x buffing jokers (as well as a flat +50 chip buff if I recall).
So I wound up playing 20K three-of-a-kind level 10 debuffed hands, into the 40K target boss.
But that required the Hone voucher (makes buffed jokers more likely), and the Burned joker (levels first discarded hand), which may or may not be available to you yet.
Short story; it's not run ending, but you have to have non-card-dependent bonuses on your jokers and have a highly leveled hand in order to push through the debuff.
I'm new to this game, but I just had a sweet run going where I got the joker that makes all cards count as face cards early, and then almost immediately got the one that gives a chance of getting $2 whenever you play a face card, and eventually got the one that replays all face cards. Then the boss blind came up that debuffs all face cards.
It's been a hot minute since I've been checkmated so hard by a video game. I guess the lesson is "If you don't buy the voucher that lets you reroll boss blinds, you may just lose no matter what else you do." Either that or the lesson is "The jokers for buffing face cards are a trap, gotcha lol".
So, this is one of the big pain points in the game that the game dosent really teach you how to handle.
There's two main approaches when building your stratergy in Balatro. One is Joker Based, the other is Card based.
Card based means you're using stuff like Hack, the one that retriggers face cards, etc to rack up points via playing specific cards. It tends to crumple because you hit the specific blind that just entirely hoses you. The other stratergy is just jokers that scale or give so many raw chips that scaling is irrelvant - The Bull, Stuntman, Supernova, Mystic Joker etc, that you can ignore whatever hands you're playing and brute force score easily.
Card Based stratergies are sstill super powerful, they're just a lot more volatile and prone to get wiped by boss blinds.
Just beat the 10-minute city challenge by completely ignoring the bus stop joker.
We're just playing straights, earning chips and using card bonuses and Ancient Joker.
joker based strategies are how you beat the game consistently.
card based strategies are how you break the game occasionally
Jorbs just published a video a few days ago digging into the game somewhat. Clickbaity title and thumbnail aside, it's real good at giving info here on his opinions, issues, and likes of the game.
It very much hits a lot of my own frustration points - I'm playing on black stake and treating the game as pretty mindless here, becuase nothing else is that fun, due to a whole bunch of factors. Good for something mindless, but there's so much potentianl. I want more!
I decided to do some of the challenges and started with omelets.
I am at the end of ante 1 and it is feeling pretty much like a cake walk right now. Aren't these supposed to be hard?
Edit: I thought I might have jinxed myself at the end when I saw the final boss was debuff one Joker each round. First choice? Egg 2. I beat every blind that entire game in one hand (got Blackboard and Stuntman in my first shop). Why didn't I buy a lottery ticket instead?!?!?!*
*Because gambling is dumb and consistency is best as this game repeatedly enforces.
I had to try Omelette quite a few tries, but as soon as a Swashbuckler turns up in the first 2 antes, you're golden and it's the easiest challenge ever.
I just unlocked that Deck where you don't get any Face Cards, and I can see some interesting synergies that can come from this.
Also a streamer I watch hit the "all cards are face cards" run only to immediately run into the "all face cards are debuffed" boss blind. He was fine though, he just sold that joker
Edit: he actually got 'all face cards are flipped' and 'all face cards are debuffed' on consecutive antes
Fun Run 1:
What happens when you get Burnt Joker after your first blind, and a Copy-Left Joker after the second blind, still in Ante 1?
(The image above is my situation at the Ante 8 boss).
My Castle had 300+ chips on a 4-suit deck, and I had around $80 in hand.
It was the first time that I gave the finger to the Ante 8 Boss that demanded to sell a joker in order to un-debuff all my cards, and I simply didn't
Fun Run 2:
Egg + Swashbuckler = +3 Mult for free every blind. Egg + 2 Swashbucklers = Heaven.
This was my situation defeating the Ante 8 boss.
So now I have a red sticker on my Copy Joker
The Copy became a second Stuntman, and then I died at the Ante 9 boss, because I forgot about what it was and it was a "Play 5 cards" Boss.
But my hand size was 4
My High Card was good, but not THAT good.
I think I am going to wait to try to tackle Gold difficulty because on consoles we are still on version 1.0.0b, which means that foils jokers/cards get +30 chips instead of +50 chips and that's a huge difference.
And our Empresses only give +3 Mult instead of +4, which is also a big difference.
Sure, our Bootstraps and Castle are a bit better, but I'd rather have a boost to generic bonuses if I have to take a nerf on a few jokers.
You guys weren’t kidding about the black deck. My white stake wins were getting crazier and crazier and then the black deck killed all my momentum.
Today I had been trying to win with the Black deck on Red difficulty (as it is the only deck I haven't completed on Red yet)and after crashing and burning many times, I decided to try the Green deck on Green and did it first try
I tried Checkered with Gold a few times but that thing scales way too quickly while teetering on bankrupcy and unable to buy boosters, and 2 discards isn't funny.
Currently doing the knife edge challenge.
Started off getting the Certificate of Authenticity joker (card with seal added to hand each blind) + garbage Ante 2, cause I figured joker independent economy would be good.
Just picked up the Hologram joker (x0.25 Mult per card added).
I think I'm good for this challenge.
Finally beat the Orange stakes by getting a Holographic Throwback in my first shop (with just enough money to buy it after the first skip). Then I got a free Spectral pack for another skip getting me Ankh (copy a random Joker and destroy all others), so I sold off my only other Joker to get a double on Throwback.
After that, I was on a mass skip run, pumping both Throwbacks to absurdly high levels. This was my set up after the final boss (had to sell my +4 Mult for each Face card Joker):
Ended up only playing 8 rounds, which unlocked an achievement. Neat!
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On my tour on winning a run with every deck on Green Difficulty, it was the Painted Deck that was being very annoying.
Bigger hand size is nice, but only 4 jokers hurt.
I won with the most stupid joker combination ever:
So Ante 1, Small Blind had "Polychrome Joker" for skipping, which I did.
This gave me a Delayed Gratification Polychrome joker. Hey, x1.5 Mult is better than nothing.
The shop had a Spectral Pack and I said "Why not?" and the only thing that looked remotely silly was the "Copy Joker, destroy all others" option.
With these 2 stupid jokers I stumbled into Ante 2, where I found a second Spectral Pack, and feeling silly, I decide to Ouija my cards.
They all turned into 5's...
The next shop had Fibonnaci, and well, a strategy was made up.
I reached the Ante 8 boss, and this was right before my winning hand:
While I did not have a lot of luck enchanting cards with Mult or Chips, I did encounter a silly amount of Death Tarot cards:
So yeah, I had 27 fives
These are the hands I played:
The silly thing is that (besides Fibonnaci,) The Duo joker was the only one that was helpful; I didn't encounter any other multiplying jokers, and a Trio or the one for Four-of-a-Kind would've been great.
So my whole run was really "I hope I survive the next blind" and a few times I won with a difference of less than 100 points.
It was nervewracking, and steadily the Deaths trickled in.
At the end I really had to focus on duplicating 5's of a different suit, because an accidental Flush Five would've spelled my doom.
But I did it!
So this is my current status:
So 15 decks completed on Green Difficulty = 15 x 3 = 45 + Checkered Deck completed on Orange (= +4) = 49 completed Stakes.
In my first few weeks I was really playing the Checkered Deck a lot, with many Flushes as a result. But now that I have been playing on Green Difficulty, I am more pivoting to (Two) Pair builds, going to Full House and then Four-of-a-Kind/Five-of-a-Kind builds.
It's true that Flushes are the easiest one to recognise, but you need better stuff to survive the higher difficulties.
So my playstyle has evolved.
Re-triggers will also re-trigger jokers that are triggered by said cards. E.g. Ancient Joker will give 1.5x twice for said card. Or thrice if you have something like Hack and Seltzer. Or even four times if the card also has a red seal. It goes crazy.
yarp. I wonder if that works for stuff like photograph which only triggers when the first face card is scored, which makes it pretty sucky unless you can get a ton of mult to score from cards before that face card is scored. Like even if the face card is scored twice, it's still technically the first card that was scored?
yarp. I wonder if that works for stuff like photograph which only triggers when the first face card is scored, which makes it pretty sucky unless you can get a ton of mult to score from cards before that face card is scored. Like even if the face card is scored twice, it's still technically the first card that was scored?
There is a cheaty way to not be too damaged by the "Flips and shuffles all jokers" boss.
With a mouse you can do this trick to select any card, on console I can manage it only for the rightmost card (because of the arrow button navigation).
When you click the [Select] button, if you're quick enough, you can click and hold on a card to keep it into place. Very useful if you want to keep your highest xMult to the right, or your highest +Mult generator to the left.
Started with a rare joker tag in the first small blind. Picked up the joker that switches suits every blind that gives you 1.5x mult for every card of that suit played. Immediately polychromed it.
Things got sillier when a “turn all cards into the same rank” spectral card showed up in the shop, which I picked up and used to turn my whole hand into queens. Then I got the joker that deletes the first card you discard every blind.
I started picking up queens wherever I could and deleting everything else. By the end of the run well over half my deck was queens. I upgraded anything north of three of a kind.
I ended up getting the legendary joker that gives you x5 mult after enough discards, as well as the rare joker that gives you x3 if you have three of a kind. Then the run gave me the joker that dupes a random joker after three blinds, which I took and duped the x3 joker.
From there it kind of just went to the moon, as you can see.
Plasma Deck gave me the most trouble; I needed a day before I could complete it.
I did it with this:
The Painted Deck (max. 4 jokers) was defeated by this nonsense:
I am quite proud of this turn 1 Eternal Madness joker
The Throwback joker was just along for the ride, but quite useless as I was not skipping blinds.
That's what's happens when you buy without thinking
I'm proud of this Castle which helped me defeat the last deck (Erratic?) on Black:
This is the picture right before going into the Ante 8 Boss (where I sold the Burnt Joker because of Verdant Leaf).
It was a Pair build, why do you ask?
It was extremely fun silliness with the Anaglyph deck on Black:
Erosion on a deck with 23 cards (from a deck of 52) together with x2 x3 x3.8 x3.8 Mult apparently helps
Sadly I died right before I could remove another 3 cards in order to get the "Thin down to 20 cards" trophy
How did that deck look like? Well...
This is what happens when you start with a Pair build and then swivel to Four-of-a-Kind
I tried to relax a bit on White difficulty after pushing all 15 decks through on Black, and my luck was atrocious on White, give me many MANY non-point scoring jokers in a row.
So when I am finally resurrected, I will try the Blue difficulty....
Did the $400 gold achievement on my first try today. Went with the Plasma deck, found the Bull, Blueprint on the Bull, the $4 per round Joker, the $1 per 9 card Joker, and the double interest voucher. That money made the Bull bigger, which in turn made me win easier.
Literally just sat back and played two-pairs and racked in the dough. Each round was the blind money ($3/$4/$5) + $4 + $4 + $10 for a total of $21-$23 per round. By the end the Bull/Blueprint combo were pulling in 900 chips each, plus some extras, for around 1000x1000 or 1 million chips. Not bad for doing nothing.
Funnily enough, I also accidentally unlocked the "Don't use a Reroll" achievement since I was skipping every store.
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If feel that from Green Stake onwards, you need to do a lot of run restarts until you get a favourable first (and even 2nd) blind, because the points ramp up quite quickly before your economy is running. And that even doesn't guarantee your early survival, because the game loves to toss your non-point-scoring jokers and standard packs in the beginning.
If you haven't unlocked all jokers, try to do so first.
The hardest to get is the Stuntman (hidden behind the $400 barrier), but that is a very useful card if you want to go for high card/pair runs, as is the Green Joker.
Do not discount the flag that gives you chips per discard left; if you can increase your discards even more, then playing high card (therefore never requiring discards) earns you a lot of chips.
In the first deck in my previous post, I had extended my discards with 2, netting me 5x50=250 chips per played hand, no wonder that I put my blueprint on that.
I wish you all the best of luck and loads of perseverance.
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Maybe Blackboard should be reworded like "if there are no (active) red cards in hand", because I noticed that stone cards do not interfere with Blackboard.
I do like that the jokers try to be "in your advantage", for the best result for you; like the "Club + non-club = x2" joker I mentioned earlier, when with Smeared joker it considers a spade flush both consisting of being clubs and non-clubs.
If only wild cards could be the same in the case of "Suit X is debuffed", in that they would be "nope, I'm not of suit X", but hey, we can't have it all.
But they still exist for the purposes of blackboard, whcih feels off with every other interaction. It's not huge, it's just a werid friction point
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So it's basically always potentially worth it to grab a Red Sealed *anything* you find, because you can just Chariot it and it effectively becomes a X2.25 in your hand.
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I think the problem is it doesn't always work that way.
Like iirc DNA will not copy a debuffed card, even though it meets the requirements (you played a hand with one card).
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Do remeber that cards in hand count *before* jokers, so they're only good at pushing the multi up if you've stacked it somehow already.Though this gets werider with stuff like Baron or Shoot the Moon, where it'll score them immediately. Steel Red Seal Queens/Kings tend to be really good, though very easily hosed by boss blinds
I'd agree with this, except Eternal exists, and massively buffs at least one Joker (Madnesss), as well as Spectral cards (Hex is a lot less crap when you've got Eternal jokers)
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The worst part of High card runs is trying to not accidentally make straights, pairs or similar. Not that two The Bulls (Meaning every dollar is worth 4 chips), a x38 Supernova (+10 from holographic), and a x5.4 Vampire really give a shit.
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Based on the look of it with 4 Jokers wouldn't it be safer just to play one card?
I'm also not sure if Vamp eats foil/holo/poly improvements; I know the Tower does not.
Ahh valid. I knew I was missing something.
Edit: Also I would think it would not. I seem to remember the card saying it dealt with "enhancements" which is a keyword on the game. So seals and the other improvements should be fine I believe since you can stack them.
There was some reason I was playing 5.i may have been trying to dig the deck to find some Enhanced cards I'd added to feed Vampire
Also I think it was actually The Psychic that made me have that comedy of errors, so I had to play 5
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It's been a hot minute since I've been checkmated so hard by a video game. I guess the lesson is "If you don't buy the voucher that lets you reroll boss blinds, you may just lose no matter what else you do." Either that or the lesson is "The jokers for buffing face cards are a trap, gotcha lol".
As above, there is a challenge that forces you into the 'all cards are face cards' mode.
And I managed to push past the debuffed face cards boss (at 40K) by being able to stack Planet cards on the same hand, and having a bunch of 1.5x buffing jokers (as well as a flat +50 chip buff if I recall).
So I wound up playing 20K three-of-a-kind level 10 debuffed hands, into the 40K target boss.
But that required the Hone voucher (makes buffed jokers more likely), and the Burned joker (levels first discarded hand), which may or may not be available to you yet.
Short story; it's not run ending, but you have to have non-card-dependent bonuses on your jokers and have a highly leveled hand in order to push through the debuff.
So, this is one of the big pain points in the game that the game dosent really teach you how to handle.
There's two main approaches when building your stratergy in Balatro. One is Joker Based, the other is Card based.
Card based means you're using stuff like Hack, the one that retriggers face cards, etc to rack up points via playing specific cards. It tends to crumple because you hit the specific blind that just entirely hoses you. The other stratergy is just jokers that scale or give so many raw chips that scaling is irrelvant - The Bull, Stuntman, Supernova, Mystic Joker etc, that you can ignore whatever hands you're playing and brute force score easily.
Card Based stratergies are sstill super powerful, they're just a lot more volatile and prone to get wiped by boss blinds.
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card based strategies are how you break the game occasionally
We're just playing straights, earning chips and using card bonuses and Ancient Joker.
Jorbs just published a video a few days ago digging into the game somewhat. Clickbaity title and thumbnail aside, it's real good at giving info here on his opinions, issues, and likes of the game.
It very much hits a lot of my own frustration points - I'm playing on black stake and treating the game as pretty mindless here, becuase nothing else is that fun, due to a whole bunch of factors. Good for something mindless, but there's so much potentianl. I want more!
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Very normal, reasonable deck.
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I am at the end of ante 1 and it is feeling pretty much like a cake walk right now. Aren't these supposed to be hard?
Edit: I thought I might have jinxed myself at the end when I saw the final boss was debuff one Joker each round. First choice? Egg 2. I beat every blind that entire game in one hand (got Blackboard and Stuntman in my first shop). Why didn't I buy a lottery ticket instead?!?!?!*
*Because gambling is dumb and consistency is best as this game repeatedly enforces.
Also a streamer I watch hit the "all cards are face cards" run only to immediately run into the "all face cards are debuffed" boss blind. He was fine though, he just sold that joker
Edit: he actually got 'all face cards are flipped' and 'all face cards are debuffed' on consecutive antes
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What happens when you get Burnt Joker after your first blind, and a Copy-Left Joker after the second blind, still in Ante 1?
(The image above is my situation at the Ante 8 boss).
My Castle had 300+ chips on a 4-suit deck, and I had around $80 in hand.
It was the first time that I gave the finger to the Ante 8 Boss that demanded to sell a joker in order to un-debuff all my cards, and I simply didn't
Fun Run 2:
Egg + Swashbuckler = +3 Mult for free every blind. Egg + 2 Swashbucklers = Heaven.
This was my situation defeating the Ante 8 boss.
So now I have a red sticker on my Copy Joker
The Copy became a second Stuntman, and then I died at the Ante 9 boss, because I forgot about what it was and it was a "Play 5 cards" Boss.
But my hand size was 4
My High Card was good, but not THAT good.
And our Empresses only give +3 Mult instead of +4, which is also a big difference.
Sure, our Bootstraps and Castle are a bit better, but I'd rather have a boost to generic bonuses if I have to take a nerf on a few jokers.
Today I had been trying to win with the Black deck on Red difficulty (as it is the only deck I haven't completed on Red yet)and after crashing and burning many times, I decided to try the Green deck on Green and did it first try
I tried Checkered with Gold a few times but that thing scales way too quickly while teetering on bankrupcy and unable to buy boosters, and 2 discards isn't funny.
Started off getting the Certificate of Authenticity joker (card with seal added to hand each blind) + garbage Ante 2, cause I figured joker independent economy would be good.
Just picked up the Hologram joker (x0.25 Mult per card added).
I think I'm good for this challenge.
Time to try complete all decks on Green difficulty
Screw you Arm! No longer shall my planet levels be set to level 0!
After that, I was on a mass skip run, pumping both Throwbacks to absurdly high levels. This was my set up after the final boss (had to sell my +4 Mult for each Face card Joker):
Ended up only playing 8 rounds, which unlocked an achievement. Neat!
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Bigger hand size is nice, but only 4 jokers hurt.
I won with the most stupid joker combination ever:
So Ante 1, Small Blind had "Polychrome Joker" for skipping, which I did.
This gave me a Delayed Gratification Polychrome joker. Hey, x1.5 Mult is better than nothing.
The shop had a Spectral Pack and I said "Why not?" and the only thing that looked remotely silly was the "Copy Joker, destroy all others" option.
With these 2 stupid jokers I stumbled into Ante 2, where I found a second Spectral Pack, and feeling silly, I decide to Ouija my cards.
They all turned into 5's...
The next shop had Fibonnaci, and well, a strategy was made up.
I reached the Ante 8 boss, and this was right before my winning hand:
While I did not have a lot of luck enchanting cards with Mult or Chips, I did encounter a silly amount of Death Tarot cards:
So yeah, I had 27 fives
These are the hands I played:
The silly thing is that (besides Fibonnaci,) The Duo joker was the only one that was helpful; I didn't encounter any other multiplying jokers, and a Trio or the one for Four-of-a-Kind would've been great.
So my whole run was really "I hope I survive the next blind" and a few times I won with a difference of less than 100 points.
It was nervewracking, and steadily the Deaths trickled in.
At the end I really had to focus on duplicating 5's of a different suit, because an accidental Flush Five would've spelled my doom.
But I did it!
So this is my current status:
So 15 decks completed on Green Difficulty = 15 x 3 = 45 + Checkered Deck completed on Orange (= +4) = 49 completed Stakes.
In my first few weeks I was really playing the Checkered Deck a lot, with many Flushes as a result.
But now that I have been playing on Green Difficulty, I am more pivoting to (Two) Pair builds, going to Full House and then Four-of-a-Kind/Five-of-a-Kind builds.
It's true that Flushes are the easiest one to recognise, but you need better stuff to survive the higher difficulties.
So my playstyle has evolved.
Re-triggers will also re-trigger jokers that are triggered by said cards. E.g. Ancient Joker will give 1.5x twice for said card. Or thrice if you have something like Hack and Seltzer. Or even four times if the card also has a red seal. It goes crazy.
That is in fact the way it works.
With a mouse you can do this trick to select any card, on console I can manage it only for the rightmost card (because of the arrow button navigation).
When you click the [Select] button, if you're quick enough, you can click and hold on a card to keep it into place. Very useful if you want to keep your highest xMult to the right, or your highest +Mult generator to the left.
It works but it feels so hard like cheating...
What a goofy spectral deck run.
Started with a rare joker tag in the first small blind. Picked up the joker that switches suits every blind that gives you 1.5x mult for every card of that suit played. Immediately polychromed it.
Things got sillier when a “turn all cards into the same rank” spectral card showed up in the shop, which I picked up and used to turn my whole hand into queens. Then I got the joker that deletes the first card you discard every blind.
I started picking up queens wherever I could and deleting everything else. By the end of the run well over half my deck was queens. I upgraded anything north of three of a kind.
I ended up getting the legendary joker that gives you x5 mult after enough discards, as well as the rare joker that gives you x3 if you have three of a kind. Then the run gave me the joker that dupes a random joker after three blinds, which I took and duped the x3 joker.
From there it kind of just went to the moon, as you can see.
Plasma Deck gave me the most trouble; I needed a day before I could complete it.
I did it with this:
The Painted Deck (max. 4 jokers) was defeated by this nonsense:
I am quite proud of this turn 1 Eternal Madness joker
The Throwback joker was just along for the ride, but quite useless as I was not skipping blinds.
That's what's happens when you buy without thinking
I'm proud of this Castle which helped me defeat the last deck (Erratic?) on Black:
This is the picture right before going into the Ante 8 Boss (where I sold the Burnt Joker because of Verdant Leaf).
It was a Pair build, why do you ask?
It was extremely fun silliness with the Anaglyph deck on Black:
Erosion on a deck with 23 cards (from a deck of 52) together with x2 x3 x3.8 x3.8 Mult apparently helps
Sadly I died right before I could remove another 3 cards in order to get the "Thin down to 20 cards" trophy
How did that deck look like? Well...
This is what happens when you start with a Pair build and then swivel to Four-of-a-Kind
I tried to relax a bit on White difficulty after pushing all 15 decks through on Black, and my luck was atrocious on White, give me many MANY non-point scoring jokers in a row.
So when I am finally resurrected, I will try the Blue difficulty....
Literally just sat back and played two-pairs and racked in the dough. Each round was the blind money ($3/$4/$5) + $4 + $4 + $10 for a total of $21-$23 per round. By the end the Bull/Blueprint combo were pulling in 900 chips each, plus some extras, for around 1000x1000 or 1 million chips. Not bad for doing nothing.
Funnily enough, I also accidentally unlocked the "Don't use a Reroll" achievement since I was skipping every store.
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
If you haven't unlocked all jokers, try to do so first.
The hardest to get is the Stuntman (hidden behind the $400 barrier), but that is a very useful card if you want to go for high card/pair runs, as is the Green Joker.
Do not discount the flag that gives you chips per discard left; if you can increase your discards even more, then playing high card (therefore never requiring discards) earns you a lot of chips.
In the first deck in my previous post, I had extended my discards with 2, netting me 5x50=250 chips per played hand, no wonder that I put my blueprint on that.
I wish you all the best of luck and loads of perseverance.