I kind of hate that the endgame almost completely centers around steel kings with red chips, a baron or two and as many mimes as you can land.
The meta steers towards only one outcome for points, even after all the experimental changes.
Unfortunately, that's kinda inevitable given how the developer has talked about the game and what they view as desirable. If the game was better focused on stuff like "Beat blind 8 on gold stake" there's a good potential game in there that could be really tense, fun and strategic. but if it's just Numby Go Up and there's not much in the way of previews etc... then yeah, chase the high roll of that combo because it'll get you the best results most consistently. The lack of consideration given to the game's strategic space ends up squishing out any strategy except high rolling.
Arrgh, I was one round away from $400. I had four double tags saved up and a "cash for hands played" tag on the Ante 10 Big Blind (with like $210 in the bank), but couldn't clear the Small Blind. So close!
Before Ante 3 on whatever the stake is after blue with the red deck:
I think I'm set.
I guess I need to see how fast the antes go up though.
But I should be fine, so long as I can get like 5/3 five-of-a-kinds going.
Will be Full Houses for a while though.
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Products, Transition Teamregular
ok, so... wow.
Took a screenshot towards the end of the run - basically every hand I would adjust my repeat jokers to give 3X of the benefit.
1st 3x was for tradeo to create three cryptids.
2nd 3x was for DNA to generate 3 steel kings with deja vu.
final 3x was for baron to have those kings dance for hours.
My only regret was the total absence of any mimes in this game; a mime would have really pushed me into next level.
Ha yeah that's the setup I've seen people use to literally break the data structure holding the number and get NaN for to a score
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
This is with the beta Bloodstone, which is now 1 in 2 chance of x2 on played Heart.
Now if I just pick up Oops, all sixes!..
Currently playing through the hack/ancient joker run, and the beta Bloodstone is no longer 1 in 2 chance of x2, and has instead gone to 1 in 2 chance of x1.5.
So this is no longer possible.
But I get to debate whether going ancient/ancient/bloodstone/hack is worth ditching DNA when I have next to no hearts at the moment.
Also square joker is now a square card, so that's good too.
Have now unlocked & discovered all the Jokers. The only thing I have left to do is clear Orange Stakes, which I just got to by finally clearing Purple Stake last night (with the Ghost Deck; Hex'd the joker that gets bigger whenever you add cards, copied that with Brainstorm, and had it up to like 5.25x before I was done).
Have now unlocked & discovered all the Jokers. The only thing I have left to do is clear Orange Stakes, which I just got to by finally clearing Purple Stake last night (with the Ghost Deck; Hex'd the joker that gets bigger whenever you add cards, copied that with Brainstorm, and had it up to like 5.25x before I was done).
We'll see how long this takes...
Got there! Assembled a truly stupid engine and rode it to victory.
Spoilered for huge both in the forum is broken way, and it's a 4k image.
I actually had a really good build, got an Idol fairly early having been able to go early Flush 5 with 4s and Even Steven, which transitioned into Hack and turning them into 5's (I got a Red Seal Spectral and could only put it on a 5) with the Spades give 50 chips Joker. Since I was playing on Plasma, the chips were pretty great with the retriggers. This honestly could have gone on a lot longer, I was using Trading Card to thin the deck, but had some blue seals that I was using to scale Flush 5 (it was up to level ~35 when I bombed out) and caught a bad roll on Idol. I should have abandoned them a little earlier. Never saw a Blueprint, Brainstorm, or Showman, so I don't think I could have gone infinite with it, but I was still way, way ahead of the curve with Idol when I lost.
finally got back to this after the changes, its a lot more fun since so many runs aren’t burned in ante 1 and 2.
i got my new highest single hand in mid-40m, i think if i had gotten luckier with my stone card draws i could have gotten the 100m
+1
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Products, Transition Teamregular
So I am still in the thrall of this thing. Which shouldn't be surprising as I am the person who got all the cheevos on solitaire; something about cards grabs me.
Anywho, I have all jokers, beaten gold stake on one deck, and am 16/20 on the challenges.
Pretty sure the challenges will be the last achievement I pop though; MAYBE I go for gold on all decks, but getting a gold sticker on all 150 jokers feels like the absolute height of tedium and RNG punishment.
I've beaten gold stakes with the red deck, and I haven't even -discovered- all my unlocked jokers, let alone considered getting them to a gold sticker.
Like, why do I even want stone cards added to my deck aside with Holographic joker?
I'm not taking that most all runs.
I've beaten gold stakes with the red deck, and I haven't even -discovered- all my unlocked jokers, let alone considered getting them to a gold sticker.
Like, why do I even want stone cards added to my deck aside with Holographic joker?
I'm not taking that most all runs.
That one is actually crazy powerful if you want to break the game. Blueprint + Brainstorm + Marble + Hologram - sure, that is 4 out of your 5 slots unless you get some negatives, but you add 0.75x every single round to X, and whatever card you are tripling up on after draw is going to be crazy powerful as a result.
Silly season would be to have space joker and oops all 6s with some negative support, or a good multiplier card and stone joker, let the repeat jokers bump your multiplier; the chips are absolutely going to be enough.
edit: the space joker is there explicitly to build up your high card ranking, because there is no real way you are going to be able to do anything but high card by mid game if you luck out on this build.
The new update has arrived on the Playstation, and it's nice to see that you don't immediately die.
The orange and gold stakes are definitely better and more interesting.
It's weird considering a plain joker that you can sell and that doesn't disappear and that doesn't cost money each turn is now the best kind of joker you can get.
But sadly I am a bit distracted by Diablo 4's new season where the Necromancer is way too overpowered, so Balatro moves a bit back for the moment for me.
Spoilered for huge both in the forum is broken way, and it's a 4k image.
I actually had a really good build, got an Idol fairly early having been able to go early Flush 5 with 4s and Even Steven, which transitioned into Hack and turning them into 5's (I got a Red Seal Spectral and could only put it on a 5) with the Spades give 50 chips Joker. Since I was playing on Plasma, the chips were pretty great with the retriggers. This honestly could have gone on a lot longer, I was using Trading Card to thin the deck, but had some blue seals that I was using to scale Flush 5 (it was up to level ~35 when I bombed out) and caught a bad roll on Idol. I should have abandoned them a little earlier. Never saw a Blueprint, Brainstorm, or Showman, so I don't think I could have gone infinite with it, but I was still way, way ahead of the curve with Idol when I lost.
I'm at e21 with Hack, hack, blueprint, idol, -lusty joker, polychrome lucky four of hearts (with like 40-60 bonus chips from previous hikers).
Still got three non-four of heart cards in the deck, but getting very close to perfection in a 48 card deck.
At some point I will have to transition to glass cards though.
Was lucky to get a reroll boss blind to get this run through the head.
Edit: Finally picked up the tape voucher, and also nabbed brainstorm. Deck is now clean of cards other than 4 of hearts.
So we're now at e27 with 5x triggers on Lucky 4s.
(because, I could dupe the idol.
But I just got $100 from a hand because 4 of the fours had gold seals.
And I imagine that going glass would screw with the math..
I guess I need to work that out in coming rounds.).
I also passed up another Oops all sixes. I'm not sure the extra +20 mult procs would help? And if we're moving into glass sooner rather than later anyway, (ante 15 atm) I'd have to sell it.
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Products, Transition Teamregular
19 of 20 challenges beaten. Golden Needle was absolutely brutal, but I powered through. Now I am on to jokerless and the absolute best I have managed was the big blind of Ante 7. There is just too much luck at play on this one, as it seems the only viable build is glass flushes starting at ante 6, red seals if possible, and as a result you are risking eating into your winning hands every time you draw.
I managed to get to a 90% heart deck with 8 glass cards, and 3 of them popped on one hand, which made getting another hand that could win statistically improbable.
Nabbed Bloodstone, but I've not yet found much any Spectral packs.
Nor the Crystal Ball/Omen Globe vouchers.
My run of using only lucky 4s appears to have exhausted at like e27, so now I'm looking at turning my gold seal cards into glass.
I had to ditch my Rocket for Bloodstone (+20/30$ per round at that point), but I'm still pulling $100+ per round from Luckys and Seals.
5 gold seal cards will still pull in $75 at that point, with full 5 activations cause glass/poly/bloodstone/idol.
And then I can keep rolling for negatives. Cause I haven't seen the negative blinds either.
Best hand of e52 with 5 glass.
But then I stuffed up and didn't play enough glass cards in, after I swapped bloodstone out for steltzer.
So lost to a big blind of e51.
Seed: 9U8PICWH
Pertinent Jokers at the end:
Blueprint, Brainstorm, Hack, Hack (Invis Joker managed to snipe Hack out of Hack/Blueprint/Rocket/DNA I believe), Idol, -Lusty Joker, Steltzer/Bloodstone.
Probably should have considered Lucky Cat at some point, but that is x0.25 Mult per Lucky card activated, which isn't exactly logarithmic scaling.
Still would have been impressive, I guess.
For a long while at the end I was avoiding Wheel of Fortunes, as I wasn't sure how they'd interact with Ectoplasm (which I never got) if all the jokers already had a quality.
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Products, Transition Teamregular
edited May 2024
Ok, so all challenges conquered. Jokerless was by far the hardest, but the trick ended up being spamming the shit out of four of a kind through constant use of death/strength/cryptid to grow the number of the same cards, and then blue chipping / purple chipping as many as possible to keep scaling and adding more tarots which in turn kept giving me death/strength.
Also chariots. So many chariots.
Then throw in some glass at the end for the final rounds. They all popped but it got the job done.
I had a bunch of frustrating runs trying to clear the highest stakes on the yellow deck, then accidentally got my best ever setup. Triboulet, which doubles your multiplier when Kings or Queens are scored, and a Blueprint to do that twice. Sock and Buskin to make face cards score twice, so now each King or Queen does x2^4, so with 5 of a kind (and eventually flush five) it's x1048576. Then a Hanging Chad to make it x16 million. I also had a Baron that gave around x1.5^3, and a bunch of steel Kings. I was getting billions of chips in Ante 5, and cruised through to Ante 15.
(I still think the game is way too random, especially on the higher stakes and in the harder challenges, but it's nice when it's random in my favour sometimes.)
Bought this yesterday and I'm up to about five hours played with one victory
I've got DNA, Banner and Baron in my current run, and just doubled the Boss Blind target by playing a single ace with four kings in my hand
Felt good
[Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
+6
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Products, Transition Teamregular
So, like this probably my game of the year. I haven't casually put this much time into a game since OG Cities Skylines. I just passed 180 hours.
Currently I have all challenges beaten, got to gold stake on a deck, unlocked all collectibles, got to an e38 score on a single hand (and probably 6-7 games where I made it to scientific notation - my time played should give a hint as to how rare this is even if you have good strategy), and gotten every oddball cheevo except for the last two, completionist+ and ++.
But I am nearly 60% there on completionist+, and it has been kind of fun working my way up to gold on all the different decks.
I know I said I wouldn't got for these last two cheevos, but the game is just so fun and there is still a goal to hit, so it's giving me an excuse to play more.
This might bite me in the ass but I seriously doubt that completing ++ is in my future. Nonstop playing of gold stakes and hoping that the 1/150 * 0.05 chance the rare joker I haven't gold chipped yet drops in a winning gold run? That doesn't seem very fun.
Maybe if I am still playing this game five years from now that would happen organically.
Posts
It’s still the worst downside of any deck though.
Never saw an X mult joker or that would have been a win smh
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
Unfortunately, that's kinda inevitable given how the developer has talked about the game and what they view as desirable. If the game was better focused on stuff like "Beat blind 8 on gold stake" there's a good potential game in there that could be really tense, fun and strategic. but if it's just Numby Go Up and there's not much in the way of previews etc... then yeah, chase the high roll of that combo because it'll get you the best results most consistently. The lack of consideration given to the game's strategic space ends up squishing out any strategy except high rolling.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
I guess I need to see how fast the antes go up though.
But I should be fine, so long as I can get like 5/3 five-of-a-kinds going.
Will be Full Houses for a while though.
Although going to Ante 0 is it's own kind of funny.
This is also the beta changes on Steam, so there were a few free Rare/negative joker tag pickups there.
Three instances of Yorick worked very well.
I lost to The Needle because I was focused on feeding all my discards into Yorick and ended up playing a hand with no face cards.
Dopamine Poker's got me real bad, y'all
Steam ID XBL: JohnnyChopsocky PSN:Stud_Beefpile WiiU:JohnnyChopsocky
Took a screenshot towards the end of the run - basically every hand I would adjust my repeat jokers to give 3X of the benefit.
1st 3x was for tradeo to create three cryptids.
2nd 3x was for DNA to generate 3 steel kings with deja vu.
final 3x was for baron to have those kings dance for hours.
My only regret was the total absence of any mimes in this game; a mime would have really pushed me into next level.
Still though, this was pretty insane.
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
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
Currently playing through the hack/ancient joker run, and the beta Bloodstone is no longer 1 in 2 chance of x2, and has instead gone to 1 in 2 chance of x1.5.
So this is no longer possible.
But I get to debate whether going ancient/ancient/bloodstone/hack is worth ditching DNA when I have next to no hearts at the moment.
Also square joker is now a square card, so that's good too.
We'll see how long this takes...
Got there! Assembled a truly stupid engine and rode it to victory.
Although I guess I also still needed to beat Ante 11 to fully unlock everything.
Oh, wait.
Sadly could not clear Ante 12. 2 billion is a lot, and only drawing 3 cards a shot makes assembling Exodia hard.
High Score on White Stake with your forum handle.
Spoilered for huge both in the forum is broken way, and it's a 4k image.
I actually had a really good build, got an Idol fairly early having been able to go early Flush 5 with 4s and Even Steven, which transitioned into Hack and turning them into 5's (I got a Red Seal Spectral and could only put it on a 5) with the Spades give 50 chips Joker. Since I was playing on Plasma, the chips were pretty great with the retriggers. This honestly could have gone on a lot longer, I was using Trading Card to thin the deck, but had some blue seals that I was using to scale Flush 5 (it was up to level ~35 when I bombed out) and caught a bad roll on Idol. I should have abandoned them a little earlier. Never saw a Blueprint, Brainstorm, or Showman, so I don't think I could have gone infinite with it, but I was still way, way ahead of the curve with Idol when I lost.
Got to ante 15 on the back of two Ancient Jokers, hack, smeared joker and a blueprint.
But my deck sucked.
Too many cards, and Flush was at like level 39 instead of achieving and leveling 5-flush or flush house.
I just didn't have economy for most of the game, and I blew one or two antes at the end forgetting to save money against Seed money.
i got my new highest single hand in mid-40m, i think if i had gotten luckier with my stone card draws i could have gotten the 100m
Anywho, I have all jokers, beaten gold stake on one deck, and am 16/20 on the challenges.
Pretty sure the challenges will be the last achievement I pop though; MAYBE I go for gold on all decks, but getting a gold sticker on all 150 jokers feels like the absolute height of tedium and RNG punishment.
Like, why do I even want stone cards added to my deck aside with Holographic joker?
I'm not taking that most all runs.
That one is actually crazy powerful if you want to break the game. Blueprint + Brainstorm + Marble + Hologram - sure, that is 4 out of your 5 slots unless you get some negatives, but you add 0.75x every single round to X, and whatever card you are tripling up on after draw is going to be crazy powerful as a result.
Silly season would be to have space joker and oops all 6s with some negative support, or a good multiplier card and stone joker, let the repeat jokers bump your multiplier; the chips are absolutely going to be enough.
edit: the space joker is there explicitly to build up your high card ranking, because there is no real way you are going to be able to do anything but high card by mid game if you luck out on this build.
The orange and gold stakes are definitely better and more interesting.
It's weird considering a plain joker that you can sell and that doesn't disappear and that doesn't cost money each turn is now the best kind of joker you can get.
But sadly I am a bit distracted by Diablo 4's new season where the Necromancer is way too overpowered, so Balatro moves a bit back for the moment for me.
I'm at e21 with Hack, hack, blueprint, idol, -lusty joker, polychrome lucky four of hearts (with like 40-60 bonus chips from previous hikers).
Still got three non-four of heart cards in the deck, but getting very close to perfection in a 48 card deck.
At some point I will have to transition to glass cards though.
Was lucky to get a reroll boss blind to get this run through the head.
Edit: Finally picked up the tape voucher, and also nabbed brainstorm. Deck is now clean of cards other than 4 of hearts.
So we're now at e27 with 5x triggers on Lucky 4s.
(because, I could dupe the idol.
But I just got $100 from a hand because 4 of the fours had gold seals.
And I imagine that going glass would screw with the math..
I guess I need to work that out in coming rounds.).
I also passed up another Oops all sixes. I'm not sure the extra +20 mult procs would help? And if we're moving into glass sooner rather than later anyway, (ante 15 atm) I'd have to sell it.
What I really need is a Deja Vu.
Edit: quick spreadsheet says glass, poly, idol wants 2xidols, 4xactivations
I managed to get to a 90% heart deck with 8 glass cards, and 3 of them popped on one hand, which made getting another hand that could win statistically improbable.
This fucking game.
I stared at that for quite a bit.
Nor the Crystal Ball/Omen Globe vouchers.
My run of using only lucky 4s appears to have exhausted at like e27, so now I'm looking at turning my gold seal cards into glass.
I had to ditch my Rocket for Bloodstone (+20/30$ per round at that point), but I'm still pulling $100+ per round from Luckys and Seals.
5 gold seal cards will still pull in $75 at that point, with full 5 activations cause glass/poly/bloodstone/idol.
And then I can keep rolling for negatives. Cause I haven't seen the negative blinds either.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
But then I stuffed up and didn't play enough glass cards in, after I swapped bloodstone out for steltzer.
So lost to a big blind of e51.
Seed: 9U8PICWH
Pertinent Jokers at the end:
Blueprint, Brainstorm, Hack, Hack (Invis Joker managed to snipe Hack out of Hack/Blueprint/Rocket/DNA I believe), Idol, -Lusty Joker, Steltzer/Bloodstone.
Probably should have considered Lucky Cat at some point, but that is x0.25 Mult per Lucky card activated, which isn't exactly logarithmic scaling.
Still would have been impressive, I guess.
For a long while at the end I was avoiding Wheel of Fortunes, as I wasn't sure how they'd interact with Ectoplasm (which I never got) if all the jokers already had a quality.
What I mean is, if all jokers have editions, then will ectoplasm fail?
I was very concerned about wheel of fortuning my way out of a negative joker slot
Spectral cards are very much assholes so I would just not risk it.
There is a good chance nothing will happen and you take a hand size loss anyways
Also chariots. So many chariots.
Then throw in some glass at the end for the final rounds. They all popped but it got the job done.
(I still think the game is way too random, especially on the higher stakes and in the harder challenges, but it's nice when it's random in my favour sometimes.)
I've got DNA, Banner and Baron in my current run, and just doubled the Boss Blind target by playing a single ace with four kings in my hand
Felt good
Currently I have all challenges beaten, got to gold stake on a deck, unlocked all collectibles, got to an e38 score on a single hand (and probably 6-7 games where I made it to scientific notation - my time played should give a hint as to how rare this is even if you have good strategy), and gotten every oddball cheevo except for the last two, completionist+ and ++.
But I am nearly 60% there on completionist+, and it has been kind of fun working my way up to gold on all the different decks.
I know I said I wouldn't got for these last two cheevos, but the game is just so fun and there is still a goal to hit, so it's giving me an excuse to play more.
This might bite me in the ass but I seriously doubt that completing ++ is in my future. Nonstop playing of gold stakes and hoping that the 1/150 * 0.05 chance the rare joker I haven't gold chipped yet drops in a winning gold run? That doesn't seem very fun.
Maybe if I am still playing this game five years from now that would happen organically.
It got to a 5.7 Multiplier before I lost at Ante 10 (getting more than a million is my current white whale)