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

Brody · February 4

And now to start the stakes climb, we'll see how far I end up going. My first run was going super well... and then I hit the Plant again on a deck full of Queens.

TelMarine · February 4

just random curiosity by me: do you pronounce it Buh-la-tro (like i do) or Bala-tro (like i heard in one of their promo videos)?

Satsumomo · February 4

It being an Italian word for jester, I pronounce it the Spanish/Italian way.

MNC Dover · February 4

Satsumomo wrote: »

It being an Italian word for jester, I pronounce it the Spanish/Italian way.

Which is….

akThera · February 5

buh-LA-tro is how I say it.

Satsumomo · February 5

MNC Dover wrote: »

Satsumomo wrote: »

It being an Italian word for jester, I pronounce it the Spanish/Italian way.

Which is….

I'll take a stab: bah-lah-troh

:P

Brody · February 17

I beat Orange Stake, and with what felt like maybe the dumbest set of jokers possible. Two square jokers worth ~150, a red card worth 99 mult, and a madness worth x10 or something, all eternal. The final blind was cards are rebuffed until you sell a joker, but I had grabbed a judgement earlier in case I needed one on the last blind, but honestly, I think I would have won anyways.

Legacy · February 25

Oh no.

I've played it too much on Switch and Mobile...

Now it's on gamepass. And there's achievements.

Oh no.

Tofystedeth · February 25

They also finally got the PEGI 18+ rating changed.

Alistair Hutton · February 28

Painted deck winning

[Deleted User] · March 1

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Muzzmuzz · March 6

I was about to start the last ante, with a perfect set up of jokers… and then I accidentally grabbed the hex spectral card by mistake.

Fuck this game.

hlprmnky · March 7

Talk to me about deck thinning, friends. I understand the concept but as I try to muddle through unlocking all the decks (currently working on purple stake with the checkered deck because it seems to be the most forgiving), I see a massive mismatch between how important this concept seems to be in online discussion and what I’m actually able to achieve. What gives?
To be more specific, even in a run where I don’t need to buy anything until the middle of Ante 2 and get a really good economy going, spending anywhere from 25 dollars to upwards of 50 in every shop, opening every pack and rerolling until I hit $25 again, I will routinely get to Ante 5 or 6 having seen the chance to change or remove maybe four or five cards. Six is remarkable, ten is unprecedented. How do people who talk about “oh yeah it would have been better to get a deck of only one card with a red seal than only one card without” …how do they do it? Am I missing something fundamental, or do people just lose dozens of runs for every “good” one? Help me understand.

Phyphor · March 7

Sometimes you just don't get offered anything but other times you can get quite a few cards gone

There's a few tarot cards that work out of 21 so the odds aren't that bad. Save fool to double up on something good and emperor is at worst a reroll

There can be a few tarot generators if you're lucky. Purple seals and that generate tarot on pack open can add 10-20 tarot cards per run.

I've gotten my card count down to the low 30s with at least a half dozen dupes of a good card, but I also startscum until I get a $25/50 boost at the start because that takes only a couple minutes so I can buy as early as the second blind

AngelHedgie · March 7

hlprmnky wrote: »

Talk to me about deck thinning, friends. I understand the concept but as I try to muddle through unlocking all the decks (currently working on purple stake with the checkered deck because it seems to be the most forgiving), I see a massive mismatch between how important this concept seems to be in online discussion and what I’m actually able to achieve. What gives?
To be more specific, even in a run where I don’t need to buy anything until the middle of Ante 2 and get a really good economy going, spending anywhere from 25 dollars to upwards of 50 in every shop, opening every pack and rerolling until I hit $25 again, I will routinely get to Ante 5 or 6 having seen the chance to change or remove maybe four or five cards. Six is remarkable, ten is unprecedented. How do people who talk about “oh yeah it would have been better to get a deck of only one card with a red seal than only one card without” …how do they do it? Am I missing something fundamental, or do people just lose dozens of runs for every “good” one? Help me understand.

Deck fixing is incredibly important because it increases the consistency of pulling the hands you want, as well letting you get better hands like Flush Five consistently. This is why Immolate, Death, and Cryptid are so powerful.

Phyphor · March 7

By the time I even get flush five somewhat consistently the humble flush is always worth more because you can start upgrading that from the start and not a few antes in

discrider · March 8

Ideally, you want some form of tarot card generation.
Superposition is a good one, as is Hallucination.
There's also the tarot on blind joker.
The tarot when hand played when under $4 joker is also very good, but keeping under $4 is a rather severe restriction.
Purple seals if you've got them.
Otherwise you're relying on your money economy and rerolls generating the tarot cards you need to thin your deck.

You've also got the Trading Card, which is very good. (First discard destroys single cards and generates $)
Sixth sense is also good in this regard, but only for a couple of rounds.

DNA is the other really good deck fixing one, but if you can't thin your deck, often pumping your deck full of anything won't necessarily help enough to keep you going in endless.
It's also rather dependent on finding a Polychrome red seal of whatever you're looking for.

Once you have your deck filtered down to red seal polychrome copies, then you attempt to retrigger them as much as possible whilst playing Flush five.
The harder hands get the biggest bonus from planet cards, and with the Telescope voucher and blue seals, eventually you'll be leveling exclusively your hardest hand (aside maybe Priestess, whose planet cards you might sell depending).

But this is all for surviving in Endless.
Deck thinning (a little.. knocking out a few of 6-8 is often all that's needed) to maximize whatever jokers you have will help get through ante 8, but so will a lot of things.
Randomly adding every card will get you through Ante 8 with the Holographic joker.
But it's not going to get past ante 11 or 12.

MNC Dover · March 11

OK, I may have actually laughed out loud at this:

discrider · March 19

Doing challenges, and somehow being absurd:

Alistair Hutton · March 19

Those are good numbers

discrider · March 21

Running Inflation at the moment (Prices increase by $1 per purchase), where using Hermit to double $0 is good play.

With the way the challenge starts you with the Credit Card and throws the Vagabond at you for economy, I'm pretty sure the challenges have different rates for the Jokers to give you what you need to win.

Alistair Hutton · March 22

Challenges are straight down the line. No modification is made to frequency except what it states in the challenge.

PMAvers · March 23

https://youtu.be/RnH17Wx91no

So I’ve been playing around with this compilation community mod, and it’s been pleasant? It definitely feels like it’s an expansion pack adding in and playing off the ideas of the core game in weird and interesting ways.

MNC Dover · March 24

There's another community mod that makes Balatro into a PvP multiplayer game. Both players do the first ante like normal, then starting at the second ante you face against the other player at the Boss Blind. Whoever has the least chips in the head-to-head loses one life, with each player starting with 4 lives.

The mod adds new jokers/cards that are specific to the multiplayer. One in particular was a Meteorite Celestial card that reduces the opponent's highest scoring hand by 1 level.

If you'd like to see it in action, here's a 2 hour video of YouTubers Rarran and Roffle going at it. Roffle is one of the best Balatro streamers out there, so they had an agreement that if Roffle won, he'd have to increase the stake deck to the next higher deck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58Qj0M7YhWc

hlprmnky · March 24

It’s been a good 24 hours in Balatro for me. Last night I finally won a gold stake run on checkered deck, and today I fired up a plasma deck run just to learn more about how the scaling works - my plan was to grab as many +chips jokers and cards as I could to see how far that would get, but it didn’t work out that way. Instead:

First time in the scientific notation clubhouse, I like it! The velour on the barstools is a nice touch.

discrider · March 26

Five card draw challenge is weird:

You get a bunch of joker slots and discards, but only five cards in a hand?
So you just pair up until you've cleaned your deck.

Anyway that was a super efficient* paradoila, face retrigger, blueprint/brainstorm, eight of hearts run.
I'm just lucky I didn't run into the face debuff joker.
Managed to get the discard legendary to x20, and the lucky cat to x25 (in like two or three antes).
The negative Oops all sixes made it hard to transition into glass though, even though it cleaned my deck with eight ball, and I was given no polychrome playing cards.

It sort of feels like the challenge was instead a deck idea that didn't work.

discrider · March 27

... Got to e11 on the Golden Needle before realizing that I had bought the antimatter voucher some antes ago and should be using it. And then Tiki picked the wrong card.

Satsumomo · March 28

Good lord does the black deck make me miserable, I always have so much trouble clearing stakes on this one.

Penny Arcade

Quick Links

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

Posts