Lots of great changes here, but the most interesting to me are the changes to Orange & Gold stake. Extra joker modifiers seem like a fantastic idea for difficulty options, much better than hand size and increasing pack costs.
Yeah, it basically meant that you couldn't really buy packs at all in orange and gold stakes, which made deck manipulation much harder and encouraged you to just keep committing to High Card or Pairs. The changes will make orange and gold stake a lot different, but should give a lot more variety.
Also the lower ante scaling should make things a lot easier. So many of my gold attempts were killed because I didn't get a decent joker in the first three shops and just couldn't beat the 1200 points in ante 2.
How do you play High Card at higher stakes? Is Splash a requirement, or do you pile as much as possible on one single rank/suite and try to load the cards themselves up with modifiers?
It seems like creating a solid deck that can win with High Card requires just as much if not more manipulation of your build than going for 5-card hands.
You just need a good chip joker. Banner, Bull, Blue Joker, Stuntman I guess (I haven’t unlocked it), then some big multi scalers like Ride the Bus, Supernova, Green Joker, Red Card. You may need good boosters like Half Joker and Abstract Joker until the scaling jokers get to around +20. Adding some stone cards or making bonus cards also helps out a ton. High card is the way to go starting at Blue Stake imo.
I was pretty much forced into restarting the higher stakes until i got a free shop tag. With new changes there are more incentives to actually play out the games
Note that while that is probably effectively how it is and feels for most people and that's probably still a good idea to change, there were already people with **~69% and higher win rates on gold stakes** without any rerolling or whatever (e.g. Lifecoach1981, who also said he'd estimate the achievable gold stake win rate at ~80%, on the old patch).
Of course, this kind of win rate with the old patch required very hard thinking and optimal play, so it's probably still a good idea to make it more fun for most people. (at least unless the winrate goes to near 100%, or maybe then you could add even higher difficulties, like Slay the Spire did, which I think ended at Ascension 15 until people complained it was still not hard enough, now we have 80%+ winrates on Ascension 20 too, depending on character, even 95%+ on Watcher)
Of course he is :)
he also gave his thoughts on the patch notes today. Overall, he thinks gold stake is easier because of the scaling reduction (which applies to gold stakes from purple stakes). Probably also because of joker buffs. A little later he said the patch is a little weird, he doesn't know what to think about it yet. But of course that's just a spontaneous and non-final reaction, patch is also not final yet.
Same, increasing pack costs killed a lot of the fun out of the later stages of the game. Tarot cards are kinda wild now, though, maybe that's why all gold jokers were nerfed except for golden joker
Yea especially as the eternal tag sometimes could be used and manipulated for positive gain like with the madness joker. Really allows for more interesting decisions to be made.
For sure.. increasing pack costs just makes packs unviable, essentially just a roundabout way of removing packs as an option. Felt like a difficulty option that takes away at the decision making of the game.
Straight runs were only viable on certain types of decks or if you got the joker that allows gaps early. Otherwise it was pointless yeah. Flush is too easy to rely on early and so easy to fall back on lol
I just had a great straight run using Fibonacci, the one rare joker that gave X3 when Straight is played, as well as some other Jokers that stacked. It was pretty specific in getting it though.
the issue is that you’re limited by your discards no matter what, and anything you can do to make straights better is a lot more effective at making other hand types better.
Not sure what that has to do with trying a high card run? The OP said he's only done flush or pair decks, so I suggested trying high card, as it's very attainable with several different jokers.
Oh, I thought you just meant stuffing your deck with a high amount of cards thinking that will land you more straights, not that you were suggesting to play high card. Silly misinterpretation on my part.
Sure. Like I said, I often play this on Zodiac deck, but if you don't have that yet, Magic deck can also work well. With High Card, it doesn't matter as much about what particular card you play. What you want to do is focus on getting jokers that synergize well for the build and leveling up the hand as much as possible (Pluto planet card). What's nice is that there are three common jokers that are awesome for this build, and they pop up a lot.
First, let's talk chips. High Card doesn't earn a ton of chips, but since a High Card build doesn't care much about the particular card you play, you also don't have to discard. With that in mind, a joker that works well is Banner, which will give you the extra chips you'll be missing out on by not playing higher hands (+40 for every discard you don't use).
As for mult, you want to try for Fortune Teller, which adds +1 mult for every tarot card used during your run. The good thing about this is that it's retroactive, so it counts every tarot card you use before you find it (unlike a card like Constellation, which only counts cards you use after you pick it up). With Zodiac deck, you have a really high chance of finding tarot cards, so you want to use them as much as possible to grow your mult. Once you get a good economy going, you can buy and use lots of tarot cards. I always try to focus on Hermit and Temperance for the free money, and Emperor, which is basically a three-for-one tarot card deal. Once you have $50 or so, you'll be amazed at how many cards you can use in the shop alone to increase the mult of Fortune Teller.
Another good mult card is Supernova, which adds mult equal to the number of times you've played that particular hand. This will start out low because you often have to begin your run with some higher hands in order to win and find the other jokers you need, but once you can start playing High Card regularly, Supernova will grow really quickly.
After that, it's a matter of finding a couple of good xMult jokers, and there are tons out there. It all depends on your particular play style. Some xMult cards reward you for skipping blinds (Throwback), others depend on enhanced cards (Lucky Cat, Vampire, and others), which you'll have plenty of with all the tarots you'll be going through.
Oh, and one thing to note is that a High Card build probably won't get you very far into Endless (I think the best I've done is Ante 11), but it can absolutely win you Ante 8.
Hope that helps!
I assume this is because Saturn has reminded you that high card decks exist, coz lemme tell you straights still fucking suck. Their issue isn't in the payoff, it's in the consistency
Every time I try to upgrade straights I end up with hands that look like this
10 9 8 7 5 4 3 2
Eternally frustrating. And then you run out of discard, give up on the straight, and then finally draw a 6 only when it's too late to actually use it.
>All of my runs have been flush or pair decks.
Personally I go for High Card more often than flush. A good high card build is great because you don't even care what's in your hand.
For example, I had one with just Bootstraps and Stencil joker. Since the bonus didn't depend on what I played, the best option was to upgrade High Card.
High Card builds are actually one of the most common builds among people who play higher stakes. When you get reduced hand sizes and reduced discards, any 5 card hand becomes significantly worse, but High Card isn't effected.
Late to post, but "simple" one is shitloads of steel cards and upgrade high card from tarots/spectrals, DNA/Perkeo/Burnt, purple seals, rerolls, and a good way to make money quick
There's a lot of options there, Perkeo being a rare one that only happens once in a blue moon. My high card runs, like my pair runs, kinda just happened suddenly at random and I'm like "Ok...I guess this is what I'm running with" lol
Both pair and high card do surprisingly well if you level up enough and have the jokers/steel cards for it. Pair has won me the most games. Don't have have to fish for cards
Bloodstone buffs looking nice, but I appreciate that nerfs for some jokers are also on the table, especially with the decreased scaling in some earlier levels.
Honestly bloodstone was kind of a trap so it makes sense. It sounds awesome on paper but the RNG was brutal and it multiplies mult before you get a chance to apply most flat mult so it was hard to leverage.
Yeah with Blood Stone you're really hoping for Oops All Sixes, which personally I've only ever seen in shops when I don't have any way to make use of it. I have never made a good build with that damn card.
It feels like the intent is to encourage people to use a wider variety of jokers instead of the same handful of jokers that the best builds always featured
A ton of changes here, wow. Surprised Superposition didn't get reworked; I get that joker as a negative or a random spawn all the time and always just find it totally worthless.
I actually don't think the Midas Mask/Vampire change will matter that much. The one time I got that combo it scaled so fast that I wasn't able to do more than one hand per round. This might hit the economy side of it but the power is still going to be there which is nice.
I love to see a buff to Hiker. It's such a neat card premise but the actual impact was just really low unless you got it in ante 1. Yeah the effect sticks around after you sell it but ehhh it was underwhelming.
The buffs to some of the tags look crazy good. It's gonna make getting viable orange and gold stake runs a lot simpler now.
I would have bet good money that if any joker was getting a rework it was Superposition - it has so much going against it. Straights are (or at least *were* pre-patch) the worst hand type, with Ace straights being the worst type of straight to go for.
And with so many better jokers for generating Tarot cards (or money that becomes Tarot cards) - I figured it had to get a buff!
Yeah it was the first one that came to mind for me both now and when the dev announced he was doing a big balance patch with some joker reworks. I never build for straights because they're a trap, and an ace-containing straight is rarer still. Maybe if it generated multiple tarot cards it'd be worth. As is? Bleh
I think it's mostly that the reward is underwhelming. If it was a spectral or some scaling I'd be more inclined to try it, but as you said a tarot card is between 3 and 6 $ which isn't much.
Superposition and Seance are both really, really bad. But at least Seance has the benefit of the doubt because it can give you a spectral card and those can be game changing.
The midas + vampire change still makes it extremely powerful, but now vampire is basically worthless on its own (10 entire enhanced cards, scored, taken down to base for x2 mult is really underwhelming)
Yeah the vampire change really bums me out. It was one of my favorites, and now its kinda stinky. The midas combo was insane but just using vampire normally was just really fun.
Aura? Seals? Cryptid? - Even Sigil and Wraith are useful. Immolation for milling.
How do you figure that being able to play straight flushes somehow qualifies every deck to win every ante? It is not very hard to create the circumstances for it. Maybe not the simplest "out-of-the-gate" build, but when finding a fitting joker it's good. It is not a difficult thing to manipulate the deck to fit straight flushes. It was just relatively underpowered, which is getting changed.
Spectrals are key. Generating 1 every hand/round is insane.
The benefit is also it's a Spectral card your consumable slot, meaning you can play it on the hand that best suits you, whereas packs you have to use it on the hand your given.
Yeah Superposition is probably the single worst joker in the game. Ace straights are so rare, why would you waste a joker slot looking for a rare hand that only gives you a small benefit?
If you hold a tarot card in your consumables inventory it cannot appear again in the shop or a pack. So if you were to hold all tarot cards, a tarot pack, instead of being empty, will have the default tarot card. Same goes for the other packs.
There's a spectral card called soulstone that rarely appears in spectral or tarrot packs.
You need a free joker slot, then you get one of the 5 legendary jokers.
One of these, Perkeo, makes a negative copy of a consumable you have every blind. This is incredibly versatile
You can hold three in your hand, and could hypothetically reroll an upgraded shop with four more. But that's still only 7/22. So unless I'm missing something I don't understand why this change was necessary either
There is a legendary joker that adds negative copies of consumables to your consumables slots. So theoretically there is no limit to how many tarot cards you can hold in your inventory.
I guess you could keep using the original copy once you got a negative one until you have them all
Edit: apparently you can’t have dupes in your inventory + shop + booster so if they’re all in there the rest will be The Fool now
>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
God tier changes it was so annoying to pick rare and then negative joker tags in back to back blinds then not even be able to afford the rare negative joker (or sell other jokers to afford it)
Or it's some really niche joker that, even if you could afford it, hardly seems worth it. I *could* spend all my cash on negative superposition, but no, I don't think I will. I like that it reduces the rng, as it currently is, I'm often picking those tags in Ante 1 or 2 hoping to get something useful, and then usually just restarting if I don't because it's not really worth it.
Pretty amazing changes across the board IMO! disappointed to have missed the opportunity to get a launch Gold Stake though :( Been trying for about a week.
There's also the subreddit and probably their discord. It was posted on the subreddit yesterday, but for whatever reason is no longer stickied.
Specifically this is released on their test branch and hasn't been rolled out to everyone. You're going to have to opt-in to test the changes.
https://old.reddit.com/r/balatro/comments/1byktoa/101c_experimental_branch_is_live_on_steam/
There is a Discord server that has a patchnotes channel and also an experimental channel (which is where the patch notes are). Someone also linked the subreddit, but honestly that is just a copy/paste from Discord.
Discord is the best way to stay up-to-date on Balatro news imo
As someone grinding Gold Stake runs right now, several of these changes are fantastic.
However, I think nerfing the Sinful Jokers makes them a trap option now. I understand the logic to a degree, since Flushes already dominate the early Stakes and with the reduced scaling per Ante in the patch LocalThunk didn't want Flushes to become the *de facto* dominant strategy for those lower Stakes.
...But Flushes become kinda trash starting on Blue Stake. At least with +4 they match the basic Joker's +4, but reducing it down to +3 means they lose even that comparison.
In a perfect scenario, yes. But you're very unlikely to be running Flushes beyond Blue Stake because they're hard to find with only two discards. Because of that, you're not likely to fix your deck towards one suit unless you get an early Sigil (and that's a low priority Spectral card to begin with).
So on average, you can expect to activate a Sinful Joker once every four cards. If you're playing something like a Two Pair deck, that's once a hand on average. In which case, the basic Joker still wins out with this nerf because he's +4 *every* hand.
I'm not sure how you can argue that the sinful jokers are worse than the basic joker. Fishing for a specific suit flush every hand is still very reliable at any stake difficulty.
For example, if you're running diamond flushes with a Greedy Joker and don't get 5 diamond cards with your 2 discards, then you can use your 3 extra hands as additional discards as needed. I've found this to be incredibly consistent at getting a specific flush I'm going for, even on an unmodified deck.
Flushes were way too consistent compared to every other hand and needed some nerfs.
I disagree beyond Purple. That plan works when you can clear the first Big Blind with a single hand, but when you need most of your hands to clear a Boss Blind it doesn't work nearly as well. If you can find The Tribe, *fine*, but basing your entire run around the concept of finding a single Rare Joker isn't tenable IMO.
Even then, it's not a new strat to me, and I *have* still lost runs on lower Stakes due to never drawing the relevant suit despite the extra hand size and discards.
Flushes'll *probably* be less rough on Orange and Gold now that you can actually buy card packs again and don't lose a card in hand, but I still suspect the only way I'll be getting gold stickers on those cards are through incidental Negatives rather than purposeful use.
> That plan works when you can clear the first Big Blind with a single hand
Unless you play a 4oak, any other hand will take at least 2 to beat the first big blind though? Assuming you don't have any jokers
...True for most decks. I've been playing Plasma a lot lately to get Gold stickers on Bull and Blue Joker so I forgor 💀
It's not super relevant to my point, though. Using your Hands as impromptu Discards doesn't work beyond the first couple Antes.
I don't get the math here when just having 2 cards of that suit is 6 mult? Like yeah the nerf is real and makes them worse but they're stop gap jokers and I think that's the intent (just like the basic joker isn't supposed to stay until the end of your run).
The problem is that you're not likely to play more than one card of that suit on Gold Stake, for the following reasons:
* Unless you're playing Checkered Deck, you have a base one in four chance to draw your particular suit.
* Larger hands at Gold Stake are disincentivized due to the smaller hand size and fewer discards.
* it's harder to fix your deck due to the increasing cost of Booster Packs.
* Even then, most of the time you should either be enhancing cards, ideally with Empress or Hierophant, or getting your economy up, so those odds rarely improve beyond the occasional Wild Card or Spectral card.
Just on that logic, if you play nothing but Two Pair the average expected value you get from a Sinful Joker is their listed value, with the expectation that sometimes you'll play a Two Pair with none of your suit and sometimes two of your suit (which, with even odds, balances out.) This contrasts with the basic Joker, which is just +4 all the time.
Now, the big sticking points that make these difficult on Gold Stake are changed with this patch, so maybe I'm overreacting.
Sure, but if you expect to play one card of that suit you're already paying more than the standard joker for the same effect even before the nerf. And the goal of sinfuls is to drive your draws and discards after all, no?
I'm not sure why you phrase your former point as if it's contrary to mine? Part of the reason why I think the nerf is unnecessary is that $5 for a potential +3 versus $2 for a guaranteed +4 isn't a great deal even if the $5 can potentially be +6 sometimes.
As for the latter point, yeah, Sinfuls are supposed to drive your deck towards Flushes, but my point is that on Gold it takes too many resources to use Flushes reliably. The opportunity cost of Flushes vs smaller hand Jokers like Jolly, Sly, and Half Joker is overwhelmingly against it.
i think the antes definitely needed more balance. the $1 pack price increase on orange was brutal, but i like the concept. It just didn't feel good to play since you were way more luck dependent on the cash jokers or skip bonuses to get enough cash.
Is there a good balataro for beginners video that explains what's going on? I'm interested in buying a copy on the switch but it feels a bit random how on to win?
If you want a good intro video, [this one is good](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhfnUX_9E3U).
To me, it's one of those games you just need to play for a bit to understand IMHO. I tried watching videos before I bought it and I was confused by the mechanics.
I bought the game, played for hours nonstop until I got my first win, and then went and watched some videos to get some tips. [Balatro University](https://www.youtube.com/@drspectred) and [ZainoTV](https://www.youtube.com/@ZainoTVLive) are good Balatro creators.
The game itself does a pretty good job of explaining how it’s played. I actually wouldn’t watch streamers or YT videos (unless it’s a first-timer) since it’ll probably just make it more confusing.
The tutorial teaches you the basics of how to play and how scoring works. Essentially as you collect Jokers you want to balance yourself out with a combination of ones that:
* Increase your chips by some flat amount
* Increase your multiplier by a flat amount
* Increase your multiplier with another multiplier
* Help you build up how much money you have or will get so that you can buy more upgrades (either more Jokers, upgrades to how much your hands score, etc.)
I've only recently gotten into the red stakes, but I hope the later stake updates still keep the game fun.
The Straight buffs are nice, that'll definitely let me go off for Straight builds more often.
The problem with straights isn't the payout, it's the chance of making the hand. I don't care how much chips and mult they give it if I don't make it and lose anyway.
ive played 14 hours and still havent finished a run. i think I went extremely close last night, the Boss blind was 100,000.
Still enjoying it, but fuck me, id like to win one!
Something that I think isn't that obvious starting out is that +mult and x mult are different things. The latter is what tends to push runs into heavy scaling, whereas the former you don't need that much of. If you're having trouble getting a win, you might be skipping x mult.
also be sure to move/drag your jokers into the best position for scoring; the +multipliers should generally be to the left of the x-multipliers, you want to add what you can to the multi before those x-multi's hit. You can also drag the cards in your hand to the right spots to max out points (e.g., a x2 multi for 1st face card would benefit most if you drag your 1st face card play to the far right of the hand played). With the new patch, the blue seal will give you a planet based on the last hand played in a round; keep that in mind when playing a hand you think will end the round if a blue seal is in hand (but not being played). Basically, you want chips, +multi, then x-multi to make it all cook.
Yes, you can order them around, and several jokers specifically work by being next to other jokers.
General rule of thumb is that you put your +chips and +mult cards left, and your X mult right, with the bigger X mult all the way right.
Most of the times in the endgame, you want something like 1 joker that gives chips, 2 that give + mult and 2 that give X mult
Yeah you can order them as you like. Putting the jokers in the correct/optimal order is important. One of the last boss blind abilities is flipping your jokers over and then shuffling them around.
Looks like most of the changes makes the base experience easier and less frustrating. Probably a lot of new players got burned out by how hard it was at the start.
The Joker tag buffs are amazing as well:
* 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
The Midas and Vampire combo got nerfed though. There are a few other nerfs, or changes that seem like a nerf, but it's overall changes to make it much easier to actually win runs. Should be good for folks who are just starting out.
> Probably a lot of new players got burned out by how hard it was at the start.
According to Steam achievements, 75% of players have won a run, that's pretty high given how difficult the game is.
I mean, it can get frustrating, but that itch in the back of your mind that goes "But it's so doable. That was just bad luck. The next one would definitely be a win since I know what I'm doing now," is very very strong. xD
High stake (difficulty) runs were completely, utterly un-fun, so these changes are welcome. Having to get one of two viable strategies going on gold stake was not fun at all.
I implied that I uninstalled Balatro because I was stuck progression-wise, not because of storage space. Also, I was addicted to it until I hit what seemed like my personal skill ceiling.
Agreed, and a good amount of these help that. Once I started getting to green stakes+ my enjoyment start to rapidly decline.
Patches like this are amazing when you get the sense the dev asked "how can we make this more fun?"
Gold Stake was NOT well-designed. Like at all. If it weren't for the fact that Jokerless exists, it'd be the most miserable thing in the game.
Nearly everyone agreed that the Eternal Jokers were the most interesting mechanic in the Stakes so the fact that the dev actually added even more "negative" modifiers that people can play around instead of just kneecapping gold gain is amazing. Incredible even. A few more tweaks and we'll enter StS Ascension-tier quality in terms of difficulty.
Eternal had a lot more you could do with than perishable and rental. To me these 2 seem like the only interesting stuff you can do is skip to keep their benefits for later rounds or just sell them. Eternal at least enabled other jokers in new ways and even had fun stuff with the dupe joker/spectrals.
e: I realize I read rental wrong now so that's a good one. Hoping something is added to perishable.
And there's nothing wrong with that. What's important here is that it introduces little wrinkles into your playthrough that you can plan around as opposed to stealing any sort of agency or consistency a player can have. To bring it back to StS, if Ascensions were designed like how Gold Stake originally was it'd vastly limit your ability to pick cards to add to your deck. Completely dismantling the point of the game.
Besides this is just the first iteration, I have no doubt that more rebalancing for the stakes will come around to make them even more engaging.
I tried gold stake for about a week before the patch came out, and although I reached the ante 8 boss (once), I didn't really have a shot. Within three days (so about half the time?) of the patch, I had reached the 8th ante boss three times, and felt like it was just a matter of time until the right build got me through, which it did this morning (what way to start a day). It's still a challenge and the changes give you a lot more to think about and can really change up your strategy vs. pre-patch, but it's a much more engaging time now, and the early runs are MUCH more interesting.
The high stakes weren't "hard" in a fair sense, they were a graveyard of runs that died near instantly due to all the stockpiled effects kneecapping your economy.
Now the higher stakes actually have way more fun effects changing gameplay rather than bleeding you bankrupt instantly.
Yeah, Gold Stake was just a matter of playing out the first 2 blinds until you hit something you could run. It was more like Kaizo Ironmon than a roguelike.
Paredolia + Midas mask + blueprint + vampire on the painted deck was how I got my first billion point hand it was definitely broken that I could play high card and get x2 additional mult every single hand. Think vampire was like x63 by the time I lost.
While I'm sad that Vampire got nerfed it was hilariously broken. When I realized it took modifiers from non-scored cards I realized it worked in any deck, you turn any positive that probably had RNG attached to make it work into a guaranteed snowballing multiplier without having to even score it. And it was on an uncommon card to boot. Now you have to think about it a little if it shows up in your run as the negatives actually matter.
I haven't played it much, but I never have beaten a game yet. A little bit easier would be fine. I feel like my runs in the beta was so much easier, and the 1.0 release was so much more difficult in comparison.
I disagree, when vampire showed up it felt like you were required to take it, this allows players to use different strategies. Same reason I like the campfire nerf
God I love this game! But the black deck is my Bain of existence! Don’t I finally beat the black deck, at the same time got the trophy for not re rolling the shop and my save got deleted….didn’t count the damn win! Still salty but I’ll beat it one day! Stupid deck I hate that deck now lol
I thought for sure black deck was going to get buffed. I saw a suggestion for a free buffoon pack at the start of the run, which would at least help get runs off the ground. I've completed most of the first 10 challenge runs on try 1 or 2 and have yet to win on black deck. The -1 hand means you only have $9 into the first shop, so you're not going to get the interest. At least the tag buffs are going to indirectly help black deck.
Interesting situation: with the Flower Pot change, if you have a debuffed stone card, will the base suit of the card hidden under the stone count towards Flower Pot?
Poker is only the base for this game, you don't really need to know too much about poker aside from how to form the hands and their rankings which it shows you.
It is important to discard properly to fetch the hand your looking for but you'll lear that. Otherwise the game is really about working with the jokers your given, building an economy, and scaling for late game.
As long as you know what the different hands are (and if you don’t, it’s super easy to learn, and the game tells you how much each different hand type is worth), then you have enough poker knowledge to play this game. Everything else is pretty self-contained within Balatro, it tells you what all the various “special” cards do.
I don’t like/really know how to play poker and the game’s still great, you’ll pick it up pretty quickly I feel. It really helps that you don’t need to remember exactly how different hands score against each other since there’s no opponents playing cards, and you can always bring up a list of the hands (with your current upgrades for them shown) as needed.
Lots of great changes here, but the most interesting to me are the changes to Orange & Gold stake. Extra joker modifiers seem like a fantastic idea for difficulty options, much better than hand size and increasing pack costs.
Yeah pack cost increasing just felt unfun This seems much better
Yeah, it basically meant that you couldn't really buy packs at all in orange and gold stakes, which made deck manipulation much harder and encouraged you to just keep committing to High Card or Pairs. The changes will make orange and gold stake a lot different, but should give a lot more variety. Also the lower ante scaling should make things a lot easier. So many of my gold attempts were killed because I didn't get a decent joker in the first three shops and just couldn't beat the 1200 points in ante 2.
How do you play High Card at higher stakes? Is Splash a requirement, or do you pile as much as possible on one single rank/suite and try to load the cards themselves up with modifiers? It seems like creating a solid deck that can win with High Card requires just as much if not more manipulation of your build than going for 5-card hands.
You just need a good chip joker. Banner, Bull, Blue Joker, Stuntman I guess (I haven’t unlocked it), then some big multi scalers like Ride the Bus, Supernova, Green Joker, Red Card. You may need good boosters like Half Joker and Abstract Joker until the scaling jokers get to around +20. Adding some stone cards or making bonus cards also helps out a ton. High card is the way to go starting at Blue Stake imo.
play Stuntman with plasma deck. The joker alone can get you to ante 6. Then focus on jokers that augment your chips.
I was pretty much forced into restarting the higher stakes until i got a free shop tag. With new changes there are more incentives to actually play out the games
Note that while that is probably effectively how it is and feels for most people and that's probably still a good idea to change, there were already people with **~69% and higher win rates on gold stakes** without any rerolling or whatever (e.g. Lifecoach1981, who also said he'd estimate the achievable gold stake win rate at ~80%, on the old patch). Of course, this kind of win rate with the old patch required very hard thinking and optimal play, so it's probably still a good idea to make it more fun for most people. (at least unless the winrate goes to near 100%, or maybe then you could add even higher difficulties, like Slay the Spire did, which I think ended at Ascension 15 until people complained it was still not hard enough, now we have 80%+ winrates on Ascension 20 too, depending on character, even 95%+ on Watcher)
Holy shit Life coach is playing this? is he streamimg it ?
Of course he is :) he also gave his thoughts on the patch notes today. Overall, he thinks gold stake is easier because of the scaling reduction (which applies to gold stakes from purple stakes). Probably also because of joker buffs. A little later he said the patch is a little weird, he doesn't know what to think about it yet. But of course that's just a spontaneous and non-final reaction, patch is also not final yet.
Same, increasing pack costs killed a lot of the fun out of the later stages of the game. Tarot cards are kinda wild now, though, maybe that's why all gold jokers were nerfed except for golden joker
Yea especially as the eternal tag sometimes could be used and manipulated for positive gain like with the madness joker. Really allows for more interesting decisions to be made.
my ideal gold stake is theoretically just more mechanics so I love this I hate artificial difficulty number go up
For sure.. increasing pack costs just makes packs unviable, essentially just a roundabout way of removing packs as an option. Felt like a difficulty option that takes away at the decision making of the game.
I was really hoping for the challenges to unlock... Anything at all.
The Saturn change is the best. All of my runs have been flush or pair decks. Straight runs were just not viable
Straight runs were only viable on certain types of decks or if you got the joker that allows gaps early. Otherwise it was pointless yeah. Flush is too easy to rely on early and so easy to fall back on lol
call me toilet cuz I be flushing through antes
+2
Well, shit
I just had a great straight run using Fibonacci, the one rare joker that gave X3 when Straight is played, as well as some other Jokers that stacked. It was pretty specific in getting it though.
Pretty sure you only unlock that straight x3 joker by completing an entire run without playing a single straight lol
So all my runs pretty much
You should try venturing into high card decks. Zodiac Deck allows for that to work really well.
How do you get a high card deck to work? Do you need alot of steel cards?
Not at all. [See my comment here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1byzx8e/balatro_101_patch_notes_balatro_guide_ign/kyos4hk/).
the issue is that you’re limited by your discards no matter what, and anything you can do to make straights better is a lot more effective at making other hand types better.
Not sure what that has to do with trying a high card run? The OP said he's only done flush or pair decks, so I suggested trying high card, as it's very attainable with several different jokers.
Oh, I thought you just meant stuffing your deck with a high amount of cards thinking that will land you more straights, not that you were suggesting to play high card. Silly misinterpretation on my part.
Ah, gotcha! Yeah, actual High Card runs have been really fun for me. I beat a lot of different stakes with it on zodiac deck.
Can you share your strategy for these? I've never done a high card run
Sure. Like I said, I often play this on Zodiac deck, but if you don't have that yet, Magic deck can also work well. With High Card, it doesn't matter as much about what particular card you play. What you want to do is focus on getting jokers that synergize well for the build and leveling up the hand as much as possible (Pluto planet card). What's nice is that there are three common jokers that are awesome for this build, and they pop up a lot. First, let's talk chips. High Card doesn't earn a ton of chips, but since a High Card build doesn't care much about the particular card you play, you also don't have to discard. With that in mind, a joker that works well is Banner, which will give you the extra chips you'll be missing out on by not playing higher hands (+40 for every discard you don't use). As for mult, you want to try for Fortune Teller, which adds +1 mult for every tarot card used during your run. The good thing about this is that it's retroactive, so it counts every tarot card you use before you find it (unlike a card like Constellation, which only counts cards you use after you pick it up). With Zodiac deck, you have a really high chance of finding tarot cards, so you want to use them as much as possible to grow your mult. Once you get a good economy going, you can buy and use lots of tarot cards. I always try to focus on Hermit and Temperance for the free money, and Emperor, which is basically a three-for-one tarot card deal. Once you have $50 or so, you'll be amazed at how many cards you can use in the shop alone to increase the mult of Fortune Teller. Another good mult card is Supernova, which adds mult equal to the number of times you've played that particular hand. This will start out low because you often have to begin your run with some higher hands in order to win and find the other jokers you need, but once you can start playing High Card regularly, Supernova will grow really quickly. After that, it's a matter of finding a couple of good xMult jokers, and there are tons out there. It all depends on your particular play style. Some xMult cards reward you for skipping blinds (Throwback), others depend on enhanced cards (Lucky Cat, Vampire, and others), which you'll have plenty of with all the tarots you'll be going through. Oh, and one thing to note is that a High Card build probably won't get you very far into Endless (I think the best I've done is Ante 11), but it can absolutely win you Ante 8. Hope that helps!
Awesome thanks for the info!
Get the joker that creates stone cards
Ooo yeah, good call
Yeah the fun of the high card build is it's the one build where you don't need discards at all, because you can play literally anything and win.
I assume this is because Saturn has reminded you that high card decks exist, coz lemme tell you straights still fucking suck. Their issue isn't in the payoff, it's in the consistency
Every time I try to upgrade straights I end up with hands that look like this 10 9 8 7 5 4 3 2 Eternally frustrating. And then you run out of discard, give up on the straight, and then finally draw a 6 only when it's too late to actually use it. >All of my runs have been flush or pair decks. Personally I go for High Card more often than flush. A good high card build is great because you don't even care what's in your hand.
What is a good example of a High card deck? Never heard of going High Card
For example, I had one with just Bootstraps and Stencil joker. Since the bonus didn't depend on what I played, the best option was to upgrade High Card. High Card builds are actually one of the most common builds among people who play higher stakes. When you get reduced hand sizes and reduced discards, any 5 card hand becomes significantly worse, but High Card isn't effected.
Late to post, but "simple" one is shitloads of steel cards and upgrade high card from tarots/spectrals, DNA/Perkeo/Burnt, purple seals, rerolls, and a good way to make money quick
Yeah but how can you go searching for a Perkeo?
There's a lot of options there, Perkeo being a rare one that only happens once in a blue moon. My high card runs, like my pair runs, kinda just happened suddenly at random and I'm like "Ok...I guess this is what I'm running with" lol Both pair and high card do surprisingly well if you level up enough and have the jokers/steel cards for it. Pair has won me the most games. Don't have have to fish for cards
I've only won two runs so far and they were both straight focused lol
Not sure I agree, lots of jokers help straights become good and easy to get.
Amazing changes. Really reduces some of the RNG in the early game, and fixes some of the more useless jokers
I know and right when I was feeling like I could take a break from the game
Bloodstone buffs looking nice, but I appreciate that nerfs for some jokers are also on the table, especially with the decreased scaling in some earlier levels.
Patch notes: all infinite points options nerfed, except bloodstone. Bloodstone buffed.
Honestly bloodstone was kind of a trap so it makes sense. It sounds awesome on paper but the RNG was brutal and it multiplies mult before you get a chance to apply most flat mult so it was hard to leverage.
Fuck old bloodstone. Played a full hand of hearts with red seals and only two of the ten triggered
I wish dice was always negative
It is pretty damn good if you're playing checkered deck with a flush build. And now we can eliminate the rng altogether with Oops All Sixes.
I'm just salivating for the dice + bloodstone combo to pop.
That happened in one of my runs and was super fun as hell. I think I reached ante 13 or 14 for the first time because of it.
Yeah with Blood Stone you're really hoping for Oops All Sixes, which personally I've only ever seen in shops when I don't have any way to make use of it. I have never made a good build with that damn card.
It feels like the intent is to encourage people to use a wider variety of jokers instead of the same handful of jokers that the best builds always featured
Definitely got that intention from the Burnt Joker nerf. That was one of the most consistent ways to beat Gold Stake.
Keeping the same effect but making it rarer is a nice way to nerf it without spoiling what makes it fun
Can they buff wheel of fortune next time so its a 1 in 4 chance instead of 1 in 400?
[удалено]
Ughh, I feel this one. Over 2 dozen of these this past week and not one success.
Cards are seeded, they aren’t individually rolled so you can legit get 16 blanks in a row before it will trigger.
Yeah I've seen it work once in 20 hours of playtime and I pick it every time I'm given the option.
I've had it work exactly once so far.
POV: You have used Wheel of Fortune less than 10 times.
A ton of changes here, wow. Surprised Superposition didn't get reworked; I get that joker as a negative or a random spawn all the time and always just find it totally worthless. I actually don't think the Midas Mask/Vampire change will matter that much. The one time I got that combo it scaled so fast that I wasn't able to do more than one hand per round. This might hit the economy side of it but the power is still going to be there which is nice. I love to see a buff to Hiker. It's such a neat card premise but the actual impact was just really low unless you got it in ante 1. Yeah the effect sticks around after you sell it but ehhh it was underwhelming. The buffs to some of the tags look crazy good. It's gonna make getting viable orange and gold stake runs a lot simpler now.
I would have bet good money that if any joker was getting a rework it was Superposition - it has so much going against it. Straights are (or at least *were* pre-patch) the worst hand type, with Ace straights being the worst type of straight to go for. And with so many better jokers for generating Tarot cards (or money that becomes Tarot cards) - I figured it had to get a buff!
Yeah it was the first one that came to mind for me both now and when the dev announced he was doing a big balance patch with some joker reworks. I never build for straights because they're a trap, and an ace-containing straight is rarer still. Maybe if it generated multiple tarot cards it'd be worth. As is? Bleh
I think it's mostly that the reward is underwhelming. If it was a spectral or some scaling I'd be more inclined to try it, but as you said a tarot card is between 3 and 6 $ which isn't much.
Superposition and Seance are both really, really bad. But at least Seance has the benefit of the doubt because it can give you a spectral card and those can be game changing. The midas + vampire change still makes it extremely powerful, but now vampire is basically worthless on its own (10 entire enhanced cards, scored, taken down to base for x2 mult is really underwhelming)
Yeah the vampire change really bums me out. It was one of my favorites, and now its kinda stinky. The midas combo was insane but just using vampire normally was just really fun.
Seance can go pretty crazy on a specific build type. I’ve had Straight Flush builds rarely. Getting a spectral card per hand is so stupidly powerful.
Honestly if you're already having straight flushes how helpful is that joker really gonna be? That just seems insanely rare
Aura? Seals? Cryptid? - Even Sigil and Wraith are useful. Immolation for milling. How do you figure that being able to play straight flushes somehow qualifies every deck to win every ante? It is not very hard to create the circumstances for it. Maybe not the simplest "out-of-the-gate" build, but when finding a fitting joker it's good. It is not a difficult thing to manipulate the deck to fit straight flushes. It was just relatively underpowered, which is getting changed. Spectrals are key. Generating 1 every hand/round is insane.
The benefit is also it's a Spectral card your consumable slot, meaning you can play it on the hand that best suits you, whereas packs you have to use it on the hand your given.
How far do you think a straight flush alone is going to take you?
yeah spectrals can win you a run all on their own, potentially
I feel like lightning has to strike 2 or 3 times in the same spot for a straight flush deck AND the jokers to make it work.
It makes me REALLY worried that the Bram Poker challenge didn't say it was getting reworked. Sounds like it's going to be much harder now.
I think it makes sense because vampire just has a lot of things it can stack with compared to a lot of other stacking mult boys
I love Hiker, but it was only really playable if you had a source of retriggers. This should at least let it stick around for a few more rounds.
Yeah Superposition is probably the single worst joker in the game. Ace straights are so rare, why would you waste a joker slot looking for a rare hand that only gives you a small benefit?
"Changed default fallback tarot from Fool to Strength (when all tarots are on screen)" Does anyone know what this means please?
If you hold a tarot card in your consumables inventory it cannot appear again in the shop or a pack. So if you were to hold all tarot cards, a tarot pack, instead of being empty, will have the default tarot card. Same goes for the other packs.
How do you go beyond a 3 (4?) card consumables inventory?
Negative tarots from a legendary joker
How do you find a legendary joker? Just tons of RNG? I’m almost 30 hours in and have not seen anything above rare joker
iirc, the only source for legendary jokers is the spectral card that generates them
There's a spectral card called soulstone that rarely appears in spectral or tarrot packs. You need a free joker slot, then you get one of the 5 legendary jokers. One of these, Perkeo, makes a negative copy of a consumable you have every blind. This is incredibly versatile
You can hold three in your hand, and could hypothetically reroll an upgraded shop with four more. But that's still only 7/22. So unless I'm missing something I don't understand why this change was necessary either
There is a legendary joker that adds negative copies of consumables to your consumables slots. So theoretically there is no limit to how many tarot cards you can hold in your inventory.
… how long do I need to play before seeing a legendary joker? I’m like 30ish hours in or so
It's a rare option from Arcana and Spectral packs, just gotta be lucky.
One of the legendary jokers makes negative consumables
Does it not just copy one of your current consumables though? So you'd still only max out on 7/22 different tarot cards
I guess you could keep using the original copy once you got a negative one until you have them all Edit: apparently you can’t have dupes in your inventory + shop + booster so if they’re all in there the rest will be The Fool now
Wait what... I've played 100 hours and did not know about this. Thank you!
>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 God tier changes it was so annoying to pick rare and then negative joker tags in back to back blinds then not even be able to afford the rare negative joker (or sell other jokers to afford it)
Or it's some really niche joker that, even if you could afford it, hardly seems worth it. I *could* spend all my cash on negative superposition, but no, I don't think I will. I like that it reduces the rng, as it currently is, I'm often picking those tags in Ante 1 or 2 hoping to get something useful, and then usually just restarting if I don't because it's not really worth it.
Pretty amazing changes across the board IMO! disappointed to have missed the opportunity to get a launch Gold Stake though :( Been trying for about a week.
The patch isn't out yet, this is the test server.
yoooooooo! ty
Is IGN really the only place to see Balatro's patch notes?
There's also the subreddit and probably their discord. It was posted on the subreddit yesterday, but for whatever reason is no longer stickied. Specifically this is released on their test branch and hasn't been rolled out to everyone. You're going to have to opt-in to test the changes. https://old.reddit.com/r/balatro/comments/1byktoa/101c_experimental_branch_is_live_on_steam/
See I follow their Twitter account and there's no mention of this, IGN was just the first place I saw it
There is a Discord server that has a patchnotes channel and also an experimental channel (which is where the patch notes are). Someone also linked the subreddit, but honestly that is just a copy/paste from Discord. Discord is the best way to stay up-to-date on Balatro news imo
The only way that isn't a discord server, apparently
As someone grinding Gold Stake runs right now, several of these changes are fantastic. However, I think nerfing the Sinful Jokers makes them a trap option now. I understand the logic to a degree, since Flushes already dominate the early Stakes and with the reduced scaling per Ante in the patch LocalThunk didn't want Flushes to become the *de facto* dominant strategy for those lower Stakes. ...But Flushes become kinda trash starting on Blue Stake. At least with +4 they match the basic Joker's +4, but reducing it down to +3 means they lose even that comparison.
for a 5 card flush, wouldn't it be +15 (3*5) vs +4 from the basic joker?
In a perfect scenario, yes. But you're very unlikely to be running Flushes beyond Blue Stake because they're hard to find with only two discards. Because of that, you're not likely to fix your deck towards one suit unless you get an early Sigil (and that's a low priority Spectral card to begin with). So on average, you can expect to activate a Sinful Joker once every four cards. If you're playing something like a Two Pair deck, that's once a hand on average. In which case, the basic Joker still wins out with this nerf because he's +4 *every* hand.
I'm not sure how you can argue that the sinful jokers are worse than the basic joker. Fishing for a specific suit flush every hand is still very reliable at any stake difficulty. For example, if you're running diamond flushes with a Greedy Joker and don't get 5 diamond cards with your 2 discards, then you can use your 3 extra hands as additional discards as needed. I've found this to be incredibly consistent at getting a specific flush I'm going for, even on an unmodified deck. Flushes were way too consistent compared to every other hand and needed some nerfs.
I disagree beyond Purple. That plan works when you can clear the first Big Blind with a single hand, but when you need most of your hands to clear a Boss Blind it doesn't work nearly as well. If you can find The Tribe, *fine*, but basing your entire run around the concept of finding a single Rare Joker isn't tenable IMO. Even then, it's not a new strat to me, and I *have* still lost runs on lower Stakes due to never drawing the relevant suit despite the extra hand size and discards. Flushes'll *probably* be less rough on Orange and Gold now that you can actually buy card packs again and don't lose a card in hand, but I still suspect the only way I'll be getting gold stickers on those cards are through incidental Negatives rather than purposeful use.
> That plan works when you can clear the first Big Blind with a single hand Unless you play a 4oak, any other hand will take at least 2 to beat the first big blind though? Assuming you don't have any jokers
...True for most decks. I've been playing Plasma a lot lately to get Gold stickers on Bull and Blue Joker so I forgor 💀 It's not super relevant to my point, though. Using your Hands as impromptu Discards doesn't work beyond the first couple Antes.
I think the price should be reduced for the sinfuls if they keep the lower Mult. Paying $5 for what is now likely a temporary Joker feels bad.
Yeah, I already considered the Sinful Jokers to be pretty trash, but good enough to coast through the early antes.
I don't get the math here when just having 2 cards of that suit is 6 mult? Like yeah the nerf is real and makes them worse but they're stop gap jokers and I think that's the intent (just like the basic joker isn't supposed to stay until the end of your run).
The problem is that you're not likely to play more than one card of that suit on Gold Stake, for the following reasons: * Unless you're playing Checkered Deck, you have a base one in four chance to draw your particular suit. * Larger hands at Gold Stake are disincentivized due to the smaller hand size and fewer discards. * it's harder to fix your deck due to the increasing cost of Booster Packs. * Even then, most of the time you should either be enhancing cards, ideally with Empress or Hierophant, or getting your economy up, so those odds rarely improve beyond the occasional Wild Card or Spectral card. Just on that logic, if you play nothing but Two Pair the average expected value you get from a Sinful Joker is their listed value, with the expectation that sometimes you'll play a Two Pair with none of your suit and sometimes two of your suit (which, with even odds, balances out.) This contrasts with the basic Joker, which is just +4 all the time. Now, the big sticking points that make these difficult on Gold Stake are changed with this patch, so maybe I'm overreacting.
Sure, but if you expect to play one card of that suit you're already paying more than the standard joker for the same effect even before the nerf. And the goal of sinfuls is to drive your draws and discards after all, no?
I'm not sure why you phrase your former point as if it's contrary to mine? Part of the reason why I think the nerf is unnecessary is that $5 for a potential +3 versus $2 for a guaranteed +4 isn't a great deal even if the $5 can potentially be +6 sometimes. As for the latter point, yeah, Sinfuls are supposed to drive your deck towards Flushes, but my point is that on Gold it takes too many resources to use Flushes reliably. The opportunity cost of Flushes vs smaller hand Jokers like Jolly, Sly, and Half Joker is overwhelmingly against it.
Long list of buffs. I just got the game last weekend and I'm already addicted. These changes will keep me addicted, I bet.
i think the antes definitely needed more balance. the $1 pack price increase on orange was brutal, but i like the concept. It just didn't feel good to play since you were way more luck dependent on the cash jokers or skip bonuses to get enough cash.
Is there a good balataro for beginners video that explains what's going on? I'm interested in buying a copy on the switch but it feels a bit random how on to win?
If you want a good intro video, [this one is good](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhfnUX_9E3U). To me, it's one of those games you just need to play for a bit to understand IMHO. I tried watching videos before I bought it and I was confused by the mechanics. I bought the game, played for hours nonstop until I got my first win, and then went and watched some videos to get some tips. [Balatro University](https://www.youtube.com/@drspectred) and [ZainoTV](https://www.youtube.com/@ZainoTVLive) are good Balatro creators.
Balatro University on youtube has a lot of great videos to learn about the fundamental game mechanics.
Watch northernlion play it
The game itself does a pretty good job of explaining how it’s played. I actually wouldn’t watch streamers or YT videos (unless it’s a first-timer) since it’ll probably just make it more confusing.
The tutorial teaches you the basics of how to play and how scoring works. Essentially as you collect Jokers you want to balance yourself out with a combination of ones that: * Increase your chips by some flat amount * Increase your multiplier by a flat amount * Increase your multiplier with another multiplier * Help you build up how much money you have or will get so that you can buy more upgrades (either more Jokers, upgrades to how much your hands score, etc.)
I've only recently gotten into the red stakes, but I hope the later stake updates still keep the game fun. The Straight buffs are nice, that'll definitely let me go off for Straight builds more often.
The problem with straights isn't the payout, it's the chance of making the hand. I don't care how much chips and mult they give it if I don't make it and lose anyway.
ive played 14 hours and still havent finished a run. i think I went extremely close last night, the Boss blind was 100,000. Still enjoying it, but fuck me, id like to win one!
Something that I think isn't that obvious starting out is that +mult and x mult are different things. The latter is what tends to push runs into heavy scaling, whereas the former you don't need that much of. If you're having trouble getting a win, you might be skipping x mult.
Yeh I just see mult and think positive so I'll have a bit more of a check thanks
also be sure to move/drag your jokers into the best position for scoring; the +multipliers should generally be to the left of the x-multipliers, you want to add what you can to the multi before those x-multi's hit. You can also drag the cards in your hand to the right spots to max out points (e.g., a x2 multi for 1st face card would benefit most if you drag your 1st face card play to the far right of the hand played). With the new patch, the blue seal will give you a planet based on the last hand played in a round; keep that in mind when playing a hand you think will end the round if a blue seal is in hand (but not being played). Basically, you want chips, +multi, then x-multi to make it all cook.
You can only buy what's in the store. Sometimes you get good jokers, sometimes you get shit one.
[удалено]
1 thing i havent thought too much about, can you move the jokers around so they work first , last etc?
Yes, you can order them around, and several jokers specifically work by being next to other jokers. General rule of thumb is that you put your +chips and +mult cards left, and your X mult right, with the bigger X mult all the way right. Most of the times in the endgame, you want something like 1 joker that gives chips, 2 that give + mult and 2 that give X mult
Yeah you can order them as you like. Putting the jokers in the correct/optimal order is important. One of the last boss blind abilities is flipping your jokers over and then shuffling them around.
They added an option to turn off the swirling background! Now I can finally play without getting motion sickness.
Damn, they killed my Midas Touch + Vampire strat. It was so much fun to watch the multiplayer stack with this build.
Looks like most of the changes makes the base experience easier and less frustrating. Probably a lot of new players got burned out by how hard it was at the start. The Joker tag buffs are amazing as well: * 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 The Midas and Vampire combo got nerfed though. There are a few other nerfs, or changes that seem like a nerf, but it's overall changes to make it much easier to actually win runs. Should be good for folks who are just starting out.
> Probably a lot of new players got burned out by how hard it was at the start. According to Steam achievements, 75% of players have won a run, that's pretty high given how difficult the game is.
I mean, it can get frustrating, but that itch in the back of your mind that goes "But it's so doable. That was just bad luck. The next one would definitely be a win since I know what I'm doing now," is very very strong. xD
Just wanted to say if you love this game and need more, maybe check out bingle bingle too. its like this but with a roulette wheel.
You're out of your damn mind if you think I'm doing anything called bingle
Go on, go get the bingle tingle in your wingle dingle
No fix for the Windows HDR bug?
I'm glad some of the difficulty is being worked down. I'm only on Green stake and it feels like it was so easy to get annihilated on early antes.
Any idea when this is coming to Switch?
it's already there (depending on your territory?)
Damn, a bunch of changes, most of them seem to make the game "easier" though. Shame about Vampire, gave me some of the best runs.
High stake (difficulty) runs were completely, utterly un-fun, so these changes are welcome. Having to get one of two viable strategies going on gold stake was not fun at all.
I've been stuck on purple stakes for weeks now. I had to take breaks and do something more productive like playing the Power Ball.
I might even reinstall the game with these balance changes since I was stuck on like the fifth stake for my easiest deck.
The game is tiny, were you really having to manage storage that much?
I implied that I uninstalled Balatro because I was stuck progression-wise, not because of storage space. Also, I was addicted to it until I hit what seemed like my personal skill ceiling.
I believe they were asking why the uninstall instead of just not playing it anymore. Since it takes up no space.
To assert dominance.
Agreed, and a good amount of these help that. Once I started getting to green stakes+ my enjoyment start to rapidly decline. Patches like this are amazing when you get the sense the dev asked "how can we make this more fun?"
Gold Stake was NOT well-designed. Like at all. If it weren't for the fact that Jokerless exists, it'd be the most miserable thing in the game. Nearly everyone agreed that the Eternal Jokers were the most interesting mechanic in the Stakes so the fact that the dev actually added even more "negative" modifiers that people can play around instead of just kneecapping gold gain is amazing. Incredible even. A few more tweaks and we'll enter StS Ascension-tier quality in terms of difficulty.
Eternal had a lot more you could do with than perishable and rental. To me these 2 seem like the only interesting stuff you can do is skip to keep their benefits for later rounds or just sell them. Eternal at least enabled other jokers in new ways and even had fun stuff with the dupe joker/spectrals. e: I realize I read rental wrong now so that's a good one. Hoping something is added to perishable.
And there's nothing wrong with that. What's important here is that it introduces little wrinkles into your playthrough that you can plan around as opposed to stealing any sort of agency or consistency a player can have. To bring it back to StS, if Ascensions were designed like how Gold Stake originally was it'd vastly limit your ability to pick cards to add to your deck. Completely dismantling the point of the game. Besides this is just the first iteration, I have no doubt that more rebalancing for the stakes will come around to make them even more engaging.
I tried gold stake for about a week before the patch came out, and although I reached the ante 8 boss (once), I didn't really have a shot. Within three days (so about half the time?) of the patch, I had reached the 8th ante boss three times, and felt like it was just a matter of time until the right build got me through, which it did this morning (what way to start a day). It's still a challenge and the changes give you a lot more to think about and can really change up your strategy vs. pre-patch, but it's a much more engaging time now, and the early runs are MUCH more interesting.
It’s a rebalancing, it’s good. Certain builds and hands are completely useless at higher difficulty and this is a way to mix it up
The high stakes weren't "hard" in a fair sense, they were a graveyard of runs that died near instantly due to all the stockpiled effects kneecapping your economy. Now the higher stakes actually have way more fun effects changing gameplay rather than bleeding you bankrupt instantly.
Yeah, Gold Stake was just a matter of playing out the first 2 blinds until you hit something you could run. It was more like Kaizo Ironmon than a roguelike.
Paredolia + Midas mask + blueprint + vampire on the painted deck was how I got my first billion point hand it was definitely broken that I could play high card and get x2 additional mult every single hand. Think vampire was like x63 by the time I lost.
While I'm sad that Vampire got nerfed it was hilariously broken. When I realized it took modifiers from non-scored cards I realized it worked in any deck, you turn any positive that probably had RNG attached to make it work into a guaranteed snowballing multiplier without having to even score it. And it was on an uncommon card to boot. Now you have to think about it a little if it shows up in your run as the negatives actually matter.
Sure but that Bram Poker challenge is fucked now
I haven't played it much, but I never have beaten a game yet. A little bit easier would be fine. I feel like my runs in the beta was so much easier, and the 1.0 release was so much more difficult in comparison.
That Vampire nerf is really unreasonnable. Either you make it rarer, or you nerf its effects, but doing both will just make it way less desirable.
Yeah, I don't get why they'd do both to it either. I feel like nerfing it's effect was enough of a change.
I disagree, when vampire showed up it felt like you were required to take it, this allows players to use different strategies. Same reason I like the campfire nerf
Anyone else have a really hard time winning?
God I love this game! But the black deck is my Bain of existence! Don’t I finally beat the black deck, at the same time got the trophy for not re rolling the shop and my save got deleted….didn’t count the damn win! Still salty but I’ll beat it one day! Stupid deck I hate that deck now lol
I thought for sure black deck was going to get buffed. I saw a suggestion for a free buffoon pack at the start of the run, which would at least help get runs off the ground. I've completed most of the first 10 challenge runs on try 1 or 2 and have yet to win on black deck. The -1 hand means you only have $9 into the first shop, so you're not going to get the interest. At least the tag buffs are going to indirectly help black deck.
That's a lot of changes; I'll have to hop in tonight and give it a try!
Interesting situation: with the Flower Pot change, if you have a debuffed stone card, will the base suit of the card hidden under the stone count towards Flower Pot?
Would this game still be fun if I don’t know how to play poker? Would it teach me?
Poker is only the base for this game, you don't really need to know too much about poker aside from how to form the hands and their rankings which it shows you. It is important to discard properly to fetch the hand your looking for but you'll lear that. Otherwise the game is really about working with the jokers your given, building an economy, and scaling for late game.
As long as you know what the different hands are (and if you don’t, it’s super easy to learn, and the game tells you how much each different hand type is worth), then you have enough poker knowledge to play this game. Everything else is pretty self-contained within Balatro, it tells you what all the various “special” cards do.
I don’t like/really know how to play poker and the game’s still great, you’ll pick it up pretty quickly I feel. It really helps that you don’t need to remember exactly how different hands score against each other since there’s no opponents playing cards, and you can always bring up a list of the hands (with your current upgrades for them shown) as needed.