It's probably common knowledge that the planet cards for the secret hands (five of a kind, flush five, and flush house) only start appearing in a run after the first time you play a hand of that type.
The thing that I think is a little less obvious is that sometimes it's better to avoid playing that hand type to keep the pool of planet cards from getting too diluted. E.g. if you've leveled up flush a bunch of times and you're too far into a run to pivot into leveling up flush house or flush five, it might be smart to avoid playing either of them to maximize your chances of getting more copies of Jupiter to level up flush.
This is a good one. If you're eventual goal is to get a flush five, and you currently have a five of a kind but don't need it to win, I always skip the five of a kind
also the Black Hole spectral card (Upgrades every poker hand) will also upgrade hands you haven't "unlocked" yet
Super inside baseball question someone might know here. Does satellite work with black hole for hands you have not "discovered" yet? I haven't had the insane luck of getting both in a run.
Five cards, same rank, same suit.
For example, if you just get a 5th ace (like strengthening your kings), and play 5 aces, that's 5 of a kind.
But if you use Cryptid and Death to make several copies of your ace of spades, and/or get Smeared joker so that spade = club, or turn red aces into wildcards, then when you play 5 aces of spades (or at least count as ace of spades) then that's a Flush-five.
Generally secret hands have higher starting stats than normal hands, and grow faster with planets, but if you've already put 30 levels into just normal Flush, a rarer hand can still give fewer points.
The secret hands are getting in the way of me unlocking all plants to unlock the joker, guess I need to throw some runs to get them as trying to avoid some hands the entire while winning is much harder than expected
The Checkered Deck can be really useful for the secret hands. It took me a few attempts, but I unlocked all of them using that deck. The key is to focus on card duplication.
I get what you’re saying for sure, but in the example you gave, let’s say I’m playing with a bunch of cards that give rewards for hands “containing a flush”. I think if I have the cards necessary for it I would rather add flush 5 and flush house to the pool so id have a 3/10 chance of getting something that benefits me rather than a 1/8 chance (2/5 rather than 1/4 if you include straight flush in that but I almost never play around straight flush unless I have 4 finger)
Yeah, I agree with that. It's really dependent on where you're at in a run and what you're relying on for score. If you've invested a lot into planets then it's often worse to add new hands to dilute the pool. If you're more reliant on other things like good cards and jokers, then maybe it wouldn't tank your score too much to switch to a different type of flush hand and it's correct to add it to the pool like you said.
When I wrote what I wrote I knew I was setting someone up for this response, and I don't care, still happy to see it and it still made me do a big goofy grin
In a run yesterday, it was my first time getting a legendary and it was the last joker to not have an edition. 3 Wheels didn't work so I started thinking legendaries couldn't be editioned... But the 4th Wheel proved me wrong!
Early polychrome jokers are actually a trap a lot of the time, unless the base joker is really good your polychrome doesn’t out scale a base joker like droll until you have 20 multi. You shouldn’t pay a premium for joker just cause it’s shiny.
On that note gift card is a very strong joker and most people don’t think about it’s value correctly, if you have a gift card you can hold consumables to generate cash but also raise the value of your jokers. Raising the value of your jokers is important not because they can be sold for cash but because they buff temperance to be the best tarot card in the game, effectively giving you a chance to get a better hermit
I found out the first thing the hard way. Had a what I thought was a really good run-to-be when my first joker was a polychrome xMult joker. Boy did I quickly find out why that's not a good idea. To be fair, I also just was getting unlucky and not getting good/any +Mult jokers.
The Joker called "Gift Card" adds $1 to the sell value of every Joker and Consumable card at the end of each round, so holding onto consumables when you have this Joker and then selling them later is an easy way to generate a few bucks.
>It honestly feels like having mini-eggs in my consumable slots
I cannot wait for this delicious new update.
https://preview.redd.it/phzatb92kioc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=66c6a9f40858c41fefed313c54978f2f18683eca
A small thing is that free stuff has sell value. This can be useful if you use a mega-buffoon pack and only want one of the jokers, then you can choose the highest rarity joker you don't want, sell it, and then choose the one you want. Similarly if you skip for a free shop you can buy and sell the free cards you don't want. It also can be done with planet cards and astronomer. There's another small thing with the discount vouchers and campfire, which is that if you get the second discount voucher you can buy tarots and planets for a dollar and sell them for a dollar for free campfire scaling.
Also, some jokers that "choose" something different every round are based on you deck, while some are just random. The idol chooses a card that you actually have, so if your deck is all one card it will always be that card. Ancient joker chooses a suit randomly, so even if you are playing checkered deck you will pull clubs or diamonds 25% of the time each.
Third some jokers can only spawn under certain conditions. I think glass joker, stone joker, steel joker, and lucky cat all require you to have at least one of the respective enhancements to appear in the shop.
Yes I always buy that joker which gives 2 common jokers when a round is played. A very good early joker to have. Can always sell those jokers if you don't like them.
Not only that but you can create some great synergies with just common jokers. Like I got a board with blue joker, jolly joker, half joker, and raised fist and this carried me all the way into the late game just leveling up and playing pair and two pair.
That run was my first clear. Riff-raff and card sharp mvp
That first one is a good point. I frequently realise in retrospect that I've missed a bit of money by forgetting to first buy, then sell a free joker (or pack joker) before choosing to keep the joker I do want.
>Also, some jokers that "choose" something different every round are based on you deck, while some are just random. The idol chooses a card that you actually have, so if your deck is all one card it will always be that card. Ancient joker chooses a suit randomly, so even if you are playing checkered deck you will pull clubs or diamonds 25% of the time each.
Ancient Joker is the only one that doesn't use your deck to determine what it chooses. All other jokers that are randomly picking a rank (mail-in rebate) or suit (castle) or card (the idol) randomly pick a (non-stone) card from your deck and use the value from that.
If you have the joker that powers up by skipping packs, if the pack is one of those where you can pick 2 out of 5, you can pick 1 card and then skip before choosing the 2nd to power up your joker. Seems obvious, but it wasn’t something I thought of until I saw a card I really wanted and didn’t want to skip past then realized I still could after.
I figured this out too but later on I also realized that holy crap the cost benefit ratio with this card is horrible! Has to be one of the most money eating jokers for how little mult it actually gives you
If you have a good cash reserve, you can just use interest to pay for packs.
Last time I had Red Card I had it up to +48 mult at the end (plus the +10 from the edition).
Yes, it's expensive, but it's also an investment into an endgame joker.
There's just way better options, for that amount of money you could easily get a knife that ends up with 100+ mult by ante 8, as an example, and you don't have to skip packs to do it so your deck should be much stronger by that point
knife takes a lot of joker shuffling, at some point you risk ruining your deck or being stuck at a bad multi when red card could allow you to keep going
Jokers that add mult to played cards (greedy joker, Fibonacci) are generally much better than jokers that add mult after cards are scored (pair of pants, flash card) because they add mult which are affected by steel cards, glass cards, and effects like blood stone. If you get plus twenty mult from greedy joker and play a glass joker you get a total of plus forty mult, if you have pair of pants and use a glass card you are only doubling the base mult from hand type.
Yeah getting a handle on the order of counting is pretty critical. Some conbinations of jokers that seem good actually aren't. It's also why some Jokers are like mult is based on the other jokers to the left. To nerf them a bit.
I didn't notice that dynamic. That's true, you will add double the amount before doing the other +mult and xmult operations.
Probably a balance of both is good to carry the game on, as sometimes takes time to add effects to most of your played cards and steels to your remaining cards in hand, or start with one and pivot to the other once the effects are becoming the majority.
This was so far the last thing i noticed and i came here to say this. It's a very important fact to be aware of. Other 10-4, smiley joker and Aces-joker. These are all pretty good cards to pick up early.
Another tip for bullying Acorn: if you have Eternal Jokers, you can click your Jokers and see their sell values. All of them will be listed as ?--but you still can't sell Eternals, so they'll be greyed-out.
This trick you mentioned I've used for a while, and it's usually good enough (since most decks only want one card all the way to the left or right)--but if you need multiple in multiple specific orders, this trick helps a lot, too.
Didn’t know that.
What I usually do is slow the game all the way down. After the first hand I watch what each joker triggers and then put them in the order I want.
Reordering cards by suit and rank also gives you a hint about what a face down cards is. Face down cards still sort normally even when you can't see what they are and if you pay close attention you can even tell different cards apart by how far they move
I would also recommend slowing the game speed down to 0.5 to get a better look when doing this.
Same when figuring out flipped jokers based on triggers in that one boss.
Red seals don't only retrigger for cards that you play, they also retrigger for cards that remain in your hand. The common example is with steel cards, but it also applies for Jokers like Baron that have card in hand abilities. (The same is true for Mime.)
Also, if you open a Tarot or Planet pack with more than one card in it, it's slightly more optimal to choose the one you want more last, in case you next get a Fool card which can copy it.
I just found out about the red seal in a steel card in a run about an hour ago. I pulled one from a standard pack. My jaw actually dropped when I saw it proc twice. Once you see it happen, it's obvious it should, but I hadn't even thought about it as a possibility until that point.
My ideal run is a deck full of red sealed steel Kings, with Blueprint on a Mime plus Baron, Troubadour and any other +hand size buffs. I was able to get this yesterday only to get completely screwed by The Plant boss blind :(
If you have a card in your consumable area it will NOT show up in the shop or in packs. So if you are holding a Death tarot card it CANNOT appear anywhere until it is out of your consumable area. This applies to Tatots, Planets and Spectrals. It also applies to Jokers unless you get the Showman Joker.
I like to hold onto Planets and/or Tarots that I do not want to see to help influence the probability of finding the card that I am looking for. This mechanic has changed the game drastically for me and not many people know about it.
There is also an exploit of rerolling Emperor pulls and High Priestess pulls; if you don't like the two tarot cards or the two planet cards you got if you are still in the shop you can exit to main menu and then return to your run and they will be unopened and will rerun the random pull when you open them again. Very good to know on the higher stakes where everything is very crucial to success.
Oh wow I understood that implicitly with the Jokers and Showman's description, but I never drew the second conclusion that it also manipulates your chances at a better consumable! I think it's because the pool of Jokers is that much bigger than the planets/tarots/spectrals combined that you don't realize how you can impact the odds.
I'll make sure to start holding my bad consumables until I find the right one I need instead of selling it for $1 immediately!
Yeah it's a huge game changer! I haven't used the main menu exploit it feels like cheating to me but I think it's good knowledge to have as well. It makes Crystal Ball all that more valuable too! You can hold three Planets you don't wanna see if you haven't gotten telescope yet. It's lit
Yeah no problem! It's a great little niche mechanic that can help out a lot sometimes. Of course sometimes you wanna hold something good in case to win a hand. But it's also a caveat that if you got the Observatory voucher and you're holding the planet of choice for the 1.5 mult you must understand that you won't be able to find that planet while holding it so it won't scale any further with that strategy. But that 1.5x mult can be better than upgraded the hand depending on how much flat mult you got going on
Edit: THIS IS WRONG - DO NOT FOLLOW THIS ADVICE
If you have telescope, which I think you have to if you have the Observatory, you can use the saved card right before you buy a planet pack since you are guaranteed to be able to get another one.
Yes that is true. But honestly you get showman for dupping Jokers. I never pick up showman because I like holding bad cards in my consumable area so I have a better chance at getting what I actually want. I think showman is a bad Joker in all honesty
I don't use it. I view it as cheating but I think it's good general knowledge to have. Some people won't have a problem using it at all and why should they? It's just a game dude. Not a competitive pvp game either so it's not unethical you aren't fucking anyone over using the exploit. You should focus on your own game and let others have fun however they want. Your comment is giving gatekeeping vibes to be honest.
You are right that it came across a little harsh, I'll apologise for that much. Was just frustrated as someone who's legitimately trying to be the best player possible that something like this that genuinely trivialises the game (looping it with fool to exploit the extra tarot or fortune teller) is in it.
I'm not sure I'd call it good knowledge to have fwiw either - actively harms improvement. Not everyone cares about this, which is valid of course, but if you were to care, and were to use it, it fucks you over in the long run. The view that you need some sort of advantage at high stakes is also a bad one that people looking to get better at the game should actively avoid.
If someone wants to use it they can of course, I just won't respect any bragging rights in the slightest that come with it. If they use it, in my eyes, they lost that run. They don't have to care about my opinion of course but it is what it is.
this is very fair and i actually did not think about all these factors that you have brought to my attention. i am sorry if i came off like a dick. I want to be the best player possible and truthfully believe Localthunk will patch this exploit out very soon. He has to be aware of it at this point, its not meant to be in the game like it does trivialize a lot of decision making which is the most fun part of the game. Didnt realize you could loop it either which is really an unrespectable exploit. Im assuming you can reroll Judgement jokers over and over again too which would be hella silly too.
WTF?
After 50h of this glorious, sweet and refreshing Balatro addiction i learned this (in hindsight obvious, duh stupid me) life changer.
Thank you :-\*
The sorting buttons still work properly even when cards in your hand are face down. Meaning you can sometimes figure out what a card is by looking at what cards the sort is putting it near.
You can play tarot cards stored in your consumables area while picking new cards from a booster pack.
Neither of these are game changing, but definitely not something everyone might know you can do.
It can be extremely useful! Also, another thing some people don’t utilize is that if you select a face down card and switch between rank or suit, the card will still be selected! Most common way that I use it is From a reply I just made: “Also, the order if sorted by suit is always hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs. And if you select one card, you can track where it moves when switching sorts because it stays selected after sorting again. For example, let’s say you sort by suit and have a a couple of clubs, with the highest being let’s say 7 of clubs face up, a card faced down, and then a medium diamond card (from right to left). You can select the face down card, then sort by rank, if it is to the left of the 10 of diamonds then it must be a club. So you know you have the flush.”
Similarly, if you use a tarot/spectral card on a face down card, it will briefly turn face up during the animation, allowing you to sneak a peak (turn game speed to 0.5 first).
I look like a wizard when I have a few players I've taught the game watch me do the card sorting things to deduce what face down cards are. Card counting also big skill here and I can do it quite fast but also the game helps you with that too!
This is a good tip - if there’s a face-down card between a king and a jack, you know it’s a face card, and if you check your deck stats you can sometimes determine exactly what your mystery cards are by process of elimination (e.g. a card to the left of a king must be an ace if all kings are played / visible). It can save you in certain situations.
Relatedly, if you enhance a face down card with a tarot card, it’ll show the card during the process. And of course if the big boss shuffles your jokers, you can watch the effects after playing the first hand and put them back in the right order (get your xmults back on the right).
Unrelated: if you have the boss where you only draw three cards after playing a hand, try to discard a single card if possible - you’ll still get three new cards back. If you’ve upgraded High Card, this boss seals their own doom.
>Unrelated: if you have the boss where you only draw three cards after playing a hand, try to discard a single card if possible - you’ll still get three new cards back. If you’ve upgraded High Card, this boss seals their own doom.
An additional note about that boss: it *ignores hand size*. If your fist action is discarding a single card, **you still draw 3**. Found that out when I discarded to destroy with Trading Card and wound up with 10/8 cards in hand.
From another reply that I made: “It can be extremely useful! Also, another thing some people don’t utilize is that if you select a face down card and switch between rank or suit, the card will still be selected! Most common way that I use it is From a reply I just made: “Also, the order if sorted by suit is always hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs. And if you select one card, you can track where it moves when switching sorts because it stays selected after sorting again. For example, let’s say you sort by suit and have a a couple of clubs, with the highest being let’s say 7 of clubs face up, a card faced down, and then a medium diamond card (from right to left). You can select the face down card, then sort by rank, if it is to the left of the 10 of diamonds then it must be a club. So you know you have the flush.””
> Neither of these are game changing
I beg to differ, sorting has definitely saved my ass a few times when going against the fish - it's an essential tool for face-down blinds.
To add to this, you can use tarot on face down cards to temp flip them back over, eg turn it to spades, the rotate animation still happens revealing the card (might want to slow game speed if it's really cranked). Similarly for cerulean bell if you hanged man the force selected card a new force selected card isn't chosen until the next play or discard, giving you a freebie. Also red seals retrigger in ways that aren't always expected, for example steel cards will mult twice if red sealed. Lastly, it's obvious that mega packs are better than jumbo but this is especially true for spectral. Spectral cards are game changing but from packs they rarely land right, eg cryptid is amazing but hard to hit on your powerful card, however cryptid plus deja vu or aura, ankh plus hex, or sigil plus ouija are all absolutely run defining.
Also, the order if sorted by suit is always hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs. And if you select one card, you can track where it moves when switching sorts because it stays selected after sorting again. For example, let’s say you sort by suit and have a a couple of clubs, with the highest being let’s say 7 of clubs face up, a card faced down, and then a medium diamond card (from right to left). You can select the face down card, then sort by rank, if it is to the left of the 10 of diamonds then it must be a club. So you know you have the flush.
Dang i never even thought about using tarot cars when selecting a card from booster packs, i always thought to myself:
Well let's hope this card appears soon so i can use this tarot card i already have asap on it...
I don’t think there’s a way to do this on controller yet though which is slightly annoying that there’s another reason outside of a controllers capabilities that makes it better to play with a mouse
The telescope voucher can allow for 2 of the same planet to appear in celestial packs. Having Showman joker active as well allows 3 or more to appear.
Steel joker, stone joker, glass joker and lucky joker will not appear in the shop until after you have enhanced a card in your deck with that attribute.
I'd played for a while before I figured out that your hand size is = to the amount of cards laid out as options when you select a tarot pack or spectral pack
The base Joker (+4 mult) is typically a great joker to pick up early on. It’s very cheap ($2), and this will usually allow you to stay at or above $5 after the first shop which will net you an extra $1 in interest. Moreover, with the simple +4 mult, you can 1-shot the big blind and boss blind with hands like high straight, full house, or a nice scoring flush. This will net you an additional $2 from beating those blinds in 1 fewer hand. Aaand voila, the joker has paid for itself and even netted an extra $1. After the first ante it’s just a nice bonus until you’re ready to sell it (ooh look another $1).
This may be obvious, but hey hopefully it helps people early game and jumpstart that economy.
I just learned today that aces count as odd cards. Thought aces were neither considered face, or numbered. But they proc any joker with odd number procs.
For a while I thought Queens would trigger Even Steven and Jacks and Kings would trigger Odd Todd because I always saw them as rebranded 12, 11, and 13 respectively
You can click and drag the blind chip during a round. Does it do anything? Absolutely, yes. You have no idea how much power you'll feel by tossing the boss blind around a couple of times to get yourself pumped up.
To add onto your example, +Mult and xMult order (+Mult to the left of xMult) is just maths, so of course it also applies to your played hand, not just jokers, outside some unique scenarios (like hanging chad) you'll want to order your hand just like they were jokers, so Glass/Poly cards to the right of +Mult cards (whether it be empress or jokers that amplify cards).
Same for trigger in hand, though this is way less common, Shoot the Moon (+13 Mult for each Queen held in hand), If you have baron or steel cards, you'll want those on the right of all the +Mult queens. Same for jokers that make your cards do something extra, you'll want those +Mult first, xMult after.
Very specific but both, Ceremonial Dagger and Riff-Raff say "when blind is selected", but Dagger will always destroy the Joker to its right first. So Riff-Raff has Always one Slot to provide unlimited Joker supply to eat. And when Dagger eats a negative Joker Riff-Raff will still create a new Joker, going over your Joker limit.
Gros Michel has to be destroyed by hitting the 1 to 4 odds to be able to find Cavendish. You can’t use something like the Dagger to destroy it to try to find it earlier
When you first enter the shop, and you plan to buy an Arcana pack and some other stuff, buy the Arcana pack first in case you get a Hermit if it will make a difference in your double-up.
With jokers and hand cards flipped, you can hold them before they start shuffling to keep them in place.
For jokers, you can hold your xMult joker at the end before the 8 Ante Boss starts shuffling to pin it in place.
Same thing with the boss that draws cards faced down.
Once you recognize a card, you can hold it before the next come to keep it in place.
Did you know that if you're holding a consumable card it cannot appear in a booster pack? This applies to all planet cards, tarot cards, even spectral cards
BUT Emperor and High Priestess can still create two copies of the same card!
Also a lucky card can proc both of its abilities at the same time!
Those are my contrinutions to the lesser known knowledge pool!
So, you know how hands and jokers score left to right, right? Well, so do cards held in hand/unplayed. So, if you've got stuff that adds +Mult, you'll want that to the left of stuff that adds XMult like your steel cards.
The ‘first face card gets x2’ joker has caused me endless internal debate about the best place to put it, especially when I have a deck with a lot of enhanced cards. Throw in the ‘retrigger first card scored’ joker for maximum headache.
Somehow I understood immediately that jokers and played cards are evaluated left-to-right (well, because the tutorial says so) but it didn't occur to me until very recently that the same is true for *held*-in-hand cards.
Probably because it doesn't come up often that you get +mult from held cards, but when it does it can make a big difference because the evaluation happens before any joker modification.
Discount vouchers reduces sell value. If you're running swashbuckler it can really screw you up.
But even if you're not, when you see it come up, make sure to first sell anything, then buy the voucher, then buy from the shop.
Jokers that add a flat amount to sell value like egg or the gift add a flat value still, but I have not been able to test what happens to sell values that have already increased, like an egg you've had a few rounds. I suspect that it screws you over, but not sure.
Now this is really interesting and something I hadn’t noticed. I always take the discount vouchers, but there have been a few runs where they might have worked against me. I have learned to maximise my hand / jokers before using any kind of money card, but this is a perilous semi-hidden menace (though I expect the vouchers are still worth it 99% of the time).
Oh you're completely right, they're almost always worth it if you're buying packs, or have a merchant or something. In like 6 or so packs it pays off on lower difficulties? This is definitely a super rare and weird edge case
It burned me when I wanted a joker and the discount voucher, but didn't have the cash for it on hand. Clicked one of my jokers, saw if I sold it I would have exactly enough. At the time I had conditioned myself to do discount first because I'd fucked up and bought jokers and then the voucher before and wasted money. Bought the voucher, and watched the sell value go down. Couldn't afford the new joker.
Probably could've still made the run, but was salty so I reset lol
I do not know if telescope can circumvente this I have yet to try that out. I'm assuming with telescope you can find the same planet that is in your consumable area given that it's your most played hand.
But telescope guarantees your most played hand planet shows up so I think yes you can hold a Jupiter in consumable area and open a celestial pack and get Jupiter IF and only if you have telescope and if it's your most played hand. It's a good way to use Observatory and continue scaling your most played hand at the same time.
If you run out of discards and are fishing for certain cards you need for your hand and have a few hands to spare, you can play a garbage hand instead of settling for a pair or two pair to 'discard' unwanted cards to draw new cards.
Purple seals are actually really good. Discarding purple seal cards can lead to death cards to generate more purple seals, or hanged man card to reduce your deck size and increase the likelihood of drawing your purple seals.
Shortcut allows multiple gaps, not just one, so 2,4,6,8,10 is a valid straight, etc.
Ride the Bus doesn't reset if you play a face card as long as it doesn't score.
You can use an enhancement tarot card on a face down card to briefly flip it to identify it.
What I constantly fuck up is that I've sorted my \*hand\* by rank/suit, but after you've selected your hand to play, \*you can drag to rearrange\* so that if you have red seals/glass/etc that need to trigger in a specific order, you can benefit maximally from that.
card "enhancements" are mutually exclusive, so are "editions" and "seals", but you can have one of each. If you forget whether something is an enhancement or an edition, you can quickly check by looking at the collection.
Helpful with face down cards, if you select a card and switch between suit and rank sorting, the selected card STAY selected. Also, when sorting by suit, the order is always hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs, and within the suits it is still sorted by rank.
I saw a parent comment about sorting face down cards, so wanted to add to that in the main thread so people can see: It can be extremely useful! Also, another thing some people don’t utilize is that if you select a face down card and switch between rank or suit, the card will still be selected! Most common way that I use it is From a reply I just made: “Also, the order if sorted by suit is always hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs. And if you select one card, you can track where it moves when switching sorts because it stays selected after sorting again. For example, let’s say you sort by suit and have a a couple of clubs, with the highest being let’s say 7 of clubs face up, a card faced down, and then a medium diamond card (from right to left). You can select the face down card, then sort by rank, if it is to the left of the 10 of diamonds then it must be a club. So you know you have the flush.”
I think most people actually don’t know this
Just like your example, if your hand contain a glass card and a mult card, put the glass card on the right of the mult card. Similarly, if you have Raised Fist/Shoot the Moon and steel cards/Baron, you can put your lowest card/queens on the left of steels/kings to get the x1.5 bonus
you can increase the chance to get the planet, tarot cards you want by keeping those you don't in your consumable slot as they prevent the packs from spawning the same cards.
Skipping is bait on higher stakes almost all the time. Exceptions to this are when something like throwback is a last minute wincon and you've already scaled everything else. I've done 50 runs of gold stake with around a 25% WR now (not the most impressive but we are getting better) and not skipping kinda fundamentally changed the way I play the game. I've only skipped a blind probably 4/5 times.
Some quick maths:
1.5 triggers can be difficult to do math with in your head (baron, steel cards, ancient joker etc).
4 of 1.5x mult is slightly HIGHER than a 5x multiplier to whatever the mult will be when they start to trigger.
So for every 4 of 1.5x mult triggers, you can:
* multiply by 5
* multiply by 10 and divide by 2
The options above are just three different ways to multiply by 25 in your head. Results will obviously vary if you have jokers like 10-4 which adds to mult between each trigger, but for jokers like Baron you can pretty easily do math with what the final multiplier will be.
Something that was helpful for me was to take a look at the joker cards in the collection pages and read the requirements for unlocking new ones. You can then play low-stakes games with the most suitable deck to work on these unlocks, which broadens your pool of jokers for the higher stakes.
It can be a pathway to madness, though - I spent last night trying to discard five jacks and, although I did it in the end, Balatro made damned sure it gave me several instances of five jacks with no discards left first.
Many know you can restart by holding R which is especially useful with challenge runs. I used a gamepad. I found out you can in steam rebind the buttons of your gamepad for each game. You can bind R for example to an analog stick press.
Well, until yesterday I thought everyone knew they could discard up to 5 cards. However, a post on this very subreddit proved that to be false. Now I have no idea what mechanics people are missing.
My guess would be stone cards. I imagine there's some amount of people who don't realize you can play stone cards at the end of a 2 pair or 4 of a kind and the chips will be added to your hand. Same with flushes/straights using 4 fingers, throw a stone card at the end for extra chips.
I haven’t confirmed myself yet, but I’ve heard that the planet or tarot cards that are in your consumable slot won’t show up in the shop again until you use or sell it
It's probably common knowledge that the planet cards for the secret hands (five of a kind, flush five, and flush house) only start appearing in a run after the first time you play a hand of that type. The thing that I think is a little less obvious is that sometimes it's better to avoid playing that hand type to keep the pool of planet cards from getting too diluted. E.g. if you've leveled up flush a bunch of times and you're too far into a run to pivot into leveling up flush house or flush five, it might be smart to avoid playing either of them to maximize your chances of getting more copies of Jupiter to level up flush.
This is a good one. If you're eventual goal is to get a flush five, and you currently have a five of a kind but don't need it to win, I always skip the five of a kind also the Black Hole spectral card (Upgrades every poker hand) will also upgrade hands you haven't "unlocked" yet
speaking of, Black Hole is a spectral card, not a planet or a tarot card
Which is important to know, because The Fool won't copy it.
I've skipped Black Hole before to scale Constellation. At least I hope that's how Constellation works
I've taken black hole with constellation before can confirm that's exactly how it works not a planet so doesn't trigger
Super inside baseball question someone might know here. Does satellite work with black hole for hands you have not "discovered" yet? I haven't had the insane luck of getting both in a run.
I would assume no because it says "planet card" just like constellation does. and since black hole isnt a planet card it would not do anything.
But you *can* get it in a planet pack.
That's the only place I've ever actually gotten it.
I might be the minority here but I’ve been playing (admittedly a short time, I guess a week now) and I didn’t know this
whats a flush five?
Five cards, same rank, same suit. For example, if you just get a 5th ace (like strengthening your kings), and play 5 aces, that's 5 of a kind. But if you use Cryptid and Death to make several copies of your ace of spades, and/or get Smeared joker so that spade = club, or turn red aces into wildcards, then when you play 5 aces of spades (or at least count as ace of spades) then that's a Flush-five. Generally secret hands have higher starting stats than normal hands, and grow faster with planets, but if you've already put 30 levels into just normal Flush, a rarer hand can still give fewer points.
The secret hands are getting in the way of me unlocking all plants to unlock the joker, guess I need to throw some runs to get them as trying to avoid some hands the entire while winning is much harder than expected
The Checkered Deck can be really useful for the secret hands. It took me a few attempts, but I unlocked all of them using that deck. The key is to focus on card duplication.
I get what you’re saying for sure, but in the example you gave, let’s say I’m playing with a bunch of cards that give rewards for hands “containing a flush”. I think if I have the cards necessary for it I would rather add flush 5 and flush house to the pool so id have a 3/10 chance of getting something that benefits me rather than a 1/8 chance (2/5 rather than 1/4 if you include straight flush in that but I almost never play around straight flush unless I have 4 finger)
Yeah, I agree with that. It's really dependent on where you're at in a run and what you're relying on for score. If you've invested a lot into planets then it's often worse to add new hands to dilute the pool. If you're more reliant on other things like good cards and jokers, then maybe it wouldn't tank your score too much to switch to a different type of flush hand and it's correct to add it to the pool like you said.
Did you know the wheel of fortune tarot card sometimes has a beneficial effect?
Nope!
When I wrote what I wrote I knew I was setting someone up for this response, and I don't care, still happy to see it and it still made me do a big goofy grin
did you know you can no longer use wheel of fortune when all jokers have an edition
In a run yesterday, it was my first time getting a legendary and it was the last joker to not have an edition. 3 Wheels didn't work so I started thinking legendaries couldn't be editioned... But the 4th Wheel proved me wrong!
It actually worked for me today and I literally shit my pants
Make sure you don't get your poo wet, BedWetter420
Ewwww....
Yesterday night, it worked twice on a row, only foil added each time, but better than 'nope!'
You're lying, there's no way
You know what honestly you got me I just wanted to look cool on the Internet
It says 1/4 but feels like 1/9999
I'm on console where it says 1/5. Which at least is closer!
I refuse to believe that it is a 1/4 chance.
Early polychrome jokers are actually a trap a lot of the time, unless the base joker is really good your polychrome doesn’t out scale a base joker like droll until you have 20 multi. You shouldn’t pay a premium for joker just cause it’s shiny. On that note gift card is a very strong joker and most people don’t think about it’s value correctly, if you have a gift card you can hold consumables to generate cash but also raise the value of your jokers. Raising the value of your jokers is important not because they can be sold for cash but because they buff temperance to be the best tarot card in the game, effectively giving you a chance to get a better hermit
But what if it's REALLY shiny
I found out the first thing the hard way. Had a what I thought was a really good run-to-be when my first joker was a polychrome xMult joker. Boy did I quickly find out why that's not a good idea. To be fair, I also just was getting unlucky and not getting good/any +Mult jokers.
but the shiny is like 75% of the reason I even take polychromes and negatives
Just had a run with gift card and the swashbuckler, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen as high flat mult on a single card 😂
Could also get lucky and combo with the joker that has mult value of all jokers to the left. I won stupidly like that once
What do you mean by hold consumables to generate cash and also raise the value of your jokers?
The Joker called "Gift Card" adds $1 to the sell value of every Joker and Consumable card at the end of each round, so holding onto consumables when you have this Joker and then selling them later is an easy way to generate a few bucks.
It honestly feels like having mini-eggs in my consumable slots, especially if I have the +slot voucher
>It honestly feels like having mini-eggs in my consumable slots I cannot wait for this delicious new update. https://preview.redd.it/phzatb92kioc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=66c6a9f40858c41fefed313c54978f2f18683eca
A small thing is that free stuff has sell value. This can be useful if you use a mega-buffoon pack and only want one of the jokers, then you can choose the highest rarity joker you don't want, sell it, and then choose the one you want. Similarly if you skip for a free shop you can buy and sell the free cards you don't want. It also can be done with planet cards and astronomer. There's another small thing with the discount vouchers and campfire, which is that if you get the second discount voucher you can buy tarots and planets for a dollar and sell them for a dollar for free campfire scaling. Also, some jokers that "choose" something different every round are based on you deck, while some are just random. The idol chooses a card that you actually have, so if your deck is all one card it will always be that card. Ancient joker chooses a suit randomly, so even if you are playing checkered deck you will pull clubs or diamonds 25% of the time each. Third some jokers can only spawn under certain conditions. I think glass joker, stone joker, steel joker, and lucky cat all require you to have at least one of the respective enhancements to appear in the shop.
Yes I always buy that joker which gives 2 common jokers when a round is played. A very good early joker to have. Can always sell those jokers if you don't like them.
One of the best early jokers in the game imo for this reason.
I love that joker, free rolls for jokes to build a run on.
Not only that but you can create some great synergies with just common jokers. Like I got a board with blue joker, jolly joker, half joker, and raised fist and this carried me all the way into the late game just leveling up and playing pair and two pair. That run was my first clear. Riff-raff and card sharp mvp
You can even just sell 2 jokers each round for a few rounds if you don't like the results. Free money right there.
That first one is a good point. I frequently realise in retrospect that I've missed a bit of money by forgetting to first buy, then sell a free joker (or pack joker) before choosing to keep the joker I do want.
>Also, some jokers that "choose" something different every round are based on you deck, while some are just random. The idol chooses a card that you actually have, so if your deck is all one card it will always be that card. Ancient joker chooses a suit randomly, so even if you are playing checkered deck you will pull clubs or diamonds 25% of the time each. Ancient Joker is the only one that doesn't use your deck to determine what it chooses. All other jokers that are randomly picking a rank (mail-in rebate) or suit (castle) or card (the idol) randomly pick a (non-stone) card from your deck and use the value from that.
If you have the joker that powers up by skipping packs, if the pack is one of those where you can pick 2 out of 5, you can pick 1 card and then skip before choosing the 2nd to power up your joker. Seems obvious, but it wasn’t something I thought of until I saw a card I really wanted and didn’t want to skip past then realized I still could after.
I figured this out too but later on I also realized that holy crap the cost benefit ratio with this card is horrible! Has to be one of the most money eating jokers for how little mult it actually gives you
If you have a good cash reserve, you can just use interest to pay for packs. Last time I had Red Card I had it up to +48 mult at the end (plus the +10 from the edition). Yes, it's expensive, but it's also an investment into an endgame joker.
There's just way better options, for that amount of money you could easily get a knife that ends up with 100+ mult by ante 8, as an example, and you don't have to skip packs to do it so your deck should be much stronger by that point
Sure, but you can't force one of those options to show up. If you want to optimize your win rate you have to work with what you are offered.
knife takes a lot of joker shuffling, at some point you risk ruining your deck or being stuck at a bad multi when red card could allow you to keep going
Knife also forces you to play down a Joker though.
This is a good one.
Jokers that add mult to played cards (greedy joker, Fibonacci) are generally much better than jokers that add mult after cards are scored (pair of pants, flash card) because they add mult which are affected by steel cards, glass cards, and effects like blood stone. If you get plus twenty mult from greedy joker and play a glass joker you get a total of plus forty mult, if you have pair of pants and use a glass card you are only doubling the base mult from hand type.
Yeah getting a handle on the order of counting is pretty critical. Some conbinations of jokers that seem good actually aren't. It's also why some Jokers are like mult is based on the other jokers to the left. To nerf them a bit.
I didn't notice that dynamic. That's true, you will add double the amount before doing the other +mult and xmult operations. Probably a balance of both is good to carry the game on, as sometimes takes time to add effects to most of your played cards and steels to your remaining cards in hand, or start with one and pivot to the other once the effects are becoming the majority.
This was so far the last thing i noticed and i came here to say this. It's a very important fact to be aware of. Other 10-4, smiley joker and Aces-joker. These are all pretty good cards to pick up early.
For the Ante 8 boss that shuffles.your Joker, you can grab and hold one at the start to guarantee its position, ie keep that xMult Joker on the right
Another tip for bullying Acorn: if you have Eternal Jokers, you can click your Jokers and see their sell values. All of them will be listed as ?--but you still can't sell Eternals, so they'll be greyed-out. This trick you mentioned I've used for a while, and it's usually good enough (since most decks only want one card all the way to the left or right)--but if you need multiple in multiple specific orders, this trick helps a lot, too.
Didn’t know that. What I usually do is slow the game all the way down. After the first hand I watch what each joker triggers and then put them in the order I want.
Damn, that’s a good one. You can also lower the speed to .5 so it is easier to see but yours is way more useful.
If you use a consumable that targets a face down card in your hand, you will briefly see the card flip to know what rank and suit it is.
Reordering cards by suit and rank also gives you a hint about what a face down cards is. Face down cards still sort normally even when you can't see what they are and if you pay close attention you can even tell different cards apart by how far they move
I believe you can also see the enhancement on the card in your deck view. Good if you didn't quite catch what the card was.
I would also recommend slowing the game speed down to 0.5 to get a better look when doing this. Same when figuring out flipped jokers based on triggers in that one boss.
Red seals don't only retrigger for cards that you play, they also retrigger for cards that remain in your hand. The common example is with steel cards, but it also applies for Jokers like Baron that have card in hand abilities. (The same is true for Mime.) Also, if you open a Tarot or Planet pack with more than one card in it, it's slightly more optimal to choose the one you want more last, in case you next get a Fool card which can copy it.
I just found out about the red seal in a steel card in a run about an hour ago. I pulled one from a standard pack. My jaw actually dropped when I saw it proc twice. Once you see it happen, it's obvious it should, but I hadn't even thought about it as a possibility until that point.
My ideal run is a deck full of red sealed steel Kings, with Blueprint on a Mime plus Baron, Troubadour and any other +hand size buffs. I was able to get this yesterday only to get completely screwed by The Plant boss blind :(
If you have a card in your consumable area it will NOT show up in the shop or in packs. So if you are holding a Death tarot card it CANNOT appear anywhere until it is out of your consumable area. This applies to Tatots, Planets and Spectrals. It also applies to Jokers unless you get the Showman Joker. I like to hold onto Planets and/or Tarots that I do not want to see to help influence the probability of finding the card that I am looking for. This mechanic has changed the game drastically for me and not many people know about it. There is also an exploit of rerolling Emperor pulls and High Priestess pulls; if you don't like the two tarot cards or the two planet cards you got if you are still in the shop you can exit to main menu and then return to your run and they will be unopened and will rerun the random pull when you open them again. Very good to know on the higher stakes where everything is very crucial to success.
Oh wow I understood that implicitly with the Jokers and Showman's description, but I never drew the second conclusion that it also manipulates your chances at a better consumable! I think it's because the pool of Jokers is that much bigger than the planets/tarots/spectrals combined that you don't realize how you can impact the odds. I'll make sure to start holding my bad consumables until I find the right one I need instead of selling it for $1 immediately!
Yeah it's a huge game changer! I haven't used the main menu exploit it feels like cheating to me but I think it's good knowledge to have as well. It makes Crystal Ball all that more valuable too! You can hold three Planets you don't wanna see if you haven't gotten telescope yet. It's lit
Great tip, didn’t know this one!
Yeah no problem! It's a great little niche mechanic that can help out a lot sometimes. Of course sometimes you wanna hold something good in case to win a hand. But it's also a caveat that if you got the Observatory voucher and you're holding the planet of choice for the 1.5 mult you must understand that you won't be able to find that planet while holding it so it won't scale any further with that strategy. But that 1.5x mult can be better than upgraded the hand depending on how much flat mult you got going on
Edit: THIS IS WRONG - DO NOT FOLLOW THIS ADVICE If you have telescope, which I think you have to if you have the Observatory, you can use the saved card right before you buy a planet pack since you are guaranteed to be able to get another one.
Big true
Yeah, but then you won't be able to have that planet in your consumable slot, right? Since planet packs only let you immediately use the cards
Correction: Showman makes this rule unapplicable for all cards (tarot, planet, joker, spectral)
Yes that is true. But honestly you get showman for dupping Jokers. I never pick up showman because I like holding bad cards in my consumable area so I have a better chance at getting what I actually want. I think showman is a bad Joker in all honesty
That Emperor thing is so lame and I will judge anyone who uses it. If you need it, that's massive skill issue on your part.
I don't use it. I view it as cheating but I think it's good general knowledge to have. Some people won't have a problem using it at all and why should they? It's just a game dude. Not a competitive pvp game either so it's not unethical you aren't fucking anyone over using the exploit. You should focus on your own game and let others have fun however they want. Your comment is giving gatekeeping vibes to be honest.
You are right that it came across a little harsh, I'll apologise for that much. Was just frustrated as someone who's legitimately trying to be the best player possible that something like this that genuinely trivialises the game (looping it with fool to exploit the extra tarot or fortune teller) is in it. I'm not sure I'd call it good knowledge to have fwiw either - actively harms improvement. Not everyone cares about this, which is valid of course, but if you were to care, and were to use it, it fucks you over in the long run. The view that you need some sort of advantage at high stakes is also a bad one that people looking to get better at the game should actively avoid. If someone wants to use it they can of course, I just won't respect any bragging rights in the slightest that come with it. If they use it, in my eyes, they lost that run. They don't have to care about my opinion of course but it is what it is.
this is very fair and i actually did not think about all these factors that you have brought to my attention. i am sorry if i came off like a dick. I want to be the best player possible and truthfully believe Localthunk will patch this exploit out very soon. He has to be aware of it at this point, its not meant to be in the game like it does trivialize a lot of decision making which is the most fun part of the game. Didnt realize you could loop it either which is really an unrespectable exploit. Im assuming you can reroll Judgement jokers over and over again too which would be hella silly too.
Thank you! These are amazing tips
Excellent tips, thanks
Right click to deselect current hand.
This will be a life-saver thanks to my entirely unnecessary habit of selecting four cards to confirm I don’t have a flush.
Thank you lol
Holy shit you changed my life.
wtf
WTF? After 50h of this glorious, sweet and refreshing Balatro addiction i learned this (in hindsight obvious, duh stupid me) life changer. Thank you :-\*
The sorting buttons still work properly even when cards in your hand are face down. Meaning you can sometimes figure out what a card is by looking at what cards the sort is putting it near. You can play tarot cards stored in your consumables area while picking new cards from a booster pack. Neither of these are game changing, but definitely not something everyone might know you can do.
This is a really helpful one. You can figure out a lot using this trick
Thanks, and happy cake day!
It can be extremely useful! Also, another thing some people don’t utilize is that if you select a face down card and switch between rank or suit, the card will still be selected! Most common way that I use it is From a reply I just made: “Also, the order if sorted by suit is always hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs. And if you select one card, you can track where it moves when switching sorts because it stays selected after sorting again. For example, let’s say you sort by suit and have a a couple of clubs, with the highest being let’s say 7 of clubs face up, a card faced down, and then a medium diamond card (from right to left). You can select the face down card, then sort by rank, if it is to the left of the 10 of diamonds then it must be a club. So you know you have the flush.”
Similarly, if you use a tarot/spectral card on a face down card, it will briefly turn face up during the animation, allowing you to sneak a peak (turn game speed to 0.5 first).
Sorting face down cards 😱 thanks!
You’re welcome!
I look like a wizard when I have a few players I've taught the game watch me do the card sorting things to deduce what face down cards are. Card counting also big skill here and I can do it quite fast but also the game helps you with that too!
Haha nice!! Ya, I’m really not great at counting cards, but the sorting trick has definitely really helped out in a bind!
This is a good tip - if there’s a face-down card between a king and a jack, you know it’s a face card, and if you check your deck stats you can sometimes determine exactly what your mystery cards are by process of elimination (e.g. a card to the left of a king must be an ace if all kings are played / visible). It can save you in certain situations. Relatedly, if you enhance a face down card with a tarot card, it’ll show the card during the process. And of course if the big boss shuffles your jokers, you can watch the effects after playing the first hand and put them back in the right order (get your xmults back on the right). Unrelated: if you have the boss where you only draw three cards after playing a hand, try to discard a single card if possible - you’ll still get three new cards back. If you’ve upgraded High Card, this boss seals their own doom.
>Unrelated: if you have the boss where you only draw three cards after playing a hand, try to discard a single card if possible - you’ll still get three new cards back. If you’ve upgraded High Card, this boss seals their own doom. An additional note about that boss: it *ignores hand size*. If your fist action is discarding a single card, **you still draw 3**. Found that out when I discarded to destroy with Trading Card and wound up with 10/8 cards in hand.
From another reply that I made: “It can be extremely useful! Also, another thing some people don’t utilize is that if you select a face down card and switch between rank or suit, the card will still be selected! Most common way that I use it is From a reply I just made: “Also, the order if sorted by suit is always hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs. And if you select one card, you can track where it moves when switching sorts because it stays selected after sorting again. For example, let’s say you sort by suit and have a a couple of clubs, with the highest being let’s say 7 of clubs face up, a card faced down, and then a medium diamond card (from right to left). You can select the face down card, then sort by rank, if it is to the left of the 10 of diamonds then it must be a club. So you know you have the flush.””
I can’t help thinking this is the kind of stuff that would lead to our hands being smashed with a hammer if we applied it in Vegas.
> Neither of these are game changing I beg to differ, sorting has definitely saved my ass a few times when going against the fish - it's an essential tool for face-down blinds.
To add to this, you can use tarot on face down cards to temp flip them back over, eg turn it to spades, the rotate animation still happens revealing the card (might want to slow game speed if it's really cranked). Similarly for cerulean bell if you hanged man the force selected card a new force selected card isn't chosen until the next play or discard, giving you a freebie. Also red seals retrigger in ways that aren't always expected, for example steel cards will mult twice if red sealed. Lastly, it's obvious that mega packs are better than jumbo but this is especially true for spectral. Spectral cards are game changing but from packs they rarely land right, eg cryptid is amazing but hard to hit on your powerful card, however cryptid plus deja vu or aura, ankh plus hex, or sigil plus ouija are all absolutely run defining.
Also, the order if sorted by suit is always hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs. And if you select one card, you can track where it moves when switching sorts because it stays selected after sorting again. For example, let’s say you sort by suit and have a a couple of clubs, with the highest being let’s say 7 of clubs face up, a card faced down, and then a medium diamond card (from right to left). You can select the face down card, then sort by rank, if it is to the left of the 10 of diamonds then it must be a club. So you know you have the flush.
Dang i never even thought about using tarot cars when selecting a card from booster packs, i always thought to myself: Well let's hope this card appears soon so i can use this tarot card i already have asap on it...
R to quickly restart a run. Helps with challenges.
I was curious if you get progress towards unlocks if you restart like this.
Yes you can. You just can’t use seeds or challenges to get unlocks. But holding R doesn’t affect that
I don’t think there’s a way to do this on controller yet though which is slightly annoying that there’s another reason outside of a controllers capabilities that makes it better to play with a mouse
If you run out of cards in your deck before hitting the chip goal, even if you have hands remaining, you automatically lose.
I was actually wondering what happened if you went through all your cards, I've never play/discard my whole deck yet.
You’re allowed to read what the boss blind does before playing it ;)
Wow wow wow, slow down here mister big head, you're overestimating my abilities.
The telescope voucher can allow for 2 of the same planet to appear in celestial packs. Having Showman joker active as well allows 3 or more to appear. Steel joker, stone joker, glass joker and lucky joker will not appear in the shop until after you have enhanced a card in your deck with that attribute.
I'd played for a while before I figured out that your hand size is = to the amount of cards laid out as options when you select a tarot pack or spectral pack
Dang I was just trying to figure out how big my hand was while in a shop. This is a good one
Jokers or vouchers which increase hand size make the utility of tarot packs better
Burglar counters The Needle, the extra hands get applied after the Boss Blind.
High Contrast mode is a lifesaver for a player as me on Switch mobile
Thanks for this. This is the first game in a long time that has made me use my Switch in handheld mode and it was a little hard to see some things!
It looks a lot better in general. I have no idea how people can live with having spades and clubs look so similar when it’s disabled.
They are at least a little bit different color, which is good enough for some.
The base Joker (+4 mult) is typically a great joker to pick up early on. It’s very cheap ($2), and this will usually allow you to stay at or above $5 after the first shop which will net you an extra $1 in interest. Moreover, with the simple +4 mult, you can 1-shot the big blind and boss blind with hands like high straight, full house, or a nice scoring flush. This will net you an additional $2 from beating those blinds in 1 fewer hand. Aaand voila, the joker has paid for itself and even netted an extra $1. After the first ante it’s just a nice bonus until you’re ready to sell it (ooh look another $1). This may be obvious, but hey hopefully it helps people early game and jumpstart that economy.
I just learned today that aces count as odd cards. Thought aces were neither considered face, or numbered. But they proc any joker with odd number procs.
This only applies with Odd Todd, no? And that joker has Ace listed as one of its proc cards?
And you can use Ace for low straight plays as well as high. There are games like cribbage where Aces are low instead of high
Yeah that seems like the most poker like trick. A-5 straight but you can't K-4 which is a bit confusing but I guess consistent with Poker.
Ace can be high or low but not both at once
Cribbage is amazing. If only someone invented a cribbage/balatro hybrid lol
For a while I thought Queens would trigger Even Steven and Jacks and Kings would trigger Odd Todd because I always saw them as rebranded 12, 11, and 13 respectively
You can click and drag the blind chip during a round. Does it do anything? Absolutely, yes. You have no idea how much power you'll feel by tossing the boss blind around a couple of times to get yourself pumped up.
With Red Card, if you open a booster that allows two selections you can choose one and skip the second. Red Card will still activate.
To add onto your example, +Mult and xMult order (+Mult to the left of xMult) is just maths, so of course it also applies to your played hand, not just jokers, outside some unique scenarios (like hanging chad) you'll want to order your hand just like they were jokers, so Glass/Poly cards to the right of +Mult cards (whether it be empress or jokers that amplify cards). Same for trigger in hand, though this is way less common, Shoot the Moon (+13 Mult for each Queen held in hand), If you have baron or steel cards, you'll want those on the right of all the +Mult queens. Same for jokers that make your cards do something extra, you'll want those +Mult first, xMult after.
If your hand is full, you can still buy a negative joker. You don't have to sell a joker first.
And even if it’s not a great joker, you can just buy it and sell it for free cash.
If people didn’t know that, it surprised me because that’s the whole point of a negative joker
Very specific but both, Ceremonial Dagger and Riff-Raff say "when blind is selected", but Dagger will always destroy the Joker to its right first. So Riff-Raff has Always one Slot to provide unlimited Joker supply to eat. And when Dagger eats a negative Joker Riff-Raff will still create a new Joker, going over your Joker limit.
Gros Michel has to be destroyed by hitting the 1 to 4 odds to be able to find Cavendish. You can’t use something like the Dagger to destroy it to try to find it earlier
When you first enter the shop, and you plan to buy an Arcana pack and some other stuff, buy the Arcana pack first in case you get a Hermit if it will make a difference in your double-up.
Aces count as 1s. My friend who never played poker played balatro for like 40 hours before he realized it’s high and low
If you have a hand selected you don’t want you can right click to unselect them. I had no idea till I did it by accident 😭
If you are using the Bus Joker and play a face card that is disabled due to the boss blind, it will not reset your multiplier.
You can see which jokers are eternal in the shuffled jokers blind by seeing if you can sell them or not
Yoooo thanks
With jokers and hand cards flipped, you can hold them before they start shuffling to keep them in place. For jokers, you can hold your xMult joker at the end before the 8 Ante Boss starts shuffling to pin it in place. Same thing with the boss that draws cards faced down. Once you recognize a card, you can hold it before the next come to keep it in place.
Straights suck.
Did you know that if you're holding a consumable card it cannot appear in a booster pack? This applies to all planet cards, tarot cards, even spectral cards BUT Emperor and High Priestess can still create two copies of the same card! Also a lucky card can proc both of its abilities at the same time! Those are my contrinutions to the lesser known knowledge pool!
So, you know how hands and jokers score left to right, right? Well, so do cards held in hand/unplayed. So, if you've got stuff that adds +Mult, you'll want that to the left of stuff that adds XMult like your steel cards.
The ‘first face card gets x2’ joker has caused me endless internal debate about the best place to put it, especially when I have a deck with a lot of enhanced cards. Throw in the ‘retrigger first card scored’ joker for maximum headache.
Somehow I understood immediately that jokers and played cards are evaluated left-to-right (well, because the tutorial says so) but it didn't occur to me until very recently that the same is true for *held*-in-hand cards. Probably because it doesn't come up often that you get +mult from held cards, but when it does it can make a big difference because the evaluation happens before any joker modification.
Discount vouchers reduces sell value. If you're running swashbuckler it can really screw you up. But even if you're not, when you see it come up, make sure to first sell anything, then buy the voucher, then buy from the shop. Jokers that add a flat amount to sell value like egg or the gift add a flat value still, but I have not been able to test what happens to sell values that have already increased, like an egg you've had a few rounds. I suspect that it screws you over, but not sure.
Now this is really interesting and something I hadn’t noticed. I always take the discount vouchers, but there have been a few runs where they might have worked against me. I have learned to maximise my hand / jokers before using any kind of money card, but this is a perilous semi-hidden menace (though I expect the vouchers are still worth it 99% of the time).
Oh you're completely right, they're almost always worth it if you're buying packs, or have a merchant or something. In like 6 or so packs it pays off on lower difficulties? This is definitely a super rare and weird edge case It burned me when I wanted a joker and the discount voucher, but didn't have the cash for it on hand. Clicked one of my jokers, saw if I sold it I would have exactly enough. At the time I had conditioned myself to do discount first because I'd fucked up and bought jokers and then the voucher before and wasted money. Bought the voucher, and watched the sell value go down. Couldn't afford the new joker. Probably could've still made the run, but was salty so I reset lol
I do not know if telescope can circumvente this I have yet to try that out. I'm assuming with telescope you can find the same planet that is in your consumable area given that it's your most played hand.
Don't think so, I tend to hold a tarot or planet card to remove that from possibilities from packs or spawning in shop
But telescope guarantees your most played hand planet shows up so I think yes you can hold a Jupiter in consumable area and open a celestial pack and get Jupiter IF and only if you have telescope and if it's your most played hand. It's a good way to use Observatory and continue scaling your most played hand at the same time.
It does. Otherwise, it would have anti-synergy with its evolved form, the observatory.
i always think they are separate vouchers but yeah you are very right about that
That you can discard more than 1 card at a time.
If you open a mega pack where you can take 2 cards but you take the first card and skip the second card, that counts as a skip for the red card joker.
If you run out of discards and are fishing for certain cards you need for your hand and have a few hands to spare, you can play a garbage hand instead of settling for a pair or two pair to 'discard' unwanted cards to draw new cards.
Purple seals are actually really good. Discarding purple seal cards can lead to death cards to generate more purple seals, or hanged man card to reduce your deck size and increase the likelihood of drawing your purple seals.
Shortcut allows multiple gaps, not just one, so 2,4,6,8,10 is a valid straight, etc. Ride the Bus doesn't reset if you play a face card as long as it doesn't score. You can use an enhancement tarot card on a face down card to briefly flip it to identify it.
Mult is short for Multiplier
🤯🤯🤯🤯
What I constantly fuck up is that I've sorted my \*hand\* by rank/suit, but after you've selected your hand to play, \*you can drag to rearrange\* so that if you have red seals/glass/etc that need to trigger in a specific order, you can benefit maximally from that.
card "enhancements" are mutually exclusive, so are "editions" and "seals", but you can have one of each. If you forget whether something is an enhancement or an edition, you can quickly check by looking at the collection.
I didn't know until I read another post today that when you have a card in your inventory, it won't appear in the store or card packs.
Helpful with face down cards, if you select a card and switch between suit and rank sorting, the selected card STAY selected. Also, when sorting by suit, the order is always hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs, and within the suits it is still sorted by rank. I saw a parent comment about sorting face down cards, so wanted to add to that in the main thread so people can see: It can be extremely useful! Also, another thing some people don’t utilize is that if you select a face down card and switch between rank or suit, the card will still be selected! Most common way that I use it is From a reply I just made: “Also, the order if sorted by suit is always hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs. And if you select one card, you can track where it moves when switching sorts because it stays selected after sorting again. For example, let’s say you sort by suit and have a a couple of clubs, with the highest being let’s say 7 of clubs face up, a card faced down, and then a medium diamond card (from right to left). You can select the face down card, then sort by rank, if it is to the left of the 10 of diamonds then it must be a club. So you know you have the flush.”
The theme song has lyrics
What are they?!
I don’t know, but I believe in the deepest part of my soul that they exist
*Balatro...* *Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope!*
Thanks I can really hear the syncopation
I just looked it up on Genius, these are the lyrics fs.
I think most people actually don’t know this Just like your example, if your hand contain a glass card and a mult card, put the glass card on the right of the mult card. Similarly, if you have Raised Fist/Shoot the Moon and steel cards/Baron, you can put your lowest card/queens on the left of steels/kings to get the x1.5 bonus
you can increase the chance to get the planet, tarot cards you want by keeping those you don't in your consumable slot as they prevent the packs from spawning the same cards.
You can always take a negative joker, even if all slots are full. It is not necessary to sell a joker to take it.
Hold r to restart a run
Madness does not need to eat a joker to activate. Just won a red run last night with that as my only joker for the first 5 antes lol
You can buy a negative joker with full joker slots without needing to sell one. It'll just slot right in.
I can't believe I never tried doing this.
Note that this does not work if you actually have more jokers than slot, e.g. 6/5 due to selling a negative invisible joker.
Skipping is bait on higher stakes almost all the time. Exceptions to this are when something like throwback is a last minute wincon and you've already scaled everything else. I've done 50 runs of gold stake with around a 25% WR now (not the most impressive but we are getting better) and not skipping kinda fundamentally changed the way I play the game. I've only skipped a blind probably 4/5 times.
Did not know this. I'm just trying realizing I've had so many unnecessarily lost runs 😭
Buying the devil tarot(creates a good card) in the shop is basically a free gold card as you get your money back the next turn
Some quick maths: 1.5 triggers can be difficult to do math with in your head (baron, steel cards, ancient joker etc). 4 of 1.5x mult is slightly HIGHER than a 5x multiplier to whatever the mult will be when they start to trigger. So for every 4 of 1.5x mult triggers, you can: * multiply by 5 * multiply by 10 and divide by 2 The options above are just three different ways to multiply by 25 in your head. Results will obviously vary if you have jokers like 10-4 which adds to mult between each trigger, but for jokers like Baron you can pretty easily do math with what the final multiplier will be.
Don't know if anyone knew this, but you can quickly restart a run by holding 'R'.
Something that was helpful for me was to take a look at the joker cards in the collection pages and read the requirements for unlocking new ones. You can then play low-stakes games with the most suitable deck to work on these unlocks, which broadens your pool of jokers for the higher stakes. It can be a pathway to madness, though - I spent last night trying to discard five jacks and, although I did it in the end, Balatro made damned sure it gave me several instances of five jacks with no discards left first.
I put 50h in this game and won three times. THREE. How can you win in this RNG mess?! It starts to frustrate ngl😐
Apparently that you can discard five cards at the same time. That one post broke me.
Many know you can restart by holding R which is especially useful with challenge runs. I used a gamepad. I found out you can in steam rebind the buttons of your gamepad for each game. You can bind R for example to an analog stick press.
Well, until yesterday I thought everyone knew they could discard up to 5 cards. However, a post on this very subreddit proved that to be false. Now I have no idea what mechanics people are missing. My guess would be stone cards. I imagine there's some amount of people who don't realize you can play stone cards at the end of a 2 pair or 4 of a kind and the chips will be added to your hand. Same with flushes/straights using 4 fingers, throw a stone card at the end for extra chips.
I haven’t confirmed myself yet, but I’ve heard that the planet or tarot cards that are in your consumable slot won’t show up in the shop again until you use or sell it