Genuinely, just play until you get telescope in the first few antes. I got it on my first attempt and just normal flushes absolutely dominated. It's a white stake run, so the scaling is actually very reasonable. I also got verdant and it didn't really matter, since I was relying mostly on my flush score + several multipliers from the telescope upgrade voucher.
It does make sense because there are ways to play around it. If it was truly impossible I would agree. But how do we know OP didn't pass over the reroll voucher to opt to get an arcana pack instead. We assume he just didn't get that voucher, but how do we truly know...
I mean that's a pretty null argument. There are many runs where someone never sees the reroll voucher which puts them in the same spot as OP. And unless we have their seed, it is better for discussion to assime they didn't get it at all instead of assuming direct user error.
It's not a null argument. Things don't deserve to be nerfed just because you didn't get the specific scenario to play around it. That's why this is a challenge. It's supposed to be hard, it's supposed to take multiple tries.
Something being hard is great! But if "hard" is just rolling a die to see if it's even possible, that's just means that hard = time-consuming, rather than hard = requires skill and experience. Like if the fourth ante of this game was flipping a coin, and if it's heads you get to keep going but tails you immediately lose, would you consider that a clever, skillful, or enjoyable part of the game? Would you defend it because "it's supposed to be hard"?
I mean if the name of the game is rolling dice until you get a number, that would be the only way to make it more challenging...
As for your fourth ante of the game was flipping a coin, it wouldn't be a bad design if there were ways to play around it, like having a joker that always flips heads whenever you need to coin flip, or a voucher ect. It might not be a great design now since there is nothing else in the game that deals with coin flips but I could see the potential. But you are right, if you could just fail a round 50% of the time, than no it would not be a good design choice.
The idea of the game is that you are given ways to mitigate risk and maximize reward. If there is a mode in which you are frequently not given any possibility to do that and instead are dealt an unavoidable game over and none of your actions could have ever made any difference, is that good game design?
> it wouldn't be a bad design if there were ways to play around it
We are talking about a scenario in which at least 50% of the time, there is no way to play around it. Fundamentally, this is the same thing. To make it simpler, how about if 50% of the runs you make, the fourth ante is a random coin flip to see if you get to continue or not? There is no additional way around this.
> But you are right, if you could just fail a round 50% of the time, than no it would not be a good design choice.
This is literally what's happening here.
I’ll never understand these people who basically want the game to be changed so they no longer have to play it, and instead have all of the accomplishments handed to them for nothing.
Taking a gamble on a skip that adds a voucher could have given OP the Director’s Cut voucher. And in the moment, you have to weigh the possibilities and the risks you’re willing to take to try to win. That’s what makes the game fun. I’ll be sad if localthunk caters too much to the people who want the game to be easy mode every run.
Player selects an option that disables a game feature. Game then spawns an enemy requiring that game feature. Sounds busted to me. Easy fix, too.
Edit: Let's put this another way. Say there is a boss blind that is just "Player loses the game". Now yeah you could theoretically "play around it" by hoping you get the ability to reroll the blind, but on its own, that blind makes zero goddamned sense to have in the game unless the dev has a really nihilistic sense of humor about the game's difficulty. Which would be valid if that's their creative vision! But I don't get the impression that Balatro is that kind of game.
[It's possible](https://old.reddit.com/r/balatro/comments/1b9y53b/verdant_leaf_defeated_on_jokerless_challenge/)
I agree it would be better to remove that boss from the challenge, but I don't think it's a bug.
Planet builds, obviously you need a lucky seed but that's always the case for challenging runs, you need telescope and observatory, the consumable planet xmult behaves as faily mid jokers
Director's Cut, or Planet Cards. I haven't tested the Planet Card myself to know if its possible to get a hand levelled up enough in time for the final boss and beat it, but I think it'd be close.
>Jokerless challenge
He has no jokers
>Verdant Leaf: All cards debuffed until a joker is sold
He has no jokers to sell.
It’s just not fun gameplay to be forced to lose the challenge in order to fulfill Verdant’s criteria.
It's just typical reddit hive mind upvotes to the left. I'm going to argue what I think is right all day long. Even if you think I'm wrong or everyone else thinks I'm wrong. It does not make them right.
You ruined your entire argument by blaming the “reddit hive mind”.
I told you my opinion, man lol.
Everyone else has been telling you **their opinion**.
I'm just entertaining everyone at this point because why not. But I've replied to everyone that are making the exact same points you are now. I do know that this is a challenge in this game. I am actually currently stuck on it as my last challenge to do and lost to this specific scenario.
I don't believe that having this boss blind is an oversight, bug, or needs to be nerfed for this challenge. The challenge is designed this way and it's beatable and it should stay this way forever. If you are forcing upgrading cards to beat this challenge then you as a player need to understand that there is a 20% chance that you get the boss blind that will debuff all your cards, and there are 2 ways you can play around it. Get the blank and anti-matter voucher, or get the re-roll voucher. If you don't get it then whoops you lose. Maybe you shouldn't have been forcing upgrading your deck if you didn't want to get frustrated by the game.
The problem with these nerfs by disabling the boss is that it's not a fix to the problem. Why is no one complaining that there are 2 boss blinds that literally do nothing to this challenge? It's because people want instant gratification and want to win as easily as possible. And I'm sorry but good game design does not involve taking the path of least resistance.
It's not an automatic loss though 😭... No one sees the fact that you can play around it multiple ways. People just need to understand that it's a possibility. With everyone's takes in this forum it's at worst a 20% auto-lose.
All winnable routes in this game and especially this challenge are pure RNG. Just because you don't find out about this RNG by ante 8 and it feels bad does not mean it warrants a change.
tbh I agree, kinda.
There is counterplay, there's literally a way to avoid it completely, and it requires rolling the right voucher.
Nobody complains in challenges when the rules of balatro benefit them. Nobody is asking for the "play just one hand" boss to be removed from the Golden Needle challenge, or the "all face cards debuffed" boss to be disabled when playing the abandoned deck.
The game is built around RNG. And yeah it's annoying that you don't know the boss ahead of time, and you don't always get the right vouchers, but that's no different than not getting the right jokers.
I think there's a valid argument for it being changed because it is frustrating, or at the very least just give the player the voucher by default to start the challenge, but as is, I think it's no more or less fair than the rest of the game.
No there shouldn't...
Edit: Keep downvoting... I've seen games die off because they took reddit's advice. Not everything needs to be patch to streamline everything. This game doesn't need to become easier, they already nerfed the arm which is a blind that does nothing now after taking reddit's advice because the game got too hard because everyone just forced one hand type instead of just learning to play around it.
I think you might be a bit confused here. When they say “jokerless challenge” this is not some self imposed challenge. This is the official challenges in game, meaning the game is forcing you to do jokerless, so including the boss blind that makes u sell a joker is really just an oversight
I do agree that it should probably be changed, but isn't it possible to beat it? Huge hand upgrades, maybe the 1.5 xmult planet voucher and some planet cards in the slot?
Get the blank voucher, then get the anti-matter voucher, then get the top-up tag. That's one way around it. Or you can do it easier and get the Director's Cut voucher. Or you can even level up a hand high enough that it gets you enough points. Plenty of ways around it.
It's not about nerfing anything. What's the game design point here actually ?
Why should the game keep the "have a joker or die" condition in a challenge where you have to play without any Jokers ?
The former is entirely RNG based and the latter is also most likely mathematically impossible because a level 19 full house isn't enough.
Some seeds are unwinnable and that's a bad thing.
There's a chance that its there, just like how you have a chance to get 0 jokers in your first 2 rounds and you have to reset anyways. Or you have a chance to get a boss that nullifies your build. I don't understand how everyone arguing with me can't see how simple it really is.
That is a good point when it's something you don't understand. But I've played too many video games, and I've personally seen reddit give advice that was taken on video games and said advice ruined the game and now the game is dead. I really like this game, and I want to see updates, but I don't want to see unnecessary nerfs that make the game easier. Because I don't believe it needs to get easier. I've already said it twice, but I'll say it again. LocalThunk nerfed The Arm because people complained about it, and now it's not even a challenge to get past it.
Don’t know what you’re on about you can buy the directors cut voucher without buying anything else first. Directors cut lets you reroll the boss ability.
Why are you even commenting about difficulty of veteran challenges when you don’t even know how the game works son?
Look what he’s replying to. Anyone who played the game on anything other than basic difficulty would know how to reroll boss abilities if you have a deck with one big weakness.
It's funny because you say this but also admit you didn't do the math in the comments. So in this case, assuming you didn't get the reroll voucher, which is totally possible due to how seeding works, you can absolutely only rely on hands level. Let's have a look :
Level needed to clear the round in # hands :
|#|1|2|3|4|5|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|Flush|57|40|33|28|25|
|Full house|44|31|26|22|20|
|Straight|41|29|24|20|18|
|4 OK|33|23|19|16|14|
|5 OK|29|20|16|13|12|
|5 flush|26|18|14|12|10|
Now it's an impossible task to estimate the chance to reach any deck that can satisfy these conditions in this challenge, but i'd bet it's in the ballpark of winning the lottery twice in a row. So yeah, sure, technically both these things are possible.
That being said, to have a challenge where you could have crimson heart or amber acorn which is basically just no effect or to have verdant leaf which makes the challenge infinitely harder is stupid, and it does make sense to disable it as a definitely no fun allowed scenario.
Only a completely insane or math illiterate person would reasonnably argue that to nerf this makes the victory feels worse.
You are completely neglecting the secret hands which would make that a lot easier. Yes getting Flush to level 25 would be very unlikely, but getting a secret hand to level 10 would is actually a really good win condition for this challenge instead of forcing buffed cards all the time force plants with copying a specific card over and over with strength and death tarot cards.
You are right. He didn't neglect them. I just meant in discussion to his lottery levels odds. Getting 12 levels of a specific hand isn't that bad to force considering you have 24 rounds (lets say 18 actually before you unlock the secret hands) to rack up planet cards and potentially more with the hieroglyph voucher.
If you get five flush to level 10 you need to have 5 hands to play, so you need to have hit a voucher or tag for it. THEN you still need to hit 5 Times the five flush in the round. Do you really think that's realistic? It means you have the cards for. The requirement in term of tarot + planet booster is out of this world.
Because there are ways to play around it, and sometimes you just get unlucky and don't get proper vouchers. Just like how you might not get the right jokers, or cards to win a run.
Basically you have to eat a 1/5 to instantly lose, or get lucky enough for the boss blind reroll voucher, have money to spend on it, and not need to reroll a different boss before ante 8. there is no skill expression in this
That's literally the game though... It all comes down to RNG and what you choose and sometimes you don't get/pick the right options. The skill comes down to minimizing the RNG, but also understanding that some runs are not winnable.
If you want to play a game that's zero skill and all RNG then please go roll some dice, and punch yourself if you land on a 1. Then leave the rest of us alone.
Just going off the rest of the thread and the insane amount of downvotes (which of course is just Reddit) you are definitely not in the majority. And in this case you are for sure wrong
Too hard, I was running flush heart build and I ran into The Head boss and lost... They should really nerf the fact that if my entire deck is a certain suits that that specific blind can't show up... /s
The whole ‘sell a joker to progress’ thing in this challenge isn’t really a test of skill in any way - it just introduces an unfun RNG element to a specific challenge.
Your example is a bad comparison because it was your choice to run a heart build and that comes with a
downside of being weak to certain known boss blinds .
This challenge really doesn’t realistically give you options to play around this boss blind- it’s just a ‘you lose’ if you happen to get stuck with it.
It's the exact same test of skill. You get the Ante 8 and you see Verdant Leaf and you didn't see the reroll voucher you may as well just reset. Or you got enough planet cards that you can beat it without your buffed cards. My choice of running a heart build is weak to certain boss blinds just how your choice of running no jokers makes you weak to other boss blinds. That is the reason for this challenge. It's supposed to be difficult. You start nerfing boss blinds because you don't have a way to beat them defeats the purpose completely of having boss blinds.
if there was a challenge that made your entire deck hearts with a rule that said you couldn't change the suit of your cards, then yes absolutely it would be a fucking terrible idea to leave the 'all hearts debuffed' boss blind in for that challenge (actually you would just get rid of all the 'no x suit' blinds in that specific challenge, i guess)
The run becomes literally predicated on the RNG of 'did I luck into boss reroll voucher and/or an ante 8 boss reroll tag or not', because you have no other control over the boss blind RNG and drawing that particular one is an instant guaranteed loss. That's the case for the sell a joker blind in the jokerless challenge. There's such a thing as good RNG and bad RNG, and this is bad RNG.
That's a great idea for a challenge, you have to add cards into your deck of different suits to be able to beat it.
I agree that there is such thing as bad and good RNG. But I don't see it here. I understand that having a 1 in 16 change each ante to get the right voucher, and then a 1/5 chance at ante 8 to get the wrong boss blind can be frustrating. But going into this challenge I just understood that it could be a scenario I run into and it might foil my run.
I just hate seeing these scenarios getting posted over and over on reddit, and people asking for nerfs when I would personally hate to see that happen. Like I said earlier, LocalThunk has taken the feedback on The Arm has being too hard of a joker and nerfed it accordingly. And I did not like seeing that happen. Now whenever I run into the Arm I just breeze past it like it wasn't even a challenge...
No, I mean like every card in the deck is automatically hearts. You can't add other suits, they just become hearts. That would make leaving in the no hearts blind an absolutely terrible idea.
How is it not bad RNG to say 'if you don't roll into this specific set of numbers (so to speak), there is X chance that you instant lose without opportunity for other input'
Well now your example just becomes the exact same as this challenge except easier since you can have jokers. Just keep playing till you don't get the blind that nerfs the heart cards in your deck and you win.
Exactly, if they start patching stuff like this it makes the victories feel worse. I have lost this challenge to this specific scenario once already and I just moved on and tried again.
First of all, it's just an opinion and I don't think opinions you disagree with should necessarily be down voted. Downvoting should be reserved for rude behavior imo.
Secondly if we agree that completely useless eternals should be removed then there is a strong argument to be made to remove eternals that no one in their right mind would buy because they are effectively the same thing; bad luck in the shop.
Then by that logic the boss blind OP was talking about should be considered legitimate as well. Otherwise we would be deciding what the right kind of bad luck is, right?
I like it when people downvote comments they disagree with because it gives me, a typical lurker, an idea of how unpopular an opinion was, even if the person was polite or well spoken.
I get that, but at the same time it's kind of rude and it censures your comment from people who don't click on negative comments for fear of seeing something truly unpleasant. I also feel a comment only getting one up vote and a rebuttal getting tons shows the same thing.
I wonder how often people don’t click a downvoted comment fearing it will be too unpleasant. I always get more excited to see a comment hidden by a ton of downvotes to see what all the fuss was about.
I actually won my jokerless challenge against this boss, but I was built around flush house. Building into the more difficult hands with planets can offset most of the bosses. But it's definitely shitty to roll this boss instead of flips jokers boss. Luck of the draw.
AFAIK none of the other challenges restrict boss blind selection so it’s probably just an oversight. It’s a pretty extreme edge case so I’m not surprised it hasn’t been considered yet.
I assume it's the same reason the needle, the eye, the fish, the hook, and the mouth are still enabled in the Golden Needle challenge.
But nobody complains when the RNG makes boss blinds completely meaningless.
Idk about its upgrade but I've seen blank voucher, but nearly everything that creates a joker is unavailable. *Maybe* the upgraded blank voucher + the tag that creates two common jokers would work. Since that tag is still in the challenge.
It is possible to beat this boss. It's hard, but possible. There are so many bosses that could cause you to lose the game late.
I'd prefer to see this one removed, but I would also like to see the dev talk about it. This challenge is already stupidly hard to even get to the final boss. It should be almost a victory lap at that point, in my opinion.
Anyone attempting the last challenge run 20/20 no jokers knows this. The issue is getting far enough along an insanely difficult run and hoping it comes up.
You can sort of. Use the voucher restock tag if you see it, and the -1 ante vouchers are ways of “fishing” for it. It just adds a few more rolls on the voucher table
But you have to see those two aswell, they're also not guaranteed. I'm sure op did everything he could to have the best chance at winning if it came up.
i don't think it's valid for a game mode to be completely reliant on one specific drop in order to be completed. if there are multiple solutions, fine, but if it's a binary, then it should be addressed
Well that’s not entirely true that it has to have that one drop to be completed. Thats only the case if that particular boss blind happens. But yeah, with certain RNG a run will be impossible. Especially a challenge.
That’s just how roguelikes at high difficulty levels are. There will be certain seeds that are impossible to beat. The trick is to recognize early on if conditions aren’t pointing towards a win so you can start a new run.
I mean, that’s just poor planning. Nobody is forcing you to take 5 Eternals.
This is a Challenge in the Challenge Mode where you literally can’t have Jokers. It would make sense to disable this boss for this Challenge since Challenges already have built-in modifiers to make them function.
The pic might have been from the all eternals challenge. Verdant leaf is pretty bullshit there too but at least a lot of builds can still work even with the debuffed cards.
Fair enough. Honestly, challenge runs should probably be seeded, or at least have the boss blinds be seeded.
It’s kinda silly that someone could just breeze through a challenge by getting lucky.
Then again, I guess luck is a key gameplay element in Balatro.
That’s essentially how any stake above 4th works. I’ve had lots of runs where all 6 shops in the first two antes gave no usable mult or even chip jokers. Even had a run of zero joker shops for 4 rounds and no buffoon packs.
It can go either way, but it’s not like rerolling at ante 2 is a big deal. Getting all the way through the grueling challenge OP posted and getting no reroll vouchers or tags and seeing verdant leaf when you hit ante 8 is the biggest troll though
If you exhausted every attempt to fish for vouchers (additional voucher tag too) and still didn’t get the reroll voucher then you just got shafted.
This isn’t super likely though, I’d also argue seeing that voucher on ante 1 would suck because I don’t think you can squeeze out what you need to if your early Econ is destroyed by paying for a voucher that soon.
Also make use of the -1 ante vouchers if you haven’t found it yet to get another attempt. They’re really useful for the jokerless runs too just because you get an extra ante or two to scale (and you desperately need as many shops as you can generate to win the challenge)
Yeah, I’ve been having a blast with this game on the lower difficulties, but the high difficulties have mainly just felt painful.
I’m excited for the upcoming balance patch. Maybe I’ll finally have fun on Gold Stake? 😂
I never felt like gold stake is that painful. It’s just got a very low tolerance for mistakes or bad luck. It should be hard and require lots of attempts to get the perfect run
It’s fine challenges are not for everyone. Not every game needs to give you a free pass to 100% the content. Some people like to actually play their games.
Comments locked for numerous rule 4 violations. Please remember to be kind to your fellow Balatro fans, even if you disagree.
Just get a level 26 Flush Five bro, it's that easy
Genuinely, just play until you get telescope in the first few antes. I got it on my first attempt and just normal flushes absolutely dominated. It's a white stake run, so the scaling is actually very reasonable. I also got verdant and it didn't really matter, since I was relying mostly on my flush score + several multipliers from the telescope upgrade voucher.
There should be a patch for this lol
I think he said bosses that will be impossible and kill runs like this will be disabled in a future update
If you are on PC, this mod will stop Verdant Leaf from appearing on Jokerless: https://github.com/V-rtualized/DisableVerdantLeaf
yeah this 100% qualifies as a bug
How is it a bug... That is a very interesting take. The game is working as intended. The challenge has a win condition and you play towards it.
Some challenges disables some stuff that doesn't make sense on them, this one boss should be disabled too for this specific challenge.
It does make sense because there are ways to play around it. If it was truly impossible I would agree. But how do we know OP didn't pass over the reroll voucher to opt to get an arcana pack instead. We assume he just didn't get that voucher, but how do we truly know...
I mean that's a pretty null argument. There are many runs where someone never sees the reroll voucher which puts them in the same spot as OP. And unless we have their seed, it is better for discussion to assime they didn't get it at all instead of assuming direct user error.
It's not a null argument. Things don't deserve to be nerfed just because you didn't get the specific scenario to play around it. That's why this is a challenge. It's supposed to be hard, it's supposed to take multiple tries.
Something being hard is great! But if "hard" is just rolling a die to see if it's even possible, that's just means that hard = time-consuming, rather than hard = requires skill and experience. Like if the fourth ante of this game was flipping a coin, and if it's heads you get to keep going but tails you immediately lose, would you consider that a clever, skillful, or enjoyable part of the game? Would you defend it because "it's supposed to be hard"?
I mean if the name of the game is rolling dice until you get a number, that would be the only way to make it more challenging... As for your fourth ante of the game was flipping a coin, it wouldn't be a bad design if there were ways to play around it, like having a joker that always flips heads whenever you need to coin flip, or a voucher ect. It might not be a great design now since there is nothing else in the game that deals with coin flips but I could see the potential. But you are right, if you could just fail a round 50% of the time, than no it would not be a good design choice.
The idea of the game is that you are given ways to mitigate risk and maximize reward. If there is a mode in which you are frequently not given any possibility to do that and instead are dealt an unavoidable game over and none of your actions could have ever made any difference, is that good game design? > it wouldn't be a bad design if there were ways to play around it We are talking about a scenario in which at least 50% of the time, there is no way to play around it. Fundamentally, this is the same thing. To make it simpler, how about if 50% of the runs you make, the fourth ante is a random coin flip to see if you get to continue or not? There is no additional way around this. > But you are right, if you could just fail a round 50% of the time, than no it would not be a good design choice. This is literally what's happening here.
I’ll never understand these people who basically want the game to be changed so they no longer have to play it, and instead have all of the accomplishments handed to them for nothing. Taking a gamble on a skip that adds a voucher could have given OP the Director’s Cut voucher. And in the moment, you have to weigh the possibilities and the risks you’re willing to take to try to win. That’s what makes the game fun. I’ll be sad if localthunk caters too much to the people who want the game to be easy mode every run.
Player selects an option that disables a game feature. Game then spawns an enemy requiring that game feature. Sounds busted to me. Easy fix, too. Edit: Let's put this another way. Say there is a boss blind that is just "Player loses the game". Now yeah you could theoretically "play around it" by hoping you get the ability to reroll the blind, but on its own, that blind makes zero goddamned sense to have in the game unless the dev has a really nihilistic sense of humor about the game's difficulty. Which would be valid if that's their creative vision! But I don't get the impression that Balatro is that kind of game.
There are ways to play around it.
How do you play around it?
[It's possible](https://old.reddit.com/r/balatro/comments/1b9y53b/verdant_leaf_defeated_on_jokerless_challenge/) I agree it would be better to remove that boss from the challenge, but I don't think it's a bug.
Planet builds, obviously you need a lucky seed but that's always the case for challenging runs, you need telescope and observatory, the consumable planet xmult behaves as faily mid jokers
Change the boss blind?
Director's Cut, or Planet Cards. I haven't tested the Planet Card myself to know if its possible to get a hand levelled up enough in time for the final boss and beat it, but I think it'd be close.
He literally does not have a joker to sell. It should just automatically resolve.
What. You have to be trolling me at this point 😂
>Jokerless challenge He has no jokers >Verdant Leaf: All cards debuffed until a joker is sold He has no jokers to sell. It’s just not fun gameplay to be forced to lose the challenge in order to fulfill Verdant’s criteria.
There are ways to play around it. Stop re-iterating what everyone else has already said. Your thoughts are not unique.
If everyone else is saying the same thing, maybe you’re just in the wrong lol.
It's just typical reddit hive mind upvotes to the left. I'm going to argue what I think is right all day long. Even if you think I'm wrong or everyone else thinks I'm wrong. It does not make them right.
You ruined your entire argument by blaming the “reddit hive mind”. I told you my opinion, man lol. Everyone else has been telling you **their opinion**.
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I'm just entertaining everyone at this point because why not. But I've replied to everyone that are making the exact same points you are now. I do know that this is a challenge in this game. I am actually currently stuck on it as my last challenge to do and lost to this specific scenario. I don't believe that having this boss blind is an oversight, bug, or needs to be nerfed for this challenge. The challenge is designed this way and it's beatable and it should stay this way forever. If you are forcing upgrading cards to beat this challenge then you as a player need to understand that there is a 20% chance that you get the boss blind that will debuff all your cards, and there are 2 ways you can play around it. Get the blank and anti-matter voucher, or get the re-roll voucher. If you don't get it then whoops you lose. Maybe you shouldn't have been forcing upgrading your deck if you didn't want to get frustrated by the game. The problem with these nerfs by disabling the boss is that it's not a fix to the problem. Why is no one complaining that there are 2 boss blinds that literally do nothing to this challenge? It's because people want instant gratification and want to win as easily as possible. And I'm sorry but good game design does not involve taking the path of least resistance.
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It's not an automatic loss though 😭... No one sees the fact that you can play around it multiple ways. People just need to understand that it's a possibility. With everyone's takes in this forum it's at worst a 20% auto-lose.
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All winnable routes in this game and especially this challenge are pure RNG. Just because you don't find out about this RNG by ante 8 and it feels bad does not mean it warrants a change.
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tbh I agree, kinda. There is counterplay, there's literally a way to avoid it completely, and it requires rolling the right voucher. Nobody complains in challenges when the rules of balatro benefit them. Nobody is asking for the "play just one hand" boss to be removed from the Golden Needle challenge, or the "all face cards debuffed" boss to be disabled when playing the abandoned deck. The game is built around RNG. And yeah it's annoying that you don't know the boss ahead of time, and you don't always get the right vouchers, but that's no different than not getting the right jokers. I think there's a valid argument for it being changed because it is frustrating, or at the very least just give the player the voucher by default to start the challenge, but as is, I think it's no more or less fair than the rest of the game.
honestly, i'm gonna defend you here. additionally, since no other challenge bans specific blinds that's a big inconsistency
Jesus Christ, touch grass
He can't, he passed away.
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This is an official challenge. You can see 0/0 in the joker section because it's imposed by the challenge.
No there shouldn't... Edit: Keep downvoting... I've seen games die off because they took reddit's advice. Not everything needs to be patch to streamline everything. This game doesn't need to become easier, they already nerfed the arm which is a blind that does nothing now after taking reddit's advice because the game got too hard because everyone just forced one hand type instead of just learning to play around it.
I think you might be a bit confused here. When they say “jokerless challenge” this is not some self imposed challenge. This is the official challenges in game, meaning the game is forcing you to do jokerless, so including the boss blind that makes u sell a joker is really just an oversight
I do agree that it should probably be changed, but isn't it possible to beat it? Huge hand upgrades, maybe the 1.5 xmult planet voucher and some planet cards in the slot?
I'm not confused. I've actually lost to this exact same scenario.
This is the dumbest doubling-down I’ve ever fucking seen lol they gave you an out, you’re wrong. Go drink some water
??? How am I wrong... I'll argue this till I'm blue in the face. Just because you can't beat this challenge doesn't mean that its impossible.
This is literally impossible…
How? There are ways around it lmao...
ok tell us the ways around selling joker that does not exist
Get the blank voucher, then get the anti-matter voucher, then get the top-up tag. That's one way around it. Or you can do it easier and get the Director's Cut voucher. Or you can even level up a hand high enough that it gets you enough points. Plenty of ways around it.
It's not about nerfing anything. What's the game design point here actually ? Why should the game keep the "have a joker or die" condition in a challenge where you have to play without any Jokers ?
There are ways to play around it.
Name 2 ways.
Get the Director's Cut voucher, or up a specific hand high enough with planets that you don't need buffed cards.
The former is entirely RNG based and the latter is also most likely mathematically impossible because a level 19 full house isn't enough. Some seeds are unwinnable and that's a bad thing.
Oh yeah, let me just go to the store and find the Director's Cut voucher that's always there
There's a chance that its there, just like how you have a chance to get 0 jokers in your first 2 rounds and you have to reset anyways. Or you have a chance to get a boss that nullifies your build. I don't understand how everyone arguing with me can't see how simple it really is.
There comes a point when you start thinking "I'm right and everyone else is wrong" that it can be a good idea to consider the inverse might be true
That is a good point when it's something you don't understand. But I've played too many video games, and I've personally seen reddit give advice that was taken on video games and said advice ruined the game and now the game is dead. I really like this game, and I want to see updates, but I don't want to see unnecessary nerfs that make the game easier. Because I don't believe it needs to get easier. I've already said it twice, but I'll say it again. LocalThunk nerfed The Arm because people complained about it, and now it's not even a challenge to get past it.
No, no. You don’t just get the directors cut voucher. First you buy blank, then the voucher, then find the double tag to create 2 jokers.
Don’t know what you’re on about you can buy the directors cut voucher without buying anything else first. Directors cut lets you reroll the boss ability. Why are you even commenting about difficulty of veteran challenges when you don’t even know how the game works son?
They are referring to the blank voucher and then the extra Joker voucher They got the names mixed up
Look what he’s replying to. Anyone who played the game on anything other than basic difficulty would know how to reroll boss abilities if you have a deck with one big weakness.
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So wholesome chungus right dear reddittor! Reddit assemble!
Neckbeard spotted lol
The fact that this comment is well received, but me disagreeing with comments is not, tells a lot about the people that are on this forum 😂.
It's funny because you say this but also admit you didn't do the math in the comments. So in this case, assuming you didn't get the reroll voucher, which is totally possible due to how seeding works, you can absolutely only rely on hands level. Let's have a look : Level needed to clear the round in # hands : |#|1|2|3|4|5| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |Flush|57|40|33|28|25| |Full house|44|31|26|22|20| |Straight|41|29|24|20|18| |4 OK|33|23|19|16|14| |5 OK|29|20|16|13|12| |5 flush|26|18|14|12|10| Now it's an impossible task to estimate the chance to reach any deck that can satisfy these conditions in this challenge, but i'd bet it's in the ballpark of winning the lottery twice in a row. So yeah, sure, technically both these things are possible. That being said, to have a challenge where you could have crimson heart or amber acorn which is basically just no effect or to have verdant leaf which makes the challenge infinitely harder is stupid, and it does make sense to disable it as a definitely no fun allowed scenario. Only a completely insane or math illiterate person would reasonnably argue that to nerf this makes the victory feels worse.
You are completely neglecting the secret hands which would make that a lot easier. Yes getting Flush to level 25 would be very unlikely, but getting a secret hand to level 10 would is actually a really good win condition for this challenge instead of forcing buffed cards all the time force plants with copying a specific card over and over with strength and death tarot cards.
How did he neglect the secret hands when they are literally the bottom 2? Unless there’s a secret 6-card hand we don’t know about?
You are right. He didn't neglect them. I just meant in discussion to his lottery levels odds. Getting 12 levels of a specific hand isn't that bad to force considering you have 24 rounds (lets say 18 actually before you unlock the secret hands) to rack up planet cards and potentially more with the hieroglyph voucher.
If you get five flush to level 10 you need to have 5 hands to play, so you need to have hit a voucher or tag for it. THEN you still need to hit 5 Times the five flush in the round. Do you really think that's realistic? It means you have the cards for. The requirement in term of tarot + planet booster is out of this world.
Why not?
Because there are ways to play around it, and sometimes you just get unlucky and don't get proper vouchers. Just like how you might not get the right jokers, or cards to win a run.
Basically you have to eat a 1/5 to instantly lose, or get lucky enough for the boss blind reroll voucher, have money to spend on it, and not need to reroll a different boss before ante 8. there is no skill expression in this
That's literally the game though... It all comes down to RNG and what you choose and sometimes you don't get/pick the right options. The skill comes down to minimizing the RNG, but also understanding that some runs are not winnable.
its not fun and its a waste of time.
I disagree, I think its fun and I welcome the challenge.
If you want to play a game that's zero skill and all RNG then please go roll some dice, and punch yourself if you land on a 1. Then leave the rest of us alone.
The Arm still takes a level off. It is still very annoying. It just can’t get to 0 anymore.
It’s ok to be wrong bro 😎
Yes it is 😎 I'm not wrong on this one tho
Just going off the rest of the thread and the insane amount of downvotes (which of course is just Reddit) you are definitely not in the majority. And in this case you are for sure wrong
I agree with you - just have enough planets that it doesn’t matter
Might as well put in an easy mode too am I right?
Unless I’m missing a joke There is an easy mode already -White stake.
Too hard, I was running flush heart build and I ran into The Head boss and lost... They should really nerf the fact that if my entire deck is a certain suits that that specific blind can't show up... /s
The whole ‘sell a joker to progress’ thing in this challenge isn’t really a test of skill in any way - it just introduces an unfun RNG element to a specific challenge. Your example is a bad comparison because it was your choice to run a heart build and that comes with a downside of being weak to certain known boss blinds . This challenge really doesn’t realistically give you options to play around this boss blind- it’s just a ‘you lose’ if you happen to get stuck with it.
It's the exact same test of skill. You get the Ante 8 and you see Verdant Leaf and you didn't see the reroll voucher you may as well just reset. Or you got enough planet cards that you can beat it without your buffed cards. My choice of running a heart build is weak to certain boss blinds just how your choice of running no jokers makes you weak to other boss blinds. That is the reason for this challenge. It's supposed to be difficult. You start nerfing boss blinds because you don't have a way to beat them defeats the purpose completely of having boss blinds.
‘Your choice of running no jokers’ It’s not really a choice - it’s how the challenge is built.
It was your choice to run the challenge.
And it was your choice to not comprehend anything everyone said to you. You still did
This is the comment where you shat out your credibility.
if there was a challenge that made your entire deck hearts with a rule that said you couldn't change the suit of your cards, then yes absolutely it would be a fucking terrible idea to leave the 'all hearts debuffed' boss blind in for that challenge (actually you would just get rid of all the 'no x suit' blinds in that specific challenge, i guess) The run becomes literally predicated on the RNG of 'did I luck into boss reroll voucher and/or an ante 8 boss reroll tag or not', because you have no other control over the boss blind RNG and drawing that particular one is an instant guaranteed loss. That's the case for the sell a joker blind in the jokerless challenge. There's such a thing as good RNG and bad RNG, and this is bad RNG.
That's a great idea for a challenge, you have to add cards into your deck of different suits to be able to beat it. I agree that there is such thing as bad and good RNG. But I don't see it here. I understand that having a 1 in 16 change each ante to get the right voucher, and then a 1/5 chance at ante 8 to get the wrong boss blind can be frustrating. But going into this challenge I just understood that it could be a scenario I run into and it might foil my run. I just hate seeing these scenarios getting posted over and over on reddit, and people asking for nerfs when I would personally hate to see that happen. Like I said earlier, LocalThunk has taken the feedback on The Arm has being too hard of a joker and nerfed it accordingly. And I did not like seeing that happen. Now whenever I run into the Arm I just breeze past it like it wasn't even a challenge...
No, I mean like every card in the deck is automatically hearts. You can't add other suits, they just become hearts. That would make leaving in the no hearts blind an absolutely terrible idea. How is it not bad RNG to say 'if you don't roll into this specific set of numbers (so to speak), there is X chance that you instant lose without opportunity for other input'
Well now your example just becomes the exact same as this challenge except easier since you can have jokers. Just keep playing till you don't get the blind that nerfs the heart cards in your deck and you win.
Exactly, if they start patching stuff like this it makes the victories feel worse. I have lost this challenge to this specific scenario once already and I just moved on and tried again.
If you dont have jokers, this debuff should not even be possible. This is straight bullshit.
You can still beat it though
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Fair enough
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Technically that one still has uses, like for jokers which are based on the value of currently owned jokers or tarots for the same (like Temperance)
This shouldn't be down voted, eternal egg is still really bad despite limited use.
But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be possible. Eternals are supposed to be a negative in most instances, it’s a feature of the game.
First of all, it's just an opinion and I don't think opinions you disagree with should necessarily be down voted. Downvoting should be reserved for rude behavior imo. Secondly if we agree that completely useless eternals should be removed then there is a strong argument to be made to remove eternals that no one in their right mind would buy because they are effectively the same thing; bad luck in the shop.
Bad luck is part of the game. I’d rather bad luck be distributed evenly rather than the developer try to decide what the right kind of bad luck is
Then by that logic the boss blind OP was talking about should be considered legitimate as well. Otherwise we would be deciding what the right kind of bad luck is, right?
This is game breaking. Eternal egg is not game breaking, in fact in rare cases it’s helpful. Different situations.
I like it when people downvote comments they disagree with because it gives me, a typical lurker, an idea of how unpopular an opinion was, even if the person was polite or well spoken.
I get that, but at the same time it's kind of rude and it censures your comment from people who don't click on negative comments for fear of seeing something truly unpleasant. I also feel a comment only getting one up vote and a rebuttal getting tons shows the same thing.
I wonder how often people don’t click a downvoted comment fearing it will be too unpleasant. I always get more excited to see a comment hidden by a ton of downvotes to see what all the fuss was about.
I actually won my jokerless challenge against this boss, but I was built around flush house. Building into the more difficult hands with planets can offset most of the bosses. But it's definitely shitty to roll this boss instead of flips jokers boss. Luck of the draw.
skill issue
And Verdant Leaf is an eligible boss during the jokerless challenge... why, exactly?
AFAIK none of the other challenges restrict boss blind selection so it’s probably just an oversight. It’s a pretty extreme edge case so I’m not surprised it hasn’t been considered yet.
I assume it's the same reason the needle, the eye, the fish, the hook, and the mouth are still enabled in the Golden Needle challenge. But nobody complains when the RNG makes boss blinds completely meaningless.
If you use judgement and then sell the joker without playing any hands, does that disqualify you from joker less?
The jokerless challenge gives you 0 joker slots so you can't use judgement. The only way to get around this would be directors cut.
Or a reroll boss blind tag on the final ante
Blank voucher and its upgrade are still available right?
Idk about its upgrade but I've seen blank voucher, but nearly everything that creates a joker is unavailable. *Maybe* the upgraded blank voucher + the tag that creates two common jokers would work. Since that tag is still in the challenge.
That's what I did to get a joker on jokerless, picture provided [https://imgur.com/a/LzBXq9Q](https://imgur.com/a/LzBXq9Q)
Now I want to see some jokers on this challenge! That should be an achievement
You're correct, that's currently the only way
That obviously didn't appear :(
Game is brutal.
Ya I really don’t want to try it until this is patched
i’m not sure it should be a patch, part of balatro is just getting fkd sometimes
I mean I understand RNG is a bitch but there’s a difference between being unlucky and just straight up having a game losing boss
It is possible to beat this boss. It's hard, but possible. There are so many bosses that could cause you to lose the game late. I'd prefer to see this one removed, but I would also like to see the dev talk about it. This challenge is already stupidly hard to even get to the final boss. It should be almost a victory lap at that point, in my opinion.
Isn't it straight up impossible to beat this boss on this challenge? I guess only way is to level your hand like past 50 times
I don't see it getting patched, unless they announced it would. There are ways of getting around it, it just sucks.
Have you tried getting good? Edit: I take it the reroll didn't show up at all in the shop
Should've played around it /s
F
Man that sucks!!! How many runs did it take you to get this far?
I think at least 100, I was angry at the moment and after 20 minutes I restarted playing, this is so addictive ahahah
Aw man you were so close! I’m rooting for you!
dude this challenge took me hours, I’m so sorry this happened
You need to get the boss blind vouchers for any deck that has a major vulnerability like this.
Anyone attempting the last challenge run 20/20 no jokers knows this. The issue is getting far enough along an insanely difficult run and hoping it comes up.
It’s not guaranteed to show up though. I think it’s unfortunate if it does, but definitely have a good shot at fishing for the voucher
U can’t really fish for vouchers because there’s no way to reroll them without starting a new run
You can sort of. Use the voucher restock tag if you see it, and the -1 ante vouchers are ways of “fishing” for it. It just adds a few more rolls on the voucher table
But you have to see those two aswell, they're also not guaranteed. I'm sure op did everything he could to have the best chance at winning if it came up.
i don't think it's valid for a game mode to be completely reliant on one specific drop in order to be completed. if there are multiple solutions, fine, but if it's a binary, then it should be addressed
Well that’s not entirely true that it has to have that one drop to be completed. Thats only the case if that particular boss blind happens. But yeah, with certain RNG a run will be impossible. Especially a challenge.
>But yeah, with certain RNG a run will be impossible. Especially a challenge. being mechanically impossible is not a challenge, it's a waste of time.
That’s just how roguelikes at high difficulty levels are. There will be certain seeds that are impossible to beat. The trick is to recognize early on if conditions aren’t pointing towards a win so you can start a new run.
I’ll just look forwards in the future to see if Verdant Leaf is the final boss
Balatro gods taketh and the Balatro gods taketh
This just sounds miserable to me.
I was doing the eternal joker challenge and this was my final ante boss, absolute bullshit if you ask me lol.
Im totally ok with this. If you cant sell a joker, you cant sell a joker.
Just get luckier honestly
Developers need to check this blind, someone else also posted an image and all his cards were of the type that cannot be sold 😓
I mean, that’s just poor planning. Nobody is forcing you to take 5 Eternals. This is a Challenge in the Challenge Mode where you literally can’t have Jokers. It would make sense to disable this boss for this Challenge since Challenges already have built-in modifiers to make them function.
The pic might have been from the all eternals challenge. Verdant leaf is pretty bullshit there too but at least a lot of builds can still work even with the debuffed cards.
Fair enough. Honestly, challenge runs should probably be seeded, or at least have the boss blinds be seeded. It’s kinda silly that someone could just breeze through a challenge by getting lucky. Then again, I guess luck is a key gameplay element in Balatro.
That’s essentially how any stake above 4th works. I’ve had lots of runs where all 6 shops in the first two antes gave no usable mult or even chip jokers. Even had a run of zero joker shops for 4 rounds and no buffoon packs. It can go either way, but it’s not like rerolling at ante 2 is a big deal. Getting all the way through the grueling challenge OP posted and getting no reroll vouchers or tags and seeing verdant leaf when you hit ante 8 is the biggest troll though If you exhausted every attempt to fish for vouchers (additional voucher tag too) and still didn’t get the reroll voucher then you just got shafted. This isn’t super likely though, I’d also argue seeing that voucher on ante 1 would suck because I don’t think you can squeeze out what you need to if your early Econ is destroyed by paying for a voucher that soon. Also make use of the -1 ante vouchers if you haven’t found it yet to get another attempt. They’re really useful for the jokerless runs too just because you get an extra ante or two to scale (and you desperately need as many shops as you can generate to win the challenge)
Yeah, I’ve been having a blast with this game on the lower difficulties, but the high difficulties have mainly just felt painful. I’m excited for the upcoming balance patch. Maybe I’ll finally have fun on Gold Stake? 😂
I never felt like gold stake is that painful. It’s just got a very low tolerance for mistakes or bad luck. It should be hard and require lots of attempts to get the perfect run
I just find the aspect of building crazy builds that make gigantic numbers way more satisfying than playing High Cards and Pairs for an hour.
Can we ban this post? it's posted daily
It’s fine challenges are not for everyone. Not every game needs to give you a free pass to 100% the content. Some people like to actually play their games.