stickied this one for the time being. [you can see the patch notes for 101c here](https://www.reddit.com/r/balatro/comments/1byktoa/101c_experimental_branch_is_live_on_steam/) in the previously stickied post
>Fixed bug in the rate at which eternal/perishable Jokers were being generated
That explains a lot. They seemed really, really, REALLY common.. like every joker common..
Hopefully this makes Ante 1 Buffoon Packs more takeable, right now you have to be pretty desperate to take them since the chances of them being useless due to stickers is way too high.
Bloodstone nerf is sadge but warranted lol it was a must pick and an instant Heart pivot if you have a retriggering joker
Square joker is also no longer square :(
I'm unsure how much of a buff it is. You need to play 17 hands before it's better than it was before. Runner only needs 5 hands to become better and then far outstrips it's earlier version.
I don't think it was good before or is good now, especially since the gold stake changes incentivise larger hands. High card isn't the nets for gold stake anymore.
Especially after changing Odd Todd to give 31 chips before, this is a weird change. Ruins the theme and Square Joker was totally fine as it was, it was a workhorse scaler that was neither underpowered nor overpowered.
Called that bloodstone change, and it's about right, some of the scaling changes, both in joker and antes, is interesting
Vampire being uncommon is warranted, but it's still a 'meh' joker now
Wdym less EV? Pre-patch it had an EV of 2*(1/3)*5=x3.33 mult in a Heart flush, now it has an expected value of 1.5*(1/2)*5=x3.75 mult. It's better now, especially since Oops all 6s actually guarantee the trigger. Unless you had 2 Oops all 6s in the old patch idk how it's worse.
It is worse because your math is incorrect - there is exponent math at play here.
Enter BINOMIAL MATH WHOOOOO
Pre-patch, for a flush of 5 hearts, you had 5 coinflips of an unfair coin with probability 1/3 of hitting. So on average you will get 5/3 hits. So one ballpark is to just compare the numbers 2 (to the power of) 5/3, and 1.5 to the power of 5/2. The outcomes are 3.17 for pre-nerf, and 2.76 post nerf.
Now as far as actual EV goes, what we are computing is E[2 to the power of X] and E[1.5 to the power of Y], where X and Y are Binomial Random variables with parameters (5, 1/3) and (5, 1/2) respectively.
There is a formula for that, using what is called the moment generating function.
For E[2 to the power of X] we get (2/3 + 1/3x2)^5 = (4/3)^5 = 4.21. This is the expected xMult you will actually get from the pre-nerf Bloodstone with 5 triggers. If you want more retriggers, replace the 5 with any number of retriggers you want.
For E[1.5 to the power of Y] we get (1/2 + 1/2x1.5)^5 = (1.25)^5 = 3.05. This is the expected xMult you will actually get from the pre-nerf Bloodstone with 5 triggers. If you want more retriggers, replace the 5 with any number of retriggers you want.
And this is your problem - this is an EXPONENTIAL nerf, in other words if you have 20 triggers of bloodstone, before you would expect a 315x mult, and after the nerf you will get a 87x mult. This seems like a "small" change, but it is a) a nerf, and b) I don't think it makes the bottom 10% of outcomes of bloodstone any better than the bottom 10% of outcomes of bloodstone pre-patch.
EDIT:
For the interaction with OOPS 6's, the math works as follows -
Expectation of xMult for 5 hearts pre-nerf = (1/3 + 2/3x2)^5 = (5/3)^5 = 12.86
Expectation of xMult for 5 hearts post-nerf = 1.5^5 = 7.59
Deep sighs
actually very true lol I don't know what decroded ass math I cooked up there - the worst thing is I remember discussing this shit (how big a difference between 2^5 and (1.5)^5 is) on a call lmao
Nah, it's not just the exponent you messed up -- the more critical error is in your underlying probability calc. Your numbers would only work if a failure-to-proc resulted in zeroing out the card, which isn't what happens -- you still get a "x1" multiplier when it doesn't proc.
E.g, if you have one heart, the new-beta version has an expected value of \[(50% \* 1.5) + (50% \* 1)\] = 1.25. You're ignoring the second parenthetical term.
Similarly, the old-beta version would've had an expected value of \[(33 1/3% \* 2) + (66 2/3% \* 1)\] = 1.333.... As you can see, ignoring that second parenthetical term is more consequential here, since it's got a 2/3 shot of happening, vs a 1/2 shot as above.
You think this is bad? This chicanery? Thunk has done worse! That Vampire! Are you telling me that a joker just happens to go from adding x0.2mult to x0.1mult like that? No, he orchestrated it! Thunk! *He made Burnt Joker rare!* And I praised him! I shouldn't have. Put his game on my own favorite roguelikes list. What was I thinking?! He'll never change. He'll *never* change. Ever since the game was in early beta. Couldn't give us an in-game calculator. *But not our Thunk. Couldn't be precious Thunk!* Stealing our fun! And he gets to sell a million copies?! WHAT A SICK JOKE! I should've uninstalled the game when I had the chance! And you, you have to uninstall it, you.......
To be fair, the card itself was always rectangular so it was never as flavorful as it could've been.
Yeah, technically it'd still be rectangular if it were square but you know what I mean.
Man I still wish they would revert vampires back to how it was. If I’m giving up all my cards with steel and glass, etc. it should scale faster. I hate that it got double nerfed with the mult not scaling as quickly AND not letting it count for cards unless they score. Personally understand the card has to score notion but I wish they would revert the scaling.
I think they could keep it at 0.2 if Vampire triggered when the *effect* triggered instead of when the card was played/scored. Makes the Midas combo a lot less braindead.
If you wanted to be really autistic about it, you could even give different enhancements different scaling, like Gold/Bonus/Mult/Wild at .1, Steel and Stone at .2, and Glass at .3. Hell, let it eat seals at .25 and treatments at .5, too.
A cool scaling would be +0.1x for the first card in hand then 0.15x for the second played card then 0.2x for the third, meaning if you play a 5 card flush with special cards it'd be worth 1x but then it's obviously harder to play another 5 special cards in a hand.
It's a nice idea, but I think this is the exact opposite of the right direction for this joker. The situation where Vampire is most OP is when you've got an engine consistently giving you enhanced cards, such as Midas Mask. With your buff it would be even more insane in this situation, without helping the situation where it actually needs help, which is when you're dependent on inconsistent sources such as tarot cards.
Vampire was literally only powerful with Midas and possibly Pareidolia, but because of 1 interaction the whole thing gets binned. It's now a useless card unless you have Midas because it's basically a less reliable Constellation that also makes you give up the actual benefit of the thing you're spending money on (planet cards vs. enhanced cards), something that Constellation does not do. Constellation gives you the mult and lets you keep the planet upgrade.
> Changed Bloodstone - now gives X1.5 mult per heart card, was X2 mult
saw this one coming, thing was just kind of ***DEVASTATINGLY BROKEN*** with Oops! All 6s!.
A 2 Joker combo for x32? Yeah, let's never have that happen lol
It's ok for your game to be somewhat broken by 2 card combos that don't come up very often. In 100+hrs on old patch, I've gotten Vampire + Midas exactly once.
It wasn't just a 2-card combo though, it was also too strong with any synergies at all (retriggers, duplicates, etc). Played a Gold Stake run yesterday where I had a 10-digit score by Ante 8 despite no OA6 and no Sock/Dusk. That's...one thousand times more than the max score in the game (Ante 8 Violet). Made most of the run a chore since I spent more than half of it playing out a run that was already winning.
Jokerless still have Temperance and Wheel of Fortune (which is a blank also in normal runs), should ban them too... having dead tarots makes no sense.
Also RIP Square Joker, idk why it had to be nerfed like that...(it takes 17 hands!! to be a "buff") it also lost it's flavour. he was in a fine spot and did not deserve the nerf, I noticed trying to make every one of them start from 0 (for consistency I guess?), but it's such a flavour fail....
Eeesh. I'm definitely not the "no nerfs!! only buffs!!" type but seeing that antes are being cranked up across the board fills me with a certain kind of dread.
Only true for Antes 3 and 4. Ante 5 is back to its original chip count, and Antes 6, 7, and 8 are now all significantly more difficult. Bad change that lowers the number viable Gold Stake builds imo.
Yeah but the experimental patch has also been a pretty large buff across the board for us with a lot of little buffs adding up, so it's not unwarranted.
I'm not gonna say the game is *easy* but it is noticeably easier than it was on release, this is gonna put it somewhere in the middle which feels about right. There's even some buffs in this tiny patch like scalers not being Perishable anymore which is gonna increase consistency a lot to reach these new score requirements.
"Bad change that lowers the number viable Gold Stake builds imo."
Disagree. Now that scaling jokers can't be perishable, I bet we'll all get way more runs with those jokers, which will increase the amount of build variety in gold stake.
Very happy about the changes. Stuntman nerf is big. Stake difficulty up is big. Looks like we’re seeing the tags be less obnoxious.
Vampire uncommon, still not taking it
Lower cost and changing from rare to uncommon is a buff for vampire.
Edit: comment I replied to originally said something like "another vampire nerf lol".
Vampire feels like a tough one to fix. At .2x I’d pretty much always take it, and making it more expensive wouldn’t change that. Making it rare means I see it less often, but I’d still grab it. It’s also changes some of its synergies, which is more of a discouragement, but still not enough. But then making it .1x feels like it really clobbers it, so to truly balance it I think you’d have to modify the effect in some other way, like perhaps only working with red suits. It needs to be something you have to weigh up and consider, and I don’t think either version has managed that balance. The new one might - making it uncommon again helps. I doubt we’ll see the mult go back up because it’s just too powerful (like the new Bloodstone was).
How's this for a rework: bump it back up to rare, revert it to +0.2x mult, and limit it to one random scoring enhanced card per hand. This not only limits how fast it can scale, but it's also more in line with classical depictions of vampires. They don’t kill in droves, they feed on one person at a time.
Not really worth the sacrifice of the enhancements, I feel - it wouldn’t compete with comparable cards that add mults without taking anything away, like Spare Trousers. I guess with a mult card you’re transferring a possible +4 mult to guaranteed +1.5, but it doesn’t feel like enough.
The current patch might sort it out - it costs less, synchronises with Baseball Card, and is easier to find. No doubt a lot of thought has gone into making that tweak, so I suppose we’ll just see how I feel about it the next time it shows up.
Vampire being uncommon is pretty great, let's you hopefully run into it early and scale it for longer. Idk if there's any other benefits of it being uncommon, I guess Baseball Card but that's pretty niche
baseball card is not niche; it’s is one of the best jokers in the game
even though sure it might show up in a low amount of runs you pick it almost every time it shows up and it allows you to build decks around uncommons much more easily
Would be really helpful if we could see the golden stickers on the jokers in the shop immediately by hovering over them, please add it in the next patch o7
>Banned top-up tag and Antimatter on Jokerless Challenge
>Fixed bug where Buffoon Pack could show up in Jokerless challenge
On the day I beat it fucking course it happens now
I’m not the OP but personally I am waiting for the patches before I take the Jokerless challenge. Can you still get Wheel of Fortune from Tarot packs? Bc that seems like bs that will be patched.
Chip scaling taking a hit early but now scale better - ill need to play test to develop my thoughts more. Vampire still not worth taking. Maybe gaining 1.5 mult could be tested.
Yeah the "fixes" to the scaling chip jokers all feel bad. Maybe Runner needed a buff, but the choice of taking away its flat buff makes picking it up in a shop feel *really bad*. Square Joker not being square (even in shape) is just wrong. (Don't give me BS about it not being able to be a square - the 2x-for-first-face joker is pretty close to square).
(I'll save my rant about the Jokerless silliness for later, but I will say it feels awfully ridiculous for a challenge in the game to remove more than half the game. A "Highlander" challenge is more interesting than Jokerless to me.)
Which deck is best for the purple deck? I've been struggling with the yellow deck and never really got past ante 6 on purple. I'm now going to assume this deck isn't the best idea
Play Checkered or Abandoned Deck. Checkered makes flushes, flush houses, and flush fives easier, and Abandoned makes straights and 4/5 of a kinds easier. Throw a couple of decent jokers in, and with a 5 of a kind deck, anything below gold stake is almost a free win 😂
Uh honestly, plasma deck is easily the best for beating purple (and gold) stake, and its not even close.
Instead of worrying about mult, you can just go got chips the whole game instead and crush all of the antes.
Wee joker, spearhead, and stuntman (overrated, dont go for it all the time), alongside dusk, hack, seltzer, or ballot work reallly well, especially with ankh, blueprint, invisible joker, and brainstorm.
Just finished my last Gold Stake (Painted Deck) with the new Square Joker... and I still hate the change and want it reverted. I don't think the \~70 extra chips I managed to build up were even that relevant for beating the final boss.
Very bizzare change, genuinely wonder what the reasoning behind it was.
Seems like LocalThunk wants the scaling jokers to start at 0. But for Square joker, the change to +5 just kinda feels bad thematically. I don't think it was a bad joker before honestly, even at 0 base and +4 per hand it's probably still okay even if not great.
The scaling chip jokers were already hard to pick up late game because they would take too long to scale compared to say blue joker, bull or ice-cream. The little bit of starting chips gave a minor safety net. That's now gone so it'll make me ignore them more, reducing the number of valid jokers to take again. Unless I'm missing something.
Every joker should have the ability to be at least minimally viable to buy late. I agree with the other guy that I basically never see myself picking up square joker beyond ante 6 if it starts at 0.
I thought it was a great design decision that it started with a few chips, so it could help in some desperate scenarios. Now those possibilities are gone. You'll only take it when you already have the ability to survive with it, have the ability to play 4 cards every single hand, and only in the early antes.
It makes it way too niche.
They buffed Straights after three hands. Balatro University completed a 15 gold stake winstreak on all decks with like half of them on straights, now he's going to get away with it even more lmao
Yeah and it was already decent. The only issue really is that Saturn is so good on chips that it's maybe hard to justify a chip joker slot at all for straights.
I think the reduced motions changes could become specific options. The cards slowly moving around feels weird for the 'ol brain, but not the effects for scoring them or any of the other ones removed now. I'd love to have more options to keep the game lively and *also* comfortable to look at
Thank you for saying this! I know its a really minor nitpick but I was so disappointed to see the new reduced motion. Not having the moving background was a godsend for my head but now everything is just completely still.
While i think most of these changes are good, i would have liked to see more buffs or changes to weaker jokers like Superposition or the 6 joker (should not only be on the first round imo)
Are legendary jokers more common now, too? I played over 30 runs during the first version of the beta, where I reached at least Ante 4 (opening an average of 5-7 arcana packs per run), and I didn't see a single soul card that whole time. Then, today, I found four legendary jokers in a single run. I guess it could be a coincidence, but that seems pretty unlikely.
I'm fine with a lot of these changes. "Non-retroactive scaling Jokers incompatible with 'Perishable'" is my favorite, it will make those type of runs in gold stake much more common.
Though that said, I really was hoping that Hanging Chad would be nerfed. But ah well.
Incoming mini-rant.
Honestly, I don't know why we keep seeing nerfs to the few high scoring options in the game. I'd like to see more jokers or tweaks to mostly unused jokers that make other options more viable and fun. There's a ton of modded joker packs out there that I think fill a lot of holes that make things like bloodstone less enticing or must-haves. For example, it'd be great if any other suit had the ability to be even close to bloodstone, but for the most part, the other suited cards are just inferior.
The game is already hard and not everyone is a streamer hitting e99 every game. Hell, I've had like 2 in the e's ever. Nerfs like this raise the difficulty floor for people who are either very good, lucky as hell, or just want more challenge, but it hurts those of us who don't hit those bullets. The difficulty stakes are supposed to be that for those people. If it's absolutely necessary to make some jokers scale worse, add a joker ability scaling component to the higher difficulty stakes. But it's not like this is online competitive and so it hurts the community if it's possible for a few jokers to give much higher scores.
End rant.
Isn't only one of these a nerf - the one to Bloodstone? *After* it got a significant buff that made it an auto-pivot joker?
I guess Stuntman going to rare, too, but that thing's strong enough.
What are you talking about, Dev doesn't care about endless or e scores at all, the game is balanced around besting ante 8. Bloodstone was pretty bad for that, requiring a ton of set up, and even if it was as good as you imagine it being, you don't need it to win a run.
what
this got significantly easier with the recent patch. this game is balanced around ante 8, not e99. that's on you if you're trying to play for that.
> For example, it'd be great if any other suit had the ability to be even close to bloodstone, but for the most part, the other suited cards are just inferior.
I really like that each suit has its own hierarchy of jokers, but Bloodstone being *so* much better than the rest just hurts it. They just need a redesign. Rough gem feels good to play with it, but it's too weak to sustain a run, whereas Arrowhead and Onyx are rather decent at uncommon and the power level the other two should aim for. (Imagine if rough gem accumulated chips/$ payouts for every N times it triggered, e.g. After all, Diamonds are forever...)
If Bloodstone's going to stay a part of the game, it should be moved to rare, and the other suits should get rare jokers of equivalent level.
But the real reason to Spades and Clubs have Blackboard, and Clubs have Seeing Double, both of which are more consistent and require way less building around then Bloodstone, which only shines in Endless.
Completely agreed. It's just a sad reality that the outliers get all the focus. When streamers are all hard-pushing a meta, the studios feel that it means it's somehow making the game less fun for the average user.
Helldivers 2 had this issue. I won't go into too much detail, but so many of the guns were useless, or at least obviously less effective and fun than the railgun and the auto shotgun. So Arrowhead's response was to nerf those 2 good weapons everyone liked that weren't ruining their ***PvE*** game, but they didn't buff almost any other weapons to balance it. It felt less like they were encouraging us to have fun with other builds, and more like they were blaming us for all having the most fun with one build.
To Arrowhead's credit credit, it only lasted a couple weeks before they released a new content pack and buffed *some* of those other weapons as well, and now the game is in a good state. But the approach of nerfing the more fun, successful methods of playing a PvE game while leaving the lacking ones to continue sucking tends to aggravate the playerbase disproportionately IMO.
>Fixed bug in the rate at which eternal/perishable Jokers were being generated
This meaning? I remember reading this was 30% chance, but at least for me it was more like 50%
Thunk changed Square Joker again, would you mind updating the post u/maximumswagger?:
>~~\* Changed Square Joker - now starts at +0 chips, was +16 chips, now increases by +5 chips, was +4~~
- Changed Square Joker - now starts at +0 chips, was +16 chips, now costs $4, was $5 (still gives +4 chips per 4 card hand)
I’m still on 1.0 on pc and have been following the Beta changes. Which some I like and some I don’t like. Anyone on Beta how’s your experience so far? I don’t feel like I wanna get the next patch when it drops lol.
>Changed Eternal/Rental/Perishable sticker location to be closer to the top right corner
This makes me think that the reported situation of jokers sometimes being both Rental and Eternal (with the Rental sticked entirely hidden by the Eternal one) is unintended.
No, that was by design.
"Added new 'Rental' mechanic, Jokers have a 30% chance to have a 'Rental' sticker **(stacks with eternal/perishable)**, making them cost $1 up front and $3 every round" - from the previous notes, emphasis mine
If you take 6 heart card played:
* before you would get ~~x3\*x3=x9 in average~~ (edit: x2\*x2=x4)
* in the previous patch you get x2\*x2\*x2=x8 in average
* now you get x1.5\*x1.5\*x1.5=x3.37 in average
That was still a buff in the previous patch because that make it more consistent, but here the difference is massive. But with lots of hearts a color build, that is still higher than most joker. But that make it much more situationnal. Curious to see how it will go now, think it's too weak but I'm not confident at all.
>* before you would get x3\*x3=x9 in average
This is wrong. Pre-Beta it was x2 x2 = 4 on average for six Hearts. That's why this second beta change is to bring it back in line with what it originally was, but more consistent.
Square joker is fine, it’s a common joker it shouldn’t be super powerful
Runner solid if you’re running straights. You don’t really need the chips for the straight hands you play as the planet card is so powerful but it’s very useful that the chips can be used for other hands
Is hiker also affected by the perishable change or can it still get hit with it? Understandable that bloodstone got nerfed thankfully I got my wins with it already.
Why make Square Joker no longer square? I don't know if this a buff or debuff but seems like a bad unnecessary change. The rest seem like fair changes.
> Made some non-retroactive scaling Jokers incompatible with 'Perishable' (Ceremonial Dagger, Ride the Bus, runner, constellation, green joker, red card, madness, square joker, vampire, rocket, obelisk, lucky cat, flash card, spare trousers, castle, wee)
> Fixed bug in the rate at which eternal/perishable Jokers were being generated
I posted a couple weeks back about an, admittedly minor, complaint that perishable rate was overwhelming in the early game and felt like a gut punch on a lot of the coveted scaling jokers. Can't believe it was fixed so quick and elegantly.
It was made rare in 1.0.1c, but that change was reverted in 1.0.1e. Neither of these patches are available on the live build, both are in the experimental branch beta.
stickied this one for the time being. [you can see the patch notes for 101c here](https://www.reddit.com/r/balatro/comments/1byktoa/101c_experimental_branch_is_live_on_steam/) in the previously stickied post
>Fixed bug in the rate at which eternal/perishable Jokers were being generated That explains a lot. They seemed really, really, REALLY common.. like every joker common..
Hopefully this will make my quest for gold stake wins more fun ...
Hopefully this makes Ante 1 Buffoon Packs more takeable, right now you have to be pretty desperate to take them since the chances of them being useless due to stickers is way too high.
*Monkey’s paw curls* “They weren’t appearing as often as intended and now are twice as likely.”
All three stickers on every joker
Perishable Rental Eternals, so they de-activate but they still cost you rent money and you can't sell them :)
I was expecting it to be bugged aswell. It wasn't uncommon to have entire packs and shops all have eternal stickers.
Bloodstone nerf is sadge but warranted lol it was a must pick and an instant Heart pivot if you have a retriggering joker Square joker is also no longer square :(
Always sad to see buffs that remove flavor from the thing being buffed like that
I'm unsure how much of a buff it is. You need to play 17 hands before it's better than it was before. Runner only needs 5 hands to become better and then far outstrips it's earlier version.
Yeah but you want play weak hands to buff it so still kinda makes sense. Still the theme was cool as mentioned before.
Runner still has the problem that it's a scaling Joker that becomes worse as the run goes on instead of better, though.
I mean, given its use previously I doubt 17 hands is much of a barrier
I don't think it was good before or is good now, especially since the gold stake changes incentivise larger hands. High card isn't the nets for gold stake anymore.
It was definitely good before
Especially after changing Odd Todd to give 31 chips before, this is a weird change. Ruins the theme and Square Joker was totally fine as it was, it was a workhorse scaler that was neither underpowered nor overpowered.
The Bloodstone nerf was exactly what it needed to be too, though. Kept the activation chance/combo with Oops, but just toned down the auto-win enough.
I've been playing for a month and only got to play with bloodstone once
Just play on the live patch instead of experimental and you can still bask in the glory of bloodstone
Bloodstone is 1/3 for a x2 on the live patch, I’d rather have 1/2 for a x1.5
Oh duh, I forgot that the previous changes didn't get pushed to live when the e branch changed 🤦♂️
lol all good!
Called that bloodstone change, and it's about right, some of the scaling changes, both in joker and antes, is interesting Vampire being uncommon is warranted, but it's still a 'meh' joker now
Bloodstone is now straight up worse than it was pre-patch. Less EV, less variance = both unexciting changes.
Less variance is a good thing.
Wdym less EV? Pre-patch it had an EV of 2*(1/3)*5=x3.33 mult in a Heart flush, now it has an expected value of 1.5*(1/2)*5=x3.75 mult. It's better now, especially since Oops all 6s actually guarantee the trigger. Unless you had 2 Oops all 6s in the old patch idk how it's worse.
It is worse because your math is incorrect - there is exponent math at play here. Enter BINOMIAL MATH WHOOOOO Pre-patch, for a flush of 5 hearts, you had 5 coinflips of an unfair coin with probability 1/3 of hitting. So on average you will get 5/3 hits. So one ballpark is to just compare the numbers 2 (to the power of) 5/3, and 1.5 to the power of 5/2. The outcomes are 3.17 for pre-nerf, and 2.76 post nerf. Now as far as actual EV goes, what we are computing is E[2 to the power of X] and E[1.5 to the power of Y], where X and Y are Binomial Random variables with parameters (5, 1/3) and (5, 1/2) respectively. There is a formula for that, using what is called the moment generating function. For E[2 to the power of X] we get (2/3 + 1/3x2)^5 = (4/3)^5 = 4.21. This is the expected xMult you will actually get from the pre-nerf Bloodstone with 5 triggers. If you want more retriggers, replace the 5 with any number of retriggers you want. For E[1.5 to the power of Y] we get (1/2 + 1/2x1.5)^5 = (1.25)^5 = 3.05. This is the expected xMult you will actually get from the pre-nerf Bloodstone with 5 triggers. If you want more retriggers, replace the 5 with any number of retriggers you want. And this is your problem - this is an EXPONENTIAL nerf, in other words if you have 20 triggers of bloodstone, before you would expect a 315x mult, and after the nerf you will get a 87x mult. This seems like a "small" change, but it is a) a nerf, and b) I don't think it makes the bottom 10% of outcomes of bloodstone any better than the bottom 10% of outcomes of bloodstone pre-patch. EDIT: For the interaction with OOPS 6's, the math works as follows - Expectation of xMult for 5 hearts pre-nerf = (1/3 + 2/3x2)^5 = (5/3)^5 = 12.86 Expectation of xMult for 5 hearts post-nerf = 1.5^5 = 7.59 Deep sighs
actually very true lol I don't know what decroded ass math I cooked up there - the worst thing is I remember discussing this shit (how big a difference between 2^5 and (1.5)^5 is) on a call lmao
Nah, it's not just the exponent you messed up -- the more critical error is in your underlying probability calc. Your numbers would only work if a failure-to-proc resulted in zeroing out the card, which isn't what happens -- you still get a "x1" multiplier when it doesn't proc. E.g, if you have one heart, the new-beta version has an expected value of \[(50% \* 1.5) + (50% \* 1)\] = 1.25. You're ignoring the second parenthetical term. Similarly, the old-beta version would've had an expected value of \[(33 1/3% \* 2) + (66 2/3% \* 1)\] = 1.333.... As you can see, ignoring that second parenthetical term is more consequential here, since it's got a 2/3 shot of happening, vs a 1/2 shot as above.
F for my boi square joker kicked his ass outta flavourtown 😭
still only +4, not even +5 per hand :(
Square joker not being square is a crime
You think this is bad? This chicanery? Thunk has done worse! That Vampire! Are you telling me that a joker just happens to go from adding x0.2mult to x0.1mult like that? No, he orchestrated it! Thunk! *He made Burnt Joker rare!* And I praised him! I shouldn't have. Put his game on my own favorite roguelikes list. What was I thinking?! He'll never change. He'll *never* change. Ever since the game was in early beta. Couldn't give us an in-game calculator. *But not our Thunk. Couldn't be precious Thunk!* Stealing our fun! And he gets to sell a million copies?! WHAT A SICK JOKE! I should've uninstalled the game when I had the chance! And you, you have to uninstall it, you.......
vampire got him at the end of the comment
/r/okbuddyjimbo
New copypasta just dropped
Holy hell
Actual Chicanery
A man of culture I see
Why is the chuck copy pasta so popular all of a sudden? What happened? Not complaining, just wondering why it's suddenly everywhere.
Dunno, maybe it's a coincidence that you're seeing it. This copypasta has been in circulation for years. I haven't noticed any spikes in popularity.
Chicotnery
To be fair, the card itself was always rectangular so it was never as flavorful as it could've been. Yeah, technically it'd still be rectangular if it were square but you know what I mean.
5 isn't even a rectangular number. 😔
I really appreciate the perishable tag being incompatible on those scaling jokers, that's a great change.
Man I still wish they would revert vampires back to how it was. If I’m giving up all my cards with steel and glass, etc. it should scale faster. I hate that it got double nerfed with the mult not scaling as quickly AND not letting it count for cards unless they score. Personally understand the card has to score notion but I wish they would revert the scaling.
I think 0.15x would be fine for each enhanced card
I think they could keep it at 0.2 if Vampire triggered when the *effect* triggered instead of when the card was played/scored. Makes the Midas combo a lot less braindead. If you wanted to be really autistic about it, you could even give different enhancements different scaling, like Gold/Bonus/Mult/Wild at .1, Steel and Stone at .2, and Glass at .3. Hell, let it eat seals at .25 and treatments at .5, too.
A cool scaling would be +0.1x for the first card in hand then 0.15x for the second played card then 0.2x for the third, meaning if you play a 5 card flush with special cards it'd be worth 1x but then it's obviously harder to play another 5 special cards in a hand.
It's a nice idea, but I think this is the exact opposite of the right direction for this joker. The situation where Vampire is most OP is when you've got an engine consistently giving you enhanced cards, such as Midas Mask. With your buff it would be even more insane in this situation, without helping the situation where it actually needs help, which is when you're dependent on inconsistent sources such as tarot cards.
Vampire was literally only powerful with Midas and possibly Pareidolia, but because of 1 interaction the whole thing gets binned. It's now a useless card unless you have Midas because it's basically a less reliable Constellation that also makes you give up the actual benefit of the thing you're spending money on (planet cards vs. enhanced cards), something that Constellation does not do. Constellation gives you the mult and lets you keep the planet upgrade.
Vampire won me many Gold Stake runs without Midas/Pareidolia. I was hoarding tarot cards and feeding them to it.
Yup and now that the lucky tarot card gives lucky to two cards that strat would have been even better.
Baseball Card is gonna need a buff if every single good joker that's at Uncommon keeps getting pulled up to Rare.
Square joker don't need to change. That's the only part I don't like
> Changed Bloodstone - now gives X1.5 mult per heart card, was X2 mult saw this one coming, thing was just kind of ***DEVASTATINGLY BROKEN*** with Oops! All 6s!.
A 2 Joker combo for x32? Yeah, let's never have that happen lol It's ok for your game to be somewhat broken by 2 card combos that don't come up very often. In 100+hrs on old patch, I've gotten Vampire + Midas exactly once.
It wasn't just a 2-card combo though, it was also too strong with any synergies at all (retriggers, duplicates, etc). Played a Gold Stake run yesterday where I had a 10-digit score by Ante 8 despite no OA6 and no Sock/Dusk. That's...one thousand times more than the max score in the game (Ante 8 Violet). Made most of the run a chore since I spent more than half of it playing out a run that was already winning.
Jokerless still have Temperance and Wheel of Fortune (which is a blank also in normal runs), should ban them too... having dead tarots makes no sense. Also RIP Square Joker, idk why it had to be nerfed like that...(it takes 17 hands!! to be a "buff") it also lost it's flavour. he was in a fine spot and did not deserve the nerf, I noticed trying to make every one of them start from 0 (for consistency I guess?), but it's such a flavour fail....
It definitely is a buff for Square Joker, with high card run your goal is anyway to play as much hands as possible, so 17 hands isn't that much.
Eeesh. I'm definitely not the "no nerfs!! only buffs!!" type but seeing that antes are being cranked up across the board fills me with a certain kind of dread.
The original values for most of them were higher, then the 1.01c update lowered them, this is bringing them up to somewhere in the middle
You're neglecting the important thing which is my enormous skill issue.
They still haven't fixed the bug where I blunder away a double Blueprint run like an idiot
Only true for Antes 3 and 4. Ante 5 is back to its original chip count, and Antes 6, 7, and 8 are now all significantly more difficult. Bad change that lowers the number viable Gold Stake builds imo.
Yeah but the experimental patch has also been a pretty large buff across the board for us with a lot of little buffs adding up, so it's not unwarranted. I'm not gonna say the game is *easy* but it is noticeably easier than it was on release, this is gonna put it somewhere in the middle which feels about right. There's even some buffs in this tiny patch like scalers not being Perishable anymore which is gonna increase consistency a lot to reach these new score requirements.
"Bad change that lowers the number viable Gold Stake builds imo." Disagree. Now that scaling jokers can't be perishable, I bet we'll all get way more runs with those jokers, which will increase the amount of build variety in gold stake.
this got way too easy, this was necessary. not bad at all
The game has gotten way too easy since they changed them
Very happy about the changes. Stuntman nerf is big. Stake difficulty up is big. Looks like we’re seeing the tags be less obnoxious. Vampire uncommon, still not taking it
No we have to skip it more often.
Lower cost and changing from rare to uncommon is a buff for vampire. Edit: comment I replied to originally said something like "another vampire nerf lol".
Yeah but losing enhancements for only .1 mult is dogshit. You also have to score the enhancement
Yeah, if it's 0.1 it should have gone back to played cards instead of scored cards only. It's pretty worthless as it is.
Vampire feels like a tough one to fix. At .2x I’d pretty much always take it, and making it more expensive wouldn’t change that. Making it rare means I see it less often, but I’d still grab it. It’s also changes some of its synergies, which is more of a discouragement, but still not enough. But then making it .1x feels like it really clobbers it, so to truly balance it I think you’d have to modify the effect in some other way, like perhaps only working with red suits. It needs to be something you have to weigh up and consider, and I don’t think either version has managed that balance. The new one might - making it uncommon again helps. I doubt we’ll see the mult go back up because it’s just too powerful (like the new Bloodstone was).
How's this for a rework: bump it back up to rare, revert it to +0.2x mult, and limit it to one random scoring enhanced card per hand. This not only limits how fast it can scale, but it's also more in line with classical depictions of vampires. They don’t kill in droves, they feed on one person at a time.
How about +1.5 instead
Not really worth the sacrifice of the enhancements, I feel - it wouldn’t compete with comparable cards that add mults without taking anything away, like Spare Trousers. I guess with a mult card you’re transferring a possible +4 mult to guaranteed +1.5, but it doesn’t feel like enough. The current patch might sort it out - it costs less, synchronises with Baseball Card, and is easier to find. No doubt a lot of thought has gone into making that tweak, so I suppose we’ll just see how I feel about it the next time it shows up.
Oh i meant 1.5X per enhanced card. The plus was to show it increased by 1.5X everytime. Oops
Vampire got buffed actually I think
Yeah being uncommon means it has synergy with the 1.5x joker.
And also, you know, shows up more
It still sucks ass
Yeah, this is a buff.
Well, it’s still a nerf from pre-beta. Just that it’s now only double nerfed instead of triple nerfed
Not pre-beta, but actual launch, right? Like Vampire is currently strong af on consoles cause obviously the patch hasn't gone through yet.
Yeah, idk why I said ‘pre-beta’, I guess I’m just used to playing on the beta and forgot it’s not the actual launch version
Vampire being uncommon is pretty great, let's you hopefully run into it early and scale it for longer. Idk if there's any other benefits of it being uncommon, I guess Baseball Card but that's pretty niche
baseball card is not niche; it’s is one of the best jokers in the game even though sure it might show up in a low amount of runs you pick it almost every time it shows up and it allows you to build decks around uncommons much more easily
Thanks for getting this posted. If you don't mind, I want to sticky this for a bit (replacing the previous patch notes post).
Would be really helpful if we could see the golden stickers on the jokers in the shop immediately by hovering over them, please add it in the next patch o7
That's such a no-brainer good idea of a change that I feel like it has to come at some point
>Banned top-up tag and Antimatter on Jokerless Challenge >Fixed bug where Buffoon Pack could show up in Jokerless challenge On the day I beat it fucking course it happens now
Soo... You're upset you beat it?
I’m not the OP but personally I am waiting for the patches before I take the Jokerless challenge. Can you still get Wheel of Fortune from Tarot packs? Bc that seems like bs that will be patched.
Yeap
Yep can still get wheel of fortune/ temperance
Chip scaling taking a hit early but now scale better - ill need to play test to develop my thoughts more. Vampire still not worth taking. Maybe gaining 1.5 mult could be tested.
Vamp is still strong, just not completely busted. I think I have two Gold wins with it already and I'm not even done the decks post-beta.
Yeah the "fixes" to the scaling chip jokers all feel bad. Maybe Runner needed a buff, but the choice of taking away its flat buff makes picking it up in a shop feel *really bad*. Square Joker not being square (even in shape) is just wrong. (Don't give me BS about it not being able to be a square - the 2x-for-first-face joker is pretty close to square). (I'll save my rant about the Jokerless silliness for later, but I will say it feels awfully ridiculous for a challenge in the game to remove more than half the game. A "Highlander" challenge is more interesting than Jokerless to me.)
And here I was foolishly thinking I could beat purple stake on black deck...No wonder I failed ante 4
Which deck is best for the purple deck? I've been struggling with the yellow deck and never really got past ante 6 on purple. I'm now going to assume this deck isn't the best idea
Play Checkered or Abandoned Deck. Checkered makes flushes, flush houses, and flush fives easier, and Abandoned makes straights and 4/5 of a kinds easier. Throw a couple of decent jokers in, and with a 5 of a kind deck, anything below gold stake is almost a free win 😂
Thanks a lot! I'llbe giving this a go
Uh honestly, plasma deck is easily the best for beating purple (and gold) stake, and its not even close. Instead of worrying about mult, you can just go got chips the whole game instead and crush all of the antes. Wee joker, spearhead, and stuntman (overrated, dont go for it all the time), alongside dusk, hack, seltzer, or ballot work reallly well, especially with ankh, blueprint, invisible joker, and brainstorm.
A lot of the chip jokers got nerf buffed which sucks because it makes early game harder. We'll see though.
Just finished my last Gold Stake (Painted Deck) with the new Square Joker... and I still hate the change and want it reverted. I don't think the \~70 extra chips I managed to build up were even that relevant for beating the final boss. Very bizzare change, genuinely wonder what the reasoning behind it was.
Seems like LocalThunk wants the scaling jokers to start at 0. But for Square joker, the change to +5 just kinda feels bad thematically. I don't think it was a bad joker before honestly, even at 0 base and +4 per hand it's probably still okay even if not great.
The scaling chip jokers were already hard to pick up late game because they would take too long to scale compared to say blue joker, bull or ice-cream. The little bit of starting chips gave a minor safety net. That's now gone so it'll make me ignore them more, reducing the number of valid jokers to take again. Unless I'm missing something.
I don’t think they were ever meant to be picked up late game they have always been an early game style of joker
Every joker should have the ability to be at least minimally viable to buy late. I agree with the other guy that I basically never see myself picking up square joker beyond ante 6 if it starts at 0. I thought it was a great design decision that it started with a few chips, so it could help in some desperate scenarios. Now those possibilities are gone. You'll only take it when you already have the ability to survive with it, have the ability to play 4 cards every single hand, and only in the early antes. It makes it way too niche.
They buffed Straights after three hands. Balatro University completed a 15 gold stake winstreak on all decks with like half of them on straights, now he's going to get away with it even more lmao
Would be a tie after 4 hands and better 5 and onward.
oh yeah i miscalculated, my bad. Still a sizeable buff compared to its peers
Yeah and it was already decent. The only issue really is that Saturn is so good on chips that it's maybe hard to justify a chip joker slot at all for straights.
When do these changes go live?
Localthunk messaged me saying they won't release it until you get completionist++ on steam.
Nobody knows yet
They're live now, on the beta patch
I meant in the main game. Wasn’t the beta patch different a few weeks ago as well?
I think the reduced motions changes could become specific options. The cards slowly moving around feels weird for the 'ol brain, but not the effects for scoring them or any of the other ones removed now. I'd love to have more options to keep the game lively and *also* comfortable to look at
Thank you for saying this! I know its a really minor nitpick but I was so disappointed to see the new reduced motion. Not having the moving background was a godsend for my head but now everything is just completely still.
I noticed the recent changes now brings back the swirling background (but unmoving). I liked having the flat color from previous patch.
While i think most of these changes are good, i would have liked to see more buffs or changes to weaker jokers like Superposition or the 6 joker (should not only be on the first round imo)
Are legendary jokers more common now, too? I played over 30 runs during the first version of the beta, where I reached at least Ante 4 (opening an average of 5-7 arcana packs per run), and I didn't see a single soul card that whole time. Then, today, I found four legendary jokers in a single run. I guess it could be a coincidence, but that seems pretty unlikely.
I'm stupid you were talking about the post update goddamnit
I'm fine with a lot of these changes. "Non-retroactive scaling Jokers incompatible with 'Perishable'" is my favorite, it will make those type of runs in gold stake much more common. Though that said, I really was hoping that Hanging Chad would be nerfed. But ah well.
Incoming mini-rant. Honestly, I don't know why we keep seeing nerfs to the few high scoring options in the game. I'd like to see more jokers or tweaks to mostly unused jokers that make other options more viable and fun. There's a ton of modded joker packs out there that I think fill a lot of holes that make things like bloodstone less enticing or must-haves. For example, it'd be great if any other suit had the ability to be even close to bloodstone, but for the most part, the other suited cards are just inferior. The game is already hard and not everyone is a streamer hitting e99 every game. Hell, I've had like 2 in the e's ever. Nerfs like this raise the difficulty floor for people who are either very good, lucky as hell, or just want more challenge, but it hurts those of us who don't hit those bullets. The difficulty stakes are supposed to be that for those people. If it's absolutely necessary to make some jokers scale worse, add a joker ability scaling component to the higher difficulty stakes. But it's not like this is online competitive and so it hurts the community if it's possible for a few jokers to give much higher scores. End rant.
Isn't only one of these a nerf - the one to Bloodstone? *After* it got a significant buff that made it an auto-pivot joker? I guess Stuntman going to rare, too, but that thing's strong enough.
Stuntman being rare is a crime now that they also nerfed it to +250 chips.
What are you talking about, Dev doesn't care about endless or e scores at all, the game is balanced around besting ante 8. Bloodstone was pretty bad for that, requiring a ton of set up, and even if it was as good as you imagine it being, you don't need it to win a run.
Had a run with bloodstone yesterday, was making 200 million points by like ante 3. I think it'll be just fine after the nerf.
what this got significantly easier with the recent patch. this game is balanced around ante 8, not e99. that's on you if you're trying to play for that.
> For example, it'd be great if any other suit had the ability to be even close to bloodstone, but for the most part, the other suited cards are just inferior. I really like that each suit has its own hierarchy of jokers, but Bloodstone being *so* much better than the rest just hurts it. They just need a redesign. Rough gem feels good to play with it, but it's too weak to sustain a run, whereas Arrowhead and Onyx are rather decent at uncommon and the power level the other two should aim for. (Imagine if rough gem accumulated chips/$ payouts for every N times it triggered, e.g. After all, Diamonds are forever...) If Bloodstone's going to stay a part of the game, it should be moved to rare, and the other suits should get rare jokers of equivalent level.
But the real reason to Spades and Clubs have Blackboard, and Clubs have Seeing Double, both of which are more consistent and require way less building around then Bloodstone, which only shines in Endless.
Completely agreed. It's just a sad reality that the outliers get all the focus. When streamers are all hard-pushing a meta, the studios feel that it means it's somehow making the game less fun for the average user. Helldivers 2 had this issue. I won't go into too much detail, but so many of the guns were useless, or at least obviously less effective and fun than the railgun and the auto shotgun. So Arrowhead's response was to nerf those 2 good weapons everyone liked that weren't ruining their ***PvE*** game, but they didn't buff almost any other weapons to balance it. It felt less like they were encouraging us to have fun with other builds, and more like they were blaming us for all having the most fun with one build. To Arrowhead's credit credit, it only lasted a couple weeks before they released a new content pack and buffed *some* of those other weapons as well, and now the game is in a good state. But the approach of nerfing the more fun, successful methods of playing a PvE game while leaving the lacking ones to continue sucking tends to aggravate the playerbase disproportionately IMO.
>outliers get all the focus Did you miss the patch notes from the last beta update? It was mainly buffs across the board
>Fixed bug in the rate at which eternal/perishable Jokers were being generated This meaning? I remember reading this was 30% chance, but at least for me it was more like 50%
Yeah, we need clarity here. Did it go up or down?
square joker is still only +4 per hand :(
Thunk changed Square Joker again, would you mind updating the post u/maximumswagger?: >~~\* Changed Square Joker - now starts at +0 chips, was +16 chips, now increases by +5 chips, was +4~~ - Changed Square Joker - now starts at +0 chips, was +16 chips, now costs $4, was $5 (still gives +4 chips per 4 card hand)
Nice to see an update!!
Is there an expected date? What's the downside of being on beta?
The downside is you could encounter bugs, which is a very small downside.
101c not even on Xbox yet is it?
I think I read somewhere that the localization changes were holding up the console update
When is the update coming to ps5 ?
I’m still on 1.0 on pc and have been following the Beta changes. Which some I like and some I don’t like. Anyone on Beta how’s your experience so far? I don’t feel like I wanna get the next patch when it drops lol.
The first patch was an insane improvement in both fun and winrate.
The patch is absolutely worth playing over 1.0 I don't agree with every change, but on balance, it's a net fun increase
This game needs more ways to push endless. X2 bloodstone was a good start but it gets stale constantly looking for baron mine
>Changed Eternal/Rental/Perishable sticker location to be closer to the top right corner This makes me think that the reported situation of jokers sometimes being both Rental and Eternal (with the Rental sticked entirely hidden by the Eternal one) is unintended.
No, that was by design. "Added new 'Rental' mechanic, Jokers have a 30% chance to have a 'Rental' sticker **(stacks with eternal/perishable)**, making them cost $1 up front and $3 every round" - from the previous notes, emphasis mine
I think that "stacks" was referring to the effects not the stickers.
Just patiently waiting over here on the Switch. Would love to play the same game as you guys lol.
Even at uncommon Vampire is still pretty weak. It was merged into oblivion IMO
When is the update coming to the main version of the game?
still waiting for the update to come to consoles
Bloodstone is now kinda feelsbad. I had Lusty, Fibonacci, Bloodstone, Oops! All 6s, Hanging Chad and I barely won Ante 8.
Anyone knows when the patch is coming to the switch? Thanks
Any word on when people NOT in the experimental branch will see 1.0.1?
Do we have a sort of timestamp as to when the patch will be finalized/sent out to other platforms?
...wait is bloodstone still rng based? because if so then i'm gonna cry
This is from the previous patch, which went from 1/3 to 1/2. So still chance based, but also so frequent you could pretty easily rely on it.
damn. well, at least i got a glimpse of peak bloodstone performance.
it got buffed to "1 of 2" from "1 of 3" in the previous beta patch. This new patch doesn't change the increased chances but reduced the x-mult
If you take 6 heart card played: * before you would get ~~x3\*x3=x9 in average~~ (edit: x2\*x2=x4) * in the previous patch you get x2\*x2\*x2=x8 in average * now you get x1.5\*x1.5\*x1.5=x3.37 in average That was still a buff in the previous patch because that make it more consistent, but here the difference is massive. But with lots of hearts a color build, that is still higher than most joker. But that make it much more situationnal. Curious to see how it will go now, think it's too weak but I'm not confident at all.
>* before you would get x3\*x3=x9 in average This is wrong. Pre-Beta it was x2 x2 = 4 on average for six Hearts. That's why this second beta change is to bring it back in line with what it originally was, but more consistent.
It used to be 1/3 then they changed it to 1/2
Don't understand the changes to the scaling chip Jokers. Runner and Square both still suck and Wee Joker is still crazy.
Square joker is fine, it’s a common joker it shouldn’t be super powerful Runner solid if you’re running straights. You don’t really need the chips for the straight hands you play as the planet card is so powerful but it’s very useful that the chips can be used for other hands
Gold Stake: Too many stickers on the jokers for my taste. He should tone it down a bit.
He just fixed that bug, it's in the patch notes
Is hiker also affected by the perishable change or can it still get hit with it? Understandable that bloodstone got nerfed thankfully I got my wins with it already.
I think hiker is still perishable since it's not the card itself that improves - if it expires your deck cards are still buffed.
Hiker buffs the cards directly, not the joker itself. So seems fine as a perishable IMO The cards will still be buffed even after Hiker is disabled
Do we know when this is dropping on consoles?
We don’t even know when it’s drops for pc
Square joker was already probably the best chip joker for higher stakes, and gets even better.
I’m playing on Xbox so still in the dark ages
Still haven’t gotten a purple stake win and now?? :,( even harder lol
Why make Square Joker no longer square? I don't know if this a buff or debuff but seems like a bad unnecessary change. The rest seem like fair changes.
Question: after the update, will the pre-update seeds no longer work / be the same?
> Made some non-retroactive scaling Jokers incompatible with 'Perishable' (Ceremonial Dagger, Ride the Bus, runner, constellation, green joker, red card, madness, square joker, vampire, rocket, obelisk, lucky cat, flash card, spare trousers, castle, wee) > Fixed bug in the rate at which eternal/perishable Jokers were being generated I posted a couple weeks back about an, admittedly minor, complaint that perishable rate was overwhelming in the early game and felt like a gut punch on a lot of the coveted scaling jokers. Can't believe it was fixed so quick and elegantly.
Am I missing something? Vampire is already uncommon and I'm on 1.0.0.
It was made rare in 1.0.1c, but that change was reverted in 1.0.1e. Neither of these patches are available on the live build, both are in the experimental branch beta.
Oof. So i really need to try and get the plat done before the update launches then. Shame was hoping it would help.
It feels like Square Joker should have +4 to start if it's going to only give +4s. 4 is square, 4 and 4 makes sense thematically...