I don't know much about Balatro, but I do know this: whenever I successfully put together a deck which consistently churns out hands worth several million dollars, I am absolutely guaranteed to get the goddamn Ante 8 boss who forces you to sell a joker, thus completely torching my chances of a great Endless run afterwards.
I don't know much about Balatro, but I do know this: whenever I successfully put together a deck which consistently churns out hands worth several million dollars, I am absolutely guaranteed to get the goddamn Ante 8 boss who forces you to sell a joker, thus completely torching my chances of a great Endless run afterwards.
You need to pick up the Director's Cut or Retcon vouchers that allow you to reroll the Boss Blind
I should have mentioned that it is also absolutely guaranteed that boss blind reroll vouchers will only be available in eventually-dominating decks in the first two antes, when they will be problematic to acquire for economic reasons. 
Those Boss Blind rerolls can go quite bad too.
I have less than zero interest in Slay the Spire and most games like it, but this game is superb.
After much experimentation, I am pretty solidly converted to just chasing high card builds when I want to consistently advance stakes on the various decks.
Once you get to Purple Stake (the second breakpoint at faster ante scaling) it's too easy for the wheels to come off the wagon when you're building around a particular hand type, either because you aren't getting the right jokers from the set of suitable jokers for that hand, or because you get a freakishly bad set of draws one round, or because you hit a boss that works against your build and can't re-roll it.
There is no boss counter to high card plays. There is no bad draw when you don't care what your draw is. There are many jokers which are not aligned with a particular hand type.
Basically the strategy is to prioritize getting a "survival joker" (or two, or three at higher stakes) ASAP and survive up through ante 2-3 while your main joker engine gets going. A survival joker is something which gives you additive mult and/or chips which is either not tied to particular hand or tied to an easy hand for your deck to make, but not something you expect to keep. That can either come from the joker's intrinsic ability, or simply from it being a Foil/Holographic.
As soon as you have your survival online, you focus on filling out three categories: scaling chips, scaling additive mult, and multiplicative mult (which may or may not be scaling). "Scaling" things are ones whose value increases as you Do The Thing they require. E.g., the Square joker which gives you 16 chips at the start, but permanently adds +4 chips every time you play exactly 4 cards. The additive scaling ones are easier because there are multiple at common rarity with easy conditions to meet. If your goal is just to clear the stake by beating ante 8, you don't need to really worry about getting scaling multiplicative mult (although sometimes it falls into your lap and works well with what you have going). Generally just getting a flat 2x or 3x mult by ante 5 or so will be enough to carry you even at purple, as long as you have the other categories met.
Once you have any scaling joker found, you want to Do The Thing that makes it scale as much as humanly possible, which usually means playing as many hands as possible to keep triggering the effect, ideally clearing the ante on the last available hand. As soon as you're able to do this without having to play any particular hand, you're in a good position to win the whole thing. Your hands aren't doing the work any more...your jokers are.
Meanwhile, focus economy. If you are below $25, only buy survival jokers or scaling jokers. You really need that interest to start working for you. If you're ahead of the curve and clearing with ease, grab any economy joker you find to get your foot down harder on the cash pedal. Always buy tarots if the pack won't put you below $25 (Orange/Gold Stake excepted), as it's very common to find Hermit (free $20) or the thing I'm forgetting the name of that gives you the sale value of your jokers. Not only does this usually wind up net cash positive over time, it also applies retroactively when you find the joker which scales additive mult with tarots used.
Over time you eventually sell off your survival and economy jokers and wind up with an endgame build of some combination of high +chips, high +mult, and some amount of x-mult which will easily see you through ante 8.
Zodiac deck is a good one to practice this on, as having the third shop slot means you see more jokers, and more tarots means more money and more scaling for that tarot joker, which will be a consistent +mult option that you can usually find at some point in the game once you're able to re-roll a lot. Having said that, it works fine with any deck.
The Balatro Propaganda Machine that is Remap Radio finally got me to bite the Balatro bullet on Switch after wrapping up 13 Sentinels last night.
Oops, my Switch is now my Balatro Machine.
I brought my Switch to work to plunk away at some hands while on lunch, it's perfectly Suited for it.
Do you have a Retro Emulation device? Can you run an app called Port Master? You too can play this wonderful game on that device legally too. Just go into your Steam install folder and copy the exe to your Balatro folder and enjoy. Granted it’s cramped as can be but hot damn.
Do you have a Retro Emulation device? Can you run an app called Port Master? You too can play this wonderful game on that device legally too. Just go into your Steam install folder and copy the exe to your Balatro folder and enjoy. Granted it’s cramped as can be but hot damn.
Are you successfully getting Balatro up on a CRT with this method? :0 Or is this just a handy means of getting the game on an Analogue device for even more portability than before?
Both are good! But something about getting Balatro on a backwoods maquinitas video poker screen feels just right.
While I'm here: Beaten Ante 8 a couple times across a couple different decks now, and I think the hooks are finally coming out of me a little bit. Like a kid with a golden ticket in the candy factory, I've started to feel the onset of the tummyache.
But there's still some room in there, we can fit in a few more rounds before I have to yartz.
Jumping into this has been an absolute delight. If this was on Mobile i would be in serious trouble.
Jumping into this has been an absolute delight. If this was on Mobile i would be in serious trouble.
Jumping into this has been an absolute delight. If this was on Mobile i would be in serious trouble.
Boy do we have bad news for you*.
"Terrible news: Balatro is coming to mobile."
*And almost everyone else.
Igneus wrote:Jumping into this has been an absolute delight. If this was on Mobile i would be in serious trouble.
Thankfully that is to much work for me to play a game.
With that said...
I am indeed in trouble.
I just tried this. It is fairly easy. I copied my balatro.exe to the APK maker folder. Clicked yes for a couple things and copied the APK to my Android device. Controller support works too. Might copy it to my drive as well.
The Trouble is near.
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguel...
Balatro hits the iOS App Store and Android's Google Play on September 26.
Unrelated, but Loop Hero also recently came out for mobile devices.
Pages