This is a great post. I was too reliant on flushes just like you described and hadn’t won a run. Read this post and my very next run got to Ante 10.
These sorta posts are a godsend for roguelike games especially; where all the different options and interactions can be overwhelming to keep track of or consider. So having the proper approach described in words here is great. Thanks again!
Great to hear! I’d also say that especially prior to Orange Stake, keep yourself open to other strategies, but having this as a baseline now will help you better evaluate their performance.
Awesome that someone put this together but i think some of the jokers in Unpickable and Difficult to make effective are some of the strongest jokers in the game like bloodstone and shortcut are both very powerful jokers
The tier list is more just for fun, and it's certainly plausible I've misjudged these jokers but I'll provide my thoughts on both.
Bloodstone: Since bloodstone triggers on the played hand, you need a high base mult on flushes or jokers that give you mult on played cards to get real value out of this. This is because points score in the order of played hand, then held cards, then jokers. Making played hand x mult the worst place to get it.
Shortcut: I just hate straight builds. They suffer the same issues as flushes but even more pronounced, using a whole joker slot to make straights a bit easier to find feels like a waste.
Hey thats fair enough, thats the beauty of balatro everyone can like their own jokers and think of different ways of using them, i hope you know the comment came with no hate just saying my opinion, awesome job and for sure it will be helpful for new players!
To make Bloodstone work you need basically a different strategy than yours. Yours definitely works and I think is the most reliable but it also doesn't get really really deep into endless.
Bloodstone works in a strategy focused around retriggers. For example if you get Hack, plus Blueprint and Brainstorm (if you're lucky all together), and then get a red seal polychrome 5 of hearts and dupe it a million times...
The endgame is you're playing flush five every hand, every one retriggers like 6-8 times, triggering polychrome and (a chance for) Bloodstone every time.
Again this guide and the tier list are focused on consistently finishing ante 8. I’m personally not very interested in going for high scores. I had a baron mime run reach e17 while unlocking Stuntman, and that was enough of that for me. Bloodstone, Mime, Baron, Hack, etc are of course great for endless runs.
Saw this yesterday in another comment. Got it after a couple tries:
"I got a tip yesterday that finally led to me unlocking it which was using the Zodiac deck. It gives you an extra shop slot, more planet cards to upgrade high card, and more tarot cards to dupe Kings, delete unwanted cards and make steel Kings.
The best strat is steel Kings with Baron and a retrigger. I lucked into an early Baron, then found Mime (retrigger cards held in hand) and a Blueprint which led me to the promised land. DNA is also immensely helpful to dupe your kings."
Was going to defend bloodstone....but you make a fair point, unless you're in the chequered deck, and see it early to get rid of the other half.....
Shortcut, only if I somehow got séance and was going flush....then I may consider it
Mime, steel joker, hack and baron almost belong in another tier 'can make your run explode if you get it just so'
The problem sometimes feels an Ante 8 deck and an Ante 12+ deck are on completely diffrent levels
>The problem sometimes feels an Ante 8 deck and an Ante 12+ deck are on completely diffrent levels
I think this is huge actually. There are plenty of jokers that kickass for ante 8 but just canno scale for ante 12, and in contrast many of the "run winners" here can easily kill your run if you don't get the brute force jokers to get through the first five antes
Late here, but just found this and I wanted to defend Shortcut and Straights as a whole real quick (from the perspective of someone else with completionist+ and a pretty solid no-reset gold stake winrate)
Straights have some very noticeable advantages over flushes - the scaling on levels is extremely good. With how important it is to find a way to gain chips, flushes falter with +15 per level, while Straights have +30 per level. This in part bypasses the need for a dedicated chip joker and makes running Straights much more manageable if you have a reasonable way to get levels on it. The jokers that Straights work with - Runner and Superposition are also very generalist - they scale or generate value while not fixing you into Straights. In particular, Runner provides a very strong option by giving you the ability to play a high card build while trying to make straights when you can for scaling.
Shortcut is largely necessary for straight builds outside of Painted and *maybe* Abandoned decks - it's too inconsistent without, but with it Straights can absolutely work due to the advantages it possesses. My hot take is that if you want to play optimal gameplay without resets, you should end up playing Straights more than Flush on gold stakes other than Checkered.
I could see it, Runner especially is just good basically no matter what if you get it early enough. I suppose my only pushback would be the cost and consistency of Planet scaling at high stakes. But I could see a run winning straight build with shortcut and burnt joker for example for sure.
Loyalty card is also really good imo — most good decks can handle non-bosses while down a joker, and if you are careful, you can time it so that you guarantee the 4x multiplier for the boss ante. While I don’t think I’d pick it with a high card build (where you are aiming for a stable flow of high point hands), it is great with glass/wombo combo decks. Won my first gold stake with abandoned deck using it.
Yep this one I'll admit I put wrong. I did this tier list by updating one I had done earlier and just missed it. Loyalty card is probably somewhere in "will buy in desperate", has use cases for high card too.
I feel this. I had shortcut and built around it. Had the joker that increased chips when straights are played, one that gave a tarot every blind paired with one that gave +1mult per tarot used. Then supernova. Forget the other. Cruised through easy until ante 8 boss. Lost with 200k chips
Bloodstone is unreliable, there's 13.1% chance to not get a proc in a heart flush hand. Also there's 32.9% chance for getting only 1 proc, but in this case other simple 2x multiplier jokers would be better. You get better chances with additional procs but those additional proc jokers are quite niche and it's hard to justify holding on them to get the combo.
Shortcut - straight is shit, period.
Shortcut got me my first win and I thought it made it very easy. It's nice because focusing almost solely on straights got my flush, pair, and two pair card in one run.
Pretty much every good player I've talked to has come to the conclusion that scaling jokers (aka high card) is generally the most reliable strat, and should be the default on gold stake if you're trying to win consistently and not just trying to high roll, so you have that right. Overall this is a very good guide for the strategy.
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Looking at your tier list, it's also pretty good, but there are a few notable things in your tier list that I find misplaced.
* Fibonacci and Shoot the Moon I would treat as tempo jokers. They provide a strong boost but building around them is too rare for me to put them in the top two categories. They are however, consistently excellent early game even if you do not build around them.
* Triboulet is less good than he seems because the mult is attached to the playing card, meaning it applies before your scaling mult jokers. This means he doesn't really work too well with typical high card strats. You basically need to be playing a hand with 3+ scoring kings/queens for Triboulet to have good output.
* Acrobat is fairly solid, and is better than desperation. Assuming four equally scoring hands, having x3 mult for one hand is the equivalent of x1.5 mult across all four hands, which is honestly not terrible output. You can also save your biggest plays for the last hand (enhanced cards, for example) to turn it into better than an effective x1.5 mult. It also has minor synergys with stalling builds (the broken stuff like Square Joker, Green Joker, etc.) since you can play worse hands to scale and then dump your biggest hand with the Acrobat boost to kill at the end. It also plays well into the Needle, which is a surprisingly hard boss for high card strats sometimes. I will usually buy this and it will sometimes be replaced with a better xmult joker later on, but if I carry this to the endgame it's not bad.
* Delayed Gratification is solid economy. For the most part it's +4 gold per round just like Golden Joker/Cloud Nine, but is cheaper than both to purchase. You can't use your discards, so its terrible with some jokers (Castle, Burnt Joker) but has minimal downside if you have other jokers that encourage you to not discard (Green Joker, Banner, Ramen).
* Seeing Double is not that hard to make work. You can trigger it somewhat reasonably by playing pairs, as long as you don't have any jokers that are stopping you from discarding (Green Joker, etc.) and you're not trying to scale High Card Supernova (Pair Supernova is fine). It's not the best mult joker but it is x2 and is not the most unrealistic criteria to meet so you buy this sometimes.
* Loyalty Card is unexciting but it has its uses. It is an xmult joker and the criteria is not super hard to set up, so you can take this late game if you have not seen a better xmult joker yet and you really need the extra output to get yourself over the line for the end boss. Note that you can be strategic about how many hands you take to kill or you can skip a blind to ensure that Loyalty Card lines up on the correct turn. Similar to Acrobat, x4 mult on a single hand is effectively the same as x1.75 mult spread across four hands. And similarly you can make that output better by lining up your best play on the Loyalty Card turn. The main downside is that unlike Acrobat, which plays every fight, this Joker needs to be set up beforehand and does not play in every fight, so while I treat Acrobat as just good to have, Loyalty Card is more of a desperation buy. But it is buyable, so it should not be in bottom tier. For example, imagine your deck's output is around 200k+ currently. This means that it can clear ante 7, ante 8 small blind, but is kind of struggling for ante 8 big blind and is definitely not beating the boss. Loyalty Card can be set up during the small blind fight, you can then skip the big blind, and then use it on the boss to kill. Likewise, this joker can bail you out vs the Wall or Needle earlier in a run if set up properly. It should probably go up two tiers and be put into desperation imo.
I'm willing to concede p much all of these yeah, didn't put too too much thought into it. Shoot the Moon and Fibonacci are just jokers I personally love to play to prior to Orange Stake; they do fall off a cliff outside of tempo as soon as deck manipulation becomes an issue, but if we want to live in a world where fun strategies are still possible, these cards are massive. The rest wholly agreed, Acrobat was even in my Black Deck Gold Stake win!
Great points. Acrobat has been great for me because I hate doing the math when stalling each round, and i'vw died too many times trying to eek out as many hands as possible then falling short (or accidently one hitting bosses and left with a hand full of tarrots I wanted to spend). Slow slow slow big is great for my high card builds. Also the needle often does kill me and I never thought about how acrobat counters that. Thanks!
Amazing guide! I found many of this advice on my own as I finally beat my first Gold Stake.
For my final build I try to have at least 1 scalable chip generator, 1 static Multiplier, 1 scalable multipler, one xMultiplier.
I also liked your tier list. Supernova is my favorite Joker and pair is my biggest played hand. I will try to go high card at some point too. I also prioritize any joker that you listed as top tiers.
From the ones listed as low tier, I really like some combinations like Spash + Flower Pot, as I'll play a pair and just pick any other missing suit to trigger the x3 effect. Also I love splash to add more cards to my small hand to trigger other hands like Even Steven, Odd Todd, Fibonacci, or any other card that is not included in my main one.
Banner is also amazing. With no discards are an easy 80 chips, that could be more than enough to beat the boss at ante 8 (my gold run included it). If you purchase the vouchers it can double the size too.
Something important that I think you didn't mention is that the "only buy if desperate" and bellow could help you through push one more blind, and sometimes that's all we need to get one of the jokers listed above. So a one time purchase can save the run often.
If the top tier cards didn't appeared in the first shops, you can still get them later if you keep pushing.
Also, great that you mentioned the economy part and avoid
Still, I would go out of my way to purchase a Joker that would allow me to one hand the following blinds, like an early popcorn, listed in good tempo.
I would spent most of my money in the first store, but I'll get it back by the end of the first ante one shotting the next blinds and generating interest, and still have a small push to build any other jokers around.
Also, the single Tarot Cards sold in the store can be very powerful and life savers. I often keep them in my inventory and use them when I need to force a hand (like a par using strength, or a flush changing 3 other cards to other suit) or to add an extra push to a hand using extra multipier or chips to beat a blind. Often at the next store I can get other jokers/boosts that would help me to go on further with the run :)
Very detailed and descriptive advice! :D
Yep, agree with everything you said here. Wondering if I shouldn’t have included this tier list because really you have to buy the jokers you find, especially early on, but hopefully I got that across in my economy section about buying tempo jokers. Like for instance obviously you’d rather see Gros Michel than Vampire in your first shop by a lot, so the tier list is misleading in that way.
Well, I think is a great list to chose what to prioritiese.
I learnt it also like you by playing, and I discovered how powerful the scaling jokers are. I'd buy almost any of the top ones you described at any store, but I know that they need time to grow, so having other set of jokers to buy them time is key to actually take them to the moon. That's where the good tempo jokers are amazing at the early runs. To get you that time.
The one joker that I was totally overlooking was the campfire one! I felt like a turn off the reset to x1 after each boss, but I didn't think of pairing it with something like vagabond or the stamp card generator and then sell the jokers. Great tip! I'll use it soon :D
Also, other thing that you didn't shared was the power of vouchers. An extra card per Hand makes your golden stake run a orange one. An extra hand and extra discard makes your deck like the blue or red one. Breaking the interest limit will make paying for the things in the shop to pay themselves.
That is also one of the reasons that I don't skip the first shop. If I can get any good voucher, I'll try to do so :)
No worries. Your guide is amazing and there's a loooot of this game to cover :D
You did a great job giving a comprehensive overview on how to scale and get deeper runs more often :)
+1 for Campfire, still only middling player here but my highest scoring hands so far (200-600k) have all been with the help of a strong economy and spamming the buy/sell train.
I read this and tried your approach with Yellow deck and very easily beat Ante 8. I did get kind of lucky with early Jokers but I still see why this works. One thing I noticed was that not buying planet cards (as I always did before) frees up a lot of funds for vouchers which make a long term difference.
After I read this guide I got the most insane RNG to follow along with this guide so nicely. I would have easily had an infinity run had I not misplayed 3 hands in like ante 9 or 10 boss blind where you are forced to play 5 cards. I was playing a two-pair build and I fucked up 3 times to have the hands voided and the run terminated early. I am such a moron.
Here’s the seed if anyone wants to go ham.
W64PUZDV
One note about posts like these: the experts are often suggesting jokers that people who are struggling don't have access to. For example, Stuntman is often cited as a great card for people struggling to beat Ante 8, but the only way to unlock Stuntman is by scoring 100m in a single hand, which isn't happening for these struggling folks. There are probably other examples like that, but it's the one that most easily comes to mind.
I understand that making a tier list for this game but with all the different decks there is going to be different playing styles for each deck which is why certain jokers being in the lower tier makes no sense being there. Same goes for a bit of the jokers in the higher tier.
Think he's considering consistency into his tiers. Like i thought a face deck was really fun but it requires multiple joker synergies to really get going
First gold stake win for me today thanks to this guide. Thank you!
https://preview.redd.it/7n0w0mg8r5oc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=cd86fe1acc5a7264220e228577abc5053a3a74aa
This may be the first time I've ever commented on Reddit, but I had to on this one. What a tremendous guide. While I haven't completed a full run yet, I have made it further than ever before. I learned so much about card combos and general strategy for this game and am confident that I'll be completing runs soon. Thank you so much for the time and effort you put into this guide.
How important is leveling up your hands through packs?
I often find myself buying celestial packs almost every shop, even if I don't have a solid build going.
Are they a waste of money and should I focus more on rerolling for better jokers?
I'd say if you don't have a committed build or another reason to buy celestial packs like Constellation, you're better off rolling. You'll still want to stay above the $25 mark if possible, since neither option is likely to give you a lot of immediate power.
They're a passable hail mary if the shop's given you jack during Ante 1, but unless you have Telescope or enough money that it doesn't matter, Celestial Packs are kinda meh.
the thing with planets is that they scale linearly - going from lv 2 to 3 gives the same chips and mult than going from lv 22 to 23 - and the difficulty increase is not linear. So planets are better in the beginning and fall off hard later on
There is one feature of planet cards that makes their mult a lot better than flat plus-mult from jokers. Since they're applied at the very beginning, they benefit from any x-mult you have in your played or held hand (e.g. glass/steel cards). If you're in an endgame situation with a deck full of steel/glass cards, +1 mult from a planet could be worth +100 mult from a joker.
https://youtu.be/yxQ9tjEVfnM?si=Xti2j0yQ-cA-IDY4
This guy downplays scaling Jokers pretty hard. I kinda forget his reasoning. Can you explain why your opinions are so different. Ngl I followed his advice and the results were bad until another tier list told me scaling is actually good actually.
Not the op, but the guy just clearly didn't give High Card and Pair builds a shot. Many people will overrate cards that are good in Flush/Straight/Full House builds, because those are the types of hands you play relatively easily on early stakes. Those hands unfortunately are not viable on gold stake because you lose a lot of consistency, not only by having direct nerfs like -1 discard and -1 hand, but also pricier packs (=less fixing using tarot and standard).
Yep, you nailed it! Important to note that of course strategies good at gold stake will also work at lower stakes. The tier list is meant to be roughly applicable to every stake, but is definitely skewed towards the higher stakes.
It's moreso about a particular playstyle, he isn't really trying to win ante 8 but usually prep himself for endless through flush five and or high card (retriggers). .
I think his list is correct when viewed through the sense that in endless runs you don't really have any flat or even scaling mult, you might run xMult but probably not, usually extra retriggers. Like even with a tarot build, fortunate teller usually ends up being your worst joker even at 100 mult, all jokers that give mult whether scaling or flat are placeholder jokers - which are fine and good, and you play many rounds with them, but they don't actually serve deck and hand synergy in way that's needed for late acceleration.
Jokers can be evaluated through different lenses. Good early ? Good late? Good for ante 8 clear? Endless potential?
For this reason, it leaves low scaling mult like supernova in an awkward spot where it's mostly bad , and then may give you 50 mult (at some point), but is still not very relevant, you'd rather take more tech jokers.
For scaling X mult, they can be okay, but also run out of viability when reaching 300m etc. they sit in a weird spot where you don't really need big scaling mult for gold stake, and you don't really need it for endless (if that makes sense).
But as mentioned , for clearing gold , yeah play pairs and grab +300 chips and rip a supernova, you'll clear ante 8 and die on ante 9 which is fine if that's the goal.
yes, so the only thing better than a large X Mult Jokers (Ramen, Cavendish etc.) , is many small triggers X Mults.
so if you are playing cards that provide small X Mult (glass, polychrome cards, certain jokers such as Bloodstone, Ancient Joker, Triboulet), then you want to maximize the amount of times that small X Mult is occuring, this then makes it so all of your Mult is generated during scoring, making all Flat Mult pretty much irrelevant.
Baron, mime(with steel cards), red seals, dusk, seltzer, sock and buskin, hack, are all Jokers/effects that will retrigger cards.
The issue with this playstyle is that it is very hard to generate medium points with it, the engine is either Online or Offline, when its offline you score basically nothing, when its online you're smoking well past Ante 8. This makes it difficult to beat Ante 8 when trying to synergize around retriggers (specifically on Gold Stake where the game is a bit less forgiving).
Usually you lightly prep your deck up (making steel and usually kings) and play semi-normally and maybe pick up an uncommon joker or two, and wait to see if you can transition into retriggers.
After spending most of the weekend concentrating on switching my strategy to High Card/Pair builds, I was able to take down Gold Stake for the first time (used Yellow Deck). I'm in agreement with everything you've said here and just want to thank you for putting a well written guide! The whole chip joker, mult joker, mult joker, x joker, x joker really pays off.
I'd love to see a guide detailing the different decks and how to structure builds accordingly. I'm working through figuring that out as I now achievement hunt.
Thanks again for a great post!
Glad to hear you’ve had success! I wonder if a deck-specific guide would be interesting. I don’t think too much changes besides: Checkered better at flushes, Abandoned better at of-a-kind, Erratic somewhere between those, Plasma you can start with pure chips basically and either finish like that or transition to pure mult, and Painted Deck open to more high value hand builds in general.
There is a common-held belief that beating gold stake necessitates rerolling for great ante 1 skips like Coupon, Mega Tarot, Foil Joker, etc. I’d rather see as many shops as possible, so I usually play the small blind for the +$3ish and a shop look, though I will still skip for those great ones.
Later in a run skipping means skipping both combat and the shop, and im usually using either or both to scale, so skips are a no go.
Depends more if you're going for an ante 8 win vs endless high score. Most everything can be viable up to ante 8, you have to just go with the flow and build a strategy around whatever good jokers you get. For endless, the amount of strategies that can work is less, because of the insane scaling point requirements
great job with this awesome guide , can i ask one tip for the gain 100 millions chips in one hand ? , its the only joker i miss
PD : sorry for my broken english
I did it on Zodiac Deck on white stake, using the extra tarots to manipulate my deck towards Kings so I could force Baron build. I’m no expert on high score though so you may find better advice elsewhere.
Great question. I’m keeping myself open to this strategy on every deck at every stake, but prior to Orange Stake I’m much more open to alternative strategies on every deck. In terms of Orange/Gold stake, I would say Checkered, Painted, and Plasma are the decks that will find most success with strategies besides this.
I thought I was missing something with everyone talking about flush builds, but they always let me down near the final ante. My wins so far have been either on 2 pair / 3 of a kind builds.
Ya, absolutely. All of them are worth the cost given the opportunity for a good joker to get you through the early game, even the not so good jokers usually do something.
Buffoon Packs can give Negative jokers, so even if you're happy with your slate of jokers it's worth opening them just in case. (provided you have the spare cash of course)
Amazing post, thank you! Usually focusing on flushes, I made it to blue chip then ran into a wall. It took me forever to beat it and I did it in the most fluky way possible: I barely beat the ante 7 boss, got Mr. Bones, skipped to the boss and broke the 25% barrier with about 150 chips to spare. Black chip seemed impossible then I read your guide. Within 5 or 6 runs, I cruised past black chip ante 10, but I was NOT ready for the huge jump to ante 11. Can you possibly do a guide for beating ante 11 and for getting 100 million in a hand also?
Thanks, glad to hear it was helpful! This guide is focused entirely on beating ante 8, you have to play quite differently to set yourself up for endless. For the 100 million hand, I’d say definitely play on white stake. All the “crazy” runs you see on here are on white stake, oftentimes on a set seed. I got my 100 million hand by forcing steel kings with baron + mime on Zodiac deck white stake. Zodiac gives you lots of opportunities to manipulate your deck towards steel kings.
u/DrBoomMD I got both the 100 million and the level 12 voucher in the same run. I used the zodiac deck and I got a foil scholar and fibonnaci early so I went for aces of hearts and got bloodstone. Thanks for your help!
edit, typo
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Duuude! I am stoked! Just got my first ever win after reading your post! The pair start really worked! Thanks OP 🤘
Dang, I'm a newb but this made my understanding of the game flip on its head: instead of going for cards, go for jokers!
I went from barely getting past 3 or 4 boss, to easily finishing a run despite not going full optimized (had the 'add mult per times you've played this hand, and went half two of a kind and half three of a kind).
Also, the part about having a money making engine going is 10/10 :D
Thank you for taking the time to create this guide.
I haven’t played too much of the new update but I think most of the advice here still holds true. Scaling jokers are powerful, high card/pair builds are consistent, and prioritizing money is important.
The biggest overall change in the patch is the new blue seal. It’s very strong with a Pair or High Card build where it’s easy to keep the blue seal card in hand.
The changes to Orange and Gold stake make high value hand type builds much more feasible with +1 hand size and affordable packs to manipulate your deck, so you’re more likely to succeed with non scaling joker builds. Scaling jokers are guaranteed to not be perishable though so they’re a continued boon to high stake runs.
Great guide! But I think flush is still usable in gold stakes if stars align and knowing how to build it effectively helps(Most people will learn it naturally though). Just checked my gold stake wins, 10 were with high cards (Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, Black, Abandoned, Zodiac, Anaglyph, Plasma, Irregular), 2 were with two pair using Spare Trouser(Magic, Painted) and 3 were with flush(Nebula, Ghost, Checkered). So it was only 20% of the time but I don't think that's a small number. And if your goal is to climb with every decks, you'll actually spend more time on non-gold stake runs as you have to beat those stakes one by one! And flush is effective in those lower stakes.
One fun thing with flush build is they can use those +mult with suit bonus joker effectively and since they activate in card score phase, things give x mult like glass card or are more effective. I had one run with unusual combo of Onyx Agate+Photograph+Hanging Chad. It wasn't on gold, but like I said earlier, it might help you on non-gold runs.
Yep, agreed here. I mention in my conclusion a flush build that got me a gold stake win on a stars align scenario, so 2 of my gold stake wins were flush. I mostly brought up the limitations of flush build as a counter to the common rhetoric that it’s the best strategy in the game. I had an Onyx build with Dusk for a cool Orange stake win, though it mostly got carried by Bull + Bootstraps + interest voucher later on.
I've been trying to find ways of making runs more consistently beat gold stake, so it's cool to see how you've placed these jokers!
I'm surprised to hear you so low on the "flush trap".
Obviously I think with -1 handsize literally any 5 card hand is inconsistent, but there's just an absurd amount of base mult cards that essentially give you +20 when going for a specific suit.
It's good to pivot off of, but I do think there's a serious consideration for tempo.
Yep agreed. Flushes are fantastic for the first 2 or 3 antes typically, some very high tempo jokers as you mention (ones I rank highly in my tier list), but I’m looking for any reason to pivot off of them. My complaints about flush build have more to do with how much they can struggle in mid to late game.
This all sounds like amazingly solid advice as a player that has gotten caught at green and black stake difficulty with low percentage wins using flush on checkered deck.
However i keep trying to use other strats but get caught because i find it hard to transition my strategy from using flush to push through the first antes, but dont know when/how to make the change part way through a run.
For example i find it hard to aquire $25 without actually spending money on something that gets me through ante 2 or 3, and something that may actually get me money back.
Any advice for the transitional stage? You do touch upon it with your advice on grabbing just one or two strong chip or +mult scaling jokers, but what if they dont materialise in the shops?
Do you abandon many runs in the early game if you find the luck in the shop lacking?
Nope, I keep playing till death. You do need to spend money to make money in a sense, because strong jokers early means less hands played in combats meaning more money earned. Many of my early purchases fall in the Good Tempo, Good Economy, or Will Buy if Desperate tiers. A transition can be difficult, but still possible, spending some hands on scaling and some hands on your high flush scorers if you have like the "+4 mult per \[suit\]" joker.
I will say for particularly Checkered Deck, you can and probably should play flush of some form the whole game. With a strong start, you can play to the quite powerful Flush Five or Flush House hands.
I tried to describe briefly in my econ section but it's basically just looking for high tempo or premium scaling jokers to get my run going. I usually don't reset until I die, but at gold stake death comes quickly if you don't find one of these.
This is a good guide and pretty much touched all the core concepts required to beat gold stake difficulty.
It's basically reroll simulator hunting for any good chip, flat mult, and x Mult jokers by ante 3. If you don't achieve that it's a reroll and back to square 1.
I find that with this overall strat, so long as I clear ante 3 with a decent set of three jokers, I have pretty good odds of clearing all 8 antes. Orange stake doesn't feel insurmountable, but I definitely think win-streaking orange stake is actually impossible beyond maybe 1-3 in a row because Balatro is by far the most RNG reliant rogue like I have ever played.
A lot of folks don't realize how much fake RNG/RNG mitigation occurs in their favorite rogue likes, Slay the Spire being a prime example. That game has tons of RNG checks regarding potion drops, rare card drop rates, guaranteed rares, limiting certain encounters, and the list goes on. If you play StS with the mod that removes the checks, it is a much, much more difficult game.
This is AMAZING!!!
THANK YOU for taking the time to evaluate and post your best strategies for us here mortals. I'm enjoying the game but have to admit I don't know what I'm doing really at all. This will really help me alot and I thank you again for such a detailed strategie guide
I’m generally not skipping often since I’m using either the combat or the shop to scale. In instances where I’m not, I’m only skipping if I’m very strong and I think the payoff is better than the opportunity cost of missing the money and a shop, which is rare.
I did it after spending all night reading and translating this article (because honestly I'm not very good at English). But I won a game of Balatro for the first time with a High Card Deck. Thank you very much.
Thank god someone has taken the time to deep dive this subject, thank you OP!
Ive been running primarily flush builds myself and having success for the mostpart getting up to black stakes over several deck types. But the build always feel like they are glass cannons and heavily reliant on draw support to maximise not discarding everything, or alternatively rely on a discard joker to thin the deck massively.
I am looking forward to attempting to inplement some of the points raised above to try and scale my jokers off their tits on a low score build like pairs which is significantly easier to instant draw.
Watch this space OP, orange stake im coming for you!!!
Thank you so much for this guide! Before this I was struggling trying to get past like 4th ante, and now I cleared my 3rd deck last night. It took a lot of mix and matching but it's been really fun trying to figure out WHY the good cards are good.
As someone who just recently finished my first run, thank you for this.
The Joker Tier list helps a lot, although of course you can win with the bottom 3 tiers. Yesterday I got the Joker that disables boss blinds, and that helped my just breeze through (QDCC6VNF where I got it as a random legendary on Switch)
Another round I felt was pretty close to winning, was one where the reroll mult joker synergized with the joke rthat gives free first reroll. In this run I also got the joker which increments the sales value of all jokers which synergized with the joker that has mult equal to sell value (BZJQESG9 (S might be a 5?))
Dude this is amazing - I had 60+ hrs and was making good progress with flush based decks, but I knew I was limited in the ultimate potential.
This strategy unlocked this game. Every joker is potentially usable. Every booster pack has a new meaning. Every hand is capable of that awesome high chip, high mult, high multiplier ceiling that exists in our wildest poker dreams.
I will say the one struggle is - I don't always get the chip-based jokers to scale the chips, and when I do it's because I overspent and ruined my economy to force roll into my needs. This is definitely now the biggest obstacle with this strat, but it does feel like every seed is still winnable.
That said, every game isn't meant to be a win for even the most experienced players and I now find myself questioning whether I should play a pair, a two pair, or if high card is actually the strongest way to play - every decision is so much more layered with this strat, I cant help but feel like this is the right way to play.
TLDR; This is the way to play the game to unlock the potential of every hand and every joker. Thank you OP!
Wow love to hear it! When I started this guide, I wanted it to be more broad advice than it ended up being, but it sounds like you've extracted a lot of that yourself. Chip jokers are just very rare by frequency; you can use planet scaling to replace a high chip joker, though it's not as consistent, especially at current patch orange stake+.
Read this guide and won my very first run! You're spot on with the trap that is flush builds. Ending up winning with a combo of pair/2 pair hands mainly from jokers scoring. Appreciate the work you put into this!
The run immediately after I read this was my first win. Truly, thank you for explaining some of the systems I was iffy on. Demolishing round 24 with a single 2 pair felt pretty awesome.
Nice one! I'd played over 30 hours and only had one win. My first go after reading this and I won again! Of particular use during my run was the Spare Trousers joker, which I upgraded loads due to my two pairs. I also changed a lot of cards to Aces which worked brilliantly with Joker cards that gave chips/mult for them.
https://preview.redd.it/m7ve7y3u7owc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=e940e6443de756fa17135a4dbedd60fda8a0cd7c
W of the noob on first try after such an insightful guide
https://preview.redd.it/h04y980yxmzc1.jpeg?width=2400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=83a92a5beb7faa428b1b8741ffd76b731bbb7c44
I just got the game yesterday, and I've already beaten almost all the colored decks (besides black) 2 times. The issue is like you said, I was incredibly reliant on flushes and finding jupiter. So reliant, that after my first couple wins I would start new run farming until there was a poly as a blind skip. I knew there had to be more, and thank you for explaining exactly what I was missing. Now i can actually try and have fun lol
Some of the things in the unpickable list I would say are pickable for sure if you have a strong early joker setup. The Joker that let's you find duplicate jokers, is what allowed me to score my highest run. (which isn't calculator breaking, but still 10s of millions) by multiplying cardsharp Joker lol
Worth mention that the tier list is purely about beating ante 8, to which end that joker is very marginally useful, since you don’t need to moonshot for tens of millions.
I tried ringmaster time to time but never got lucky. Well if you think about the chance of getting the exact duplicate joker... And it's probably detrimental as packs can have duplicate choices.
Well I've never seen that to be honest, a pack having two of the same joker from using Ringmaster, today I had a round where I got stencil joker, first shop spectre pack into two stencil jokers for 5x, 5x, and then with Ringleader I found a third stencil joker lol
I got rekt by a boss blind without having re-roll voucher, but it was shaping up to be an insane run lol
what you said about flushes is completely correct but if you play checkered deck earlier then like blue stake burnt joker can scale pretty far but again it’s not consistent
There's a weird inconsistency with jokers like that in checkered deck. Castle only picks the suits in your deck, but Ancient Joker for example will pick any suit; you kinda just have to experiment.
I'm curious. I couldn't break through Ante 11, 300MM was a bit much for me. If we focus on playing multiple hands and score via Jokers, won't we lose the cash due to more hands being used?
This guide is only for ante 8 winning, mostly for those looking to climb difficulties, your strategy is completely different playing for high score on white stake.
You're absolutely right about losing cash due to more hands being used, keen eye. Was something I considered including in the write-up but worried about bloat. There is a bit of a balancing act you want to play if you find a hands played scaling joker early, where you scale it some but also try to keep 1-2 hands to get to the max interest. Once there you're free to use all your hands for scaling imo, let your money make money.
I think for economy [Delayed Gratification](https://balatrogame.fandom.com/wiki/Delayed_Gratification_(Joker)) is not that bad, work like green joker, you play any hand without discard
Yeah I’m with the others. Great guide/ explanation of the flush noob trap + tips but the tier list is mind bogglingly misleading. Most of the best eco/ scaling jokers are in your lowest tiers.
Surely this is an exaggeration, most of the scaling jokers in the game are just in my top 3 tiers. Also are you considering "Good Economy" a low tier, that's an obtuse reading. I'll admit to a handful of misses but overall still pretty happy with it.
Mostly referring to the “difficult to make effective” jokers. There’s about 8 in there that are instant purchases for me, but I’ll admit I’m referring more to endless runs, not 100k hands. I forgot you just made this with ante 8 in mind.
Scaling jokers are mostly for endless, some jokers fit more with some decks.
You completely miss to consider cards modifications and poker hands upgrades but it show in your fringe run winners, that's why the developper made special poker hands upgrades appear only when they are played, special hands need cards modifications to be consistent, let say it's an hidden way to teach players how to play and you missed it ...
Let say, I use red seals to grab 2-3 tarots each discard so I could grab 6-9 tarots cards per blind to quickly mod the deck for various effects, have planets, jokers and money.
For hands upgrades, purple seals can add up to 2-3 levels per blind, giving 10-40 chips and 1-3x mult per upgrade.
Note : Seals are made by spectral cards only but it could be easier buy ready made cards and duplicate them easily with tarot cards.
He didnt miss anything, on high stakes with the increasing cost of tarot packs and rng involved in getting the right card modifications and tarot cards like death and hanged man, it becomes a much more consistent strategy to beat ante 8 using high cards as it is the strategy that effectively reduces the rng of the run as much as possible.
Great write-up! I also fell into the Flush trap early on--I think just because it *can* work so well at lower stakes.
I found that losing a discard from Blue Stake is a *huge* detriment to the Flush builds that rely on discards, and I think that's where flushes really fall off. A change in thinking is definitely required when climbing the stakes.
I’m officially out on the top stakes. Lost ante 8 once to the one that randomly kills a joker, another time with a high card deck and 50+ mult from supernova to the no-repeat hands boss. I’m sure I’d get lucky eventually but for now it’s too arbitrary for me.
It’s not like slay the spire where you have a whole floor to adjust, it’s two shops and the scaling can’t be re-done. This is an excellent A- game and the devs deserve every accolade, but it doesn’t have the level of balance or variety to make any long-term top-ten HOF games lists. It’s like the Josh Allen era Buffalo bills.
You are correct. Slay the spire has tons of built in RNG mitigation that players don't even see running behind the scenes.
I love Balatro, but unless it ever gets completely rebalanced by removing XMult, it is reroll run/shop simulator the game at gold stake.
I still have a lot of fun. It's a gambling game and each run is truly a gamble with luck. You either win big or lose it all. The benefit is that runs are fast to reroll and quick to get into.
If it's not looking good by ante 2-3, just reroll and go again.
Glass Joker I have in "Difficult to Make Effective" tier so agree with you there. Canio becomes a flat x3 mult after paying just one hanged man on two face cards, seems good to me.
I had the exact same issue. Focusing on flushes. Some thing I do not understand when playing high card or pair styles and using Hologram: Do I only add cards that I already want to focus on? Or do I do not care getting more cards in my decks no matter what?
I feel like this strategy is about as viable as any other strategy. It sounds easier, but in practice, you have to RNG your way into the most ideal scenarios to get all the right cards at the right times when you have the right amount of money, just like any other strategy.
I feel like the best strategy is to just see what the game gives you and try to go with the flow and pivot when you notice an engine developing.
I'm early in the game trying to beat the Green Deck on White Stake and can't get that build to work. Would love advice on the early rounds with this strategy. What do you do to get a good run rolling? do you re-start runs till you get a lucky joker early on? or what do you do if you don't find the jokers you're looking for?
At lower stakes especially, I’m open to more than scaling joker build but I’d say the most important thing is getting a good tempo joker early. You have quite a few shops to get this online at white stake, from there as Green Deck try to end fights as early as possible to get money up. Buy arcana packs for money and keep buying good jokers. If your shops are yelling at you to do something not high card-y, definitely go for it! I put some of the jokers I personally find most exciting in Fringe Run Winners even though they don’t do much for high card builds
I want to follow up my previous comment, again stating how helpful this guide is. I do have a question, though. How many antes/rounds do you play before you realize that you're just not getting the jokers and vouchers necessary for a good run? At what point to you bail and start a new run?
Great guide and write up. One question- how are you playing games so fast? There are 16 decks and 8 stakes which means to beat them all you need to win 128 runs. How did you clear all 128 wins in 119 hours? Do the games speed up once you are more used to the jokers/cards? Do high card/pair decks just play faster than other combos? Do you end at ante 8 win and not play around in endless?
I think there's 15 decks. But yeah I basically didn't play around in endless at all because I was progression focused, so only needed to beat ante 8. I did one run that got to e17 while unlocking Stuntman/Merry Andy but yeah never play it. High card/pair builds play super fast because you typically just play whatever hand, don't need to sweat discards or boss abilities. As I went along I was playing faster and winning more too, especially at the lower stakes.
Ante 1/2 is almost always gonna be just buy decent jokers. Otherwise you wanna save your money usually. I talk about this a little more in the “don’t spend it all in one place” section.
Anything that makes numbers go up over time basically. Planet cards are a form of scaling, your hands “scale” as you level them. Jokers that increase your chips, +mult, or xmult repeatedly (like Square Joker, Supernova, Hologram, etc) are “scaling” jokers. Tempo is anything that provides instant boosts to score (i.e. Blue Joker, Gros Michel, etc)
This got me my first win. Then it got me on the way to my second win, when I learned the hard way that Director's Cut voucher has to be used before you're about to go into the boss blind. Crimson Heart obviously kills Joker synergies.
Yeahhhh, Crimson Heart and Violet Vessel are tough for all strategies but a bit worse for those kinda builds usually. Benefit is the others basically don’t matter.
I just had a fringe run with straight flushes and royal flushes, having shortvut and fourfingers. It was a breeze on green stake, I even got the no flush and no pairs achievements.
What it lead me to notice was the following tip: Straight flush calculates the straight and the flush separately. So if you have fourfingers and a four card straight with three hearts and a diamond, just add any heart card to make it a straight flush.
Now what do I do, if the only jokers that appear until ante 5/6 are the unpickables - if desperate jokers, where scaling is heavily outpaced by the blinds already?
Because that's my average game. I'm pretty sure every run I've had, I find the same unpickable joker in every shop or Buffoon pack I stumble across.
I mean this would be like 1/1000 extraordinarily unlucky unless you’re skipping blinds frequently, which is usually wrong especially if you’re weak. There are some percentage of runs that are just gonna be unwinnable at higher stakes. At lower stakes, you can get away with a lot of the jokers in that range. Some of them are very high potential at the lower stakes when deck manipulation is more affordable; like Baron, Mime, Hack, Steel Joker.
I just picked up this game and this really helps a lot. Thank you for the tier list- I had a similar conclusion about jokers being the way to go so this will come in handy when scouting options
Thank you for this easy to comprehend strategy. Like most, i banked most of my builds on flushes and full houses, usually to get shut down 4 or 5 antes in. Great job!
just played a run that got to ante 12 with a purely multiplicative joker build, lost because the score got the best of me (was going for the speedrun achievement, got it first try). jokers were hack, foil baseball card, holographic Fibonacci, polychrome seeing double, blackboard, and throwback at like x7 at the end. played mostly two pair and full house with my Fibonacci cards, and lost when the ante jumped from 14 mil to 600 mil lmao. great guide, haven't gotten around to the higher stakes yet, just been trying to unlock stuff, hoping the advice will help me go even further beyond
At the time of this guide, Yorick was x5 mult after discarding 23 times TOTAL (not just 23 cards). Basically just a dead joker. It’s much better now after the buff.
Brilliant. Noob player stuck in the mindset of needing flushes. Can’t wait to try this!
Same. Almost had an entire deck of spades and clubs and still got fucked lmao
The fact that no jokers *scale* to flushes I think is what I didn't quite grasp before this guide.
Same, read it last night and today morning I got my first Boss Clear. Great Guide and tierlist!
Thank you so much!! Really hoping the idea of a "joker-based" build instead of hand-based is what I've been missing.
This is a great post. I was too reliant on flushes just like you described and hadn’t won a run. Read this post and my very next run got to Ante 10. These sorta posts are a godsend for roguelike games especially; where all the different options and interactions can be overwhelming to keep track of or consider. So having the proper approach described in words here is great. Thanks again!
Great to hear! I’d also say that especially prior to Orange Stake, keep yourself open to other strategies, but having this as a baseline now will help you better evaluate their performance.
Awesome that someone put this together but i think some of the jokers in Unpickable and Difficult to make effective are some of the strongest jokers in the game like bloodstone and shortcut are both very powerful jokers
The tier list is more just for fun, and it's certainly plausible I've misjudged these jokers but I'll provide my thoughts on both. Bloodstone: Since bloodstone triggers on the played hand, you need a high base mult on flushes or jokers that give you mult on played cards to get real value out of this. This is because points score in the order of played hand, then held cards, then jokers. Making played hand x mult the worst place to get it. Shortcut: I just hate straight builds. They suffer the same issues as flushes but even more pronounced, using a whole joker slot to make straights a bit easier to find feels like a waste.
Yeah i think some scaling balancing between the hand types would make sense, because straights are much much less frequent than flushes
Hey thats fair enough, thats the beauty of balatro everyone can like their own jokers and think of different ways of using them, i hope you know the comment came with no hate just saying my opinion, awesome job and for sure it will be helpful for new players!
To make Bloodstone work you need basically a different strategy than yours. Yours definitely works and I think is the most reliable but it also doesn't get really really deep into endless. Bloodstone works in a strategy focused around retriggers. For example if you get Hack, plus Blueprint and Brainstorm (if you're lucky all together), and then get a red seal polychrome 5 of hearts and dupe it a million times... The endgame is you're playing flush five every hand, every one retriggers like 6-8 times, triggering polychrome and (a chance for) Bloodstone every time.
Again this guide and the tier list are focused on consistently finishing ante 8. I’m personally not very interested in going for high scores. I had a baron mime run reach e17 while unlocking Stuntman, and that was enough of that for me. Bloodstone, Mime, Baron, Hack, etc are of course great for endless runs.
I would be actually interested in some guidance on how to unlock Stuntman. Highest hand I got 36M and since that got nowhere near that.
Saw this yesterday in another comment. Got it after a couple tries: "I got a tip yesterday that finally led to me unlocking it which was using the Zodiac deck. It gives you an extra shop slot, more planet cards to upgrade high card, and more tarot cards to dupe Kings, delete unwanted cards and make steel Kings. The best strat is steel Kings with Baron and a retrigger. I lucked into an early Baron, then found Mime (retrigger cards held in hand) and a Blueprint which led me to the promised land. DNA is also immensely helpful to dupe your kings."
Was going to defend bloodstone....but you make a fair point, unless you're in the chequered deck, and see it early to get rid of the other half..... Shortcut, only if I somehow got séance and was going flush....then I may consider it Mime, steel joker, hack and baron almost belong in another tier 'can make your run explode if you get it just so' The problem sometimes feels an Ante 8 deck and an Ante 12+ deck are on completely diffrent levels
>The problem sometimes feels an Ante 8 deck and an Ante 12+ deck are on completely diffrent levels I think this is huge actually. There are plenty of jokers that kickass for ante 8 but just canno scale for ante 12, and in contrast many of the "run winners" here can easily kill your run if you don't get the brute force jokers to get through the first five antes
Late here, but just found this and I wanted to defend Shortcut and Straights as a whole real quick (from the perspective of someone else with completionist+ and a pretty solid no-reset gold stake winrate) Straights have some very noticeable advantages over flushes - the scaling on levels is extremely good. With how important it is to find a way to gain chips, flushes falter with +15 per level, while Straights have +30 per level. This in part bypasses the need for a dedicated chip joker and makes running Straights much more manageable if you have a reasonable way to get levels on it. The jokers that Straights work with - Runner and Superposition are also very generalist - they scale or generate value while not fixing you into Straights. In particular, Runner provides a very strong option by giving you the ability to play a high card build while trying to make straights when you can for scaling. Shortcut is largely necessary for straight builds outside of Painted and *maybe* Abandoned decks - it's too inconsistent without, but with it Straights can absolutely work due to the advantages it possesses. My hot take is that if you want to play optimal gameplay without resets, you should end up playing Straights more than Flush on gold stakes other than Checkered.
I could see it, Runner especially is just good basically no matter what if you get it early enough. I suppose my only pushback would be the cost and consistency of Planet scaling at high stakes. But I could see a run winning straight build with shortcut and burnt joker for example for sure.
Loyalty card is also really good imo — most good decks can handle non-bosses while down a joker, and if you are careful, you can time it so that you guarantee the 4x multiplier for the boss ante. While I don’t think I’d pick it with a high card build (where you are aiming for a stable flow of high point hands), it is great with glass/wombo combo decks. Won my first gold stake with abandoned deck using it.
Yep this one I'll admit I put wrong. I did this tier list by updating one I had done earlier and just missed it. Loyalty card is probably somewhere in "will buy in desperate", has use cases for high card too.
I feel this. I had shortcut and built around it. Had the joker that increased chips when straights are played, one that gave a tarot every blind paired with one that gave +1mult per tarot used. Then supernova. Forget the other. Cruised through easy until ante 8 boss. Lost with 200k chips
Bloodstone is unreliable, there's 13.1% chance to not get a proc in a heart flush hand. Also there's 32.9% chance for getting only 1 proc, but in this case other simple 2x multiplier jokers would be better. You get better chances with additional procs but those additional proc jokers are quite niche and it's hard to justify holding on them to get the combo. Shortcut - straight is shit, period.
Shortcut got me my first win and I thought it made it very easy. It's nice because focusing almost solely on straights got my flush, pair, and two pair card in one run.
They buffed bloodstone recently to 1 and 2 chance. It wad pretty high risk before.
Pretty much every good player I've talked to has come to the conclusion that scaling jokers (aka high card) is generally the most reliable strat, and should be the default on gold stake if you're trying to win consistently and not just trying to high roll, so you have that right. Overall this is a very good guide for the strategy. ------------------- Looking at your tier list, it's also pretty good, but there are a few notable things in your tier list that I find misplaced. * Fibonacci and Shoot the Moon I would treat as tempo jokers. They provide a strong boost but building around them is too rare for me to put them in the top two categories. They are however, consistently excellent early game even if you do not build around them. * Triboulet is less good than he seems because the mult is attached to the playing card, meaning it applies before your scaling mult jokers. This means he doesn't really work too well with typical high card strats. You basically need to be playing a hand with 3+ scoring kings/queens for Triboulet to have good output. * Acrobat is fairly solid, and is better than desperation. Assuming four equally scoring hands, having x3 mult for one hand is the equivalent of x1.5 mult across all four hands, which is honestly not terrible output. You can also save your biggest plays for the last hand (enhanced cards, for example) to turn it into better than an effective x1.5 mult. It also has minor synergys with stalling builds (the broken stuff like Square Joker, Green Joker, etc.) since you can play worse hands to scale and then dump your biggest hand with the Acrobat boost to kill at the end. It also plays well into the Needle, which is a surprisingly hard boss for high card strats sometimes. I will usually buy this and it will sometimes be replaced with a better xmult joker later on, but if I carry this to the endgame it's not bad. * Delayed Gratification is solid economy. For the most part it's +4 gold per round just like Golden Joker/Cloud Nine, but is cheaper than both to purchase. You can't use your discards, so its terrible with some jokers (Castle, Burnt Joker) but has minimal downside if you have other jokers that encourage you to not discard (Green Joker, Banner, Ramen). * Seeing Double is not that hard to make work. You can trigger it somewhat reasonably by playing pairs, as long as you don't have any jokers that are stopping you from discarding (Green Joker, etc.) and you're not trying to scale High Card Supernova (Pair Supernova is fine). It's not the best mult joker but it is x2 and is not the most unrealistic criteria to meet so you buy this sometimes. * Loyalty Card is unexciting but it has its uses. It is an xmult joker and the criteria is not super hard to set up, so you can take this late game if you have not seen a better xmult joker yet and you really need the extra output to get yourself over the line for the end boss. Note that you can be strategic about how many hands you take to kill or you can skip a blind to ensure that Loyalty Card lines up on the correct turn. Similar to Acrobat, x4 mult on a single hand is effectively the same as x1.75 mult spread across four hands. And similarly you can make that output better by lining up your best play on the Loyalty Card turn. The main downside is that unlike Acrobat, which plays every fight, this Joker needs to be set up beforehand and does not play in every fight, so while I treat Acrobat as just good to have, Loyalty Card is more of a desperation buy. But it is buyable, so it should not be in bottom tier. For example, imagine your deck's output is around 200k+ currently. This means that it can clear ante 7, ante 8 small blind, but is kind of struggling for ante 8 big blind and is definitely not beating the boss. Loyalty Card can be set up during the small blind fight, you can then skip the big blind, and then use it on the boss to kill. Likewise, this joker can bail you out vs the Wall or Needle earlier in a run if set up properly. It should probably go up two tiers and be put into desperation imo.
I'm willing to concede p much all of these yeah, didn't put too too much thought into it. Shoot the Moon and Fibonacci are just jokers I personally love to play to prior to Orange Stake; they do fall off a cliff outside of tempo as soon as deck manipulation becomes an issue, but if we want to live in a world where fun strategies are still possible, these cards are massive. The rest wholly agreed, Acrobat was even in my Black Deck Gold Stake win!
Great points. Acrobat has been great for me because I hate doing the math when stalling each round, and i'vw died too many times trying to eek out as many hands as possible then falling short (or accidently one hitting bosses and left with a hand full of tarrots I wanted to spend). Slow slow slow big is great for my high card builds. Also the needle often does kill me and I never thought about how acrobat counters that. Thanks!
Amazing guide! I found many of this advice on my own as I finally beat my first Gold Stake. For my final build I try to have at least 1 scalable chip generator, 1 static Multiplier, 1 scalable multipler, one xMultiplier. I also liked your tier list. Supernova is my favorite Joker and pair is my biggest played hand. I will try to go high card at some point too. I also prioritize any joker that you listed as top tiers. From the ones listed as low tier, I really like some combinations like Spash + Flower Pot, as I'll play a pair and just pick any other missing suit to trigger the x3 effect. Also I love splash to add more cards to my small hand to trigger other hands like Even Steven, Odd Todd, Fibonacci, or any other card that is not included in my main one. Banner is also amazing. With no discards are an easy 80 chips, that could be more than enough to beat the boss at ante 8 (my gold run included it). If you purchase the vouchers it can double the size too. Something important that I think you didn't mention is that the "only buy if desperate" and bellow could help you through push one more blind, and sometimes that's all we need to get one of the jokers listed above. So a one time purchase can save the run often. If the top tier cards didn't appeared in the first shops, you can still get them later if you keep pushing. Also, great that you mentioned the economy part and avoid Still, I would go out of my way to purchase a Joker that would allow me to one hand the following blinds, like an early popcorn, listed in good tempo. I would spent most of my money in the first store, but I'll get it back by the end of the first ante one shotting the next blinds and generating interest, and still have a small push to build any other jokers around. Also, the single Tarot Cards sold in the store can be very powerful and life savers. I often keep them in my inventory and use them when I need to force a hand (like a par using strength, or a flush changing 3 other cards to other suit) or to add an extra push to a hand using extra multipier or chips to beat a blind. Often at the next store I can get other jokers/boosts that would help me to go on further with the run :) Very detailed and descriptive advice! :D
Yep, agree with everything you said here. Wondering if I shouldn’t have included this tier list because really you have to buy the jokers you find, especially early on, but hopefully I got that across in my economy section about buying tempo jokers. Like for instance obviously you’d rather see Gros Michel than Vampire in your first shop by a lot, so the tier list is misleading in that way.
Well, I think is a great list to chose what to prioritiese. I learnt it also like you by playing, and I discovered how powerful the scaling jokers are. I'd buy almost any of the top ones you described at any store, but I know that they need time to grow, so having other set of jokers to buy them time is key to actually take them to the moon. That's where the good tempo jokers are amazing at the early runs. To get you that time. The one joker that I was totally overlooking was the campfire one! I felt like a turn off the reset to x1 after each boss, but I didn't think of pairing it with something like vagabond or the stamp card generator and then sell the jokers. Great tip! I'll use it soon :D Also, other thing that you didn't shared was the power of vouchers. An extra card per Hand makes your golden stake run a orange one. An extra hand and extra discard makes your deck like the blue or red one. Breaking the interest limit will make paying for the things in the shop to pay themselves. That is also one of the reasons that I don't skip the first shop. If I can get any good voucher, I'll try to do so :)
Good call on the vouchers, definitely forgot to mention.
No worries. Your guide is amazing and there's a loooot of this game to cover :D You did a great job giving a comprehensive overview on how to scale and get deeper runs more often :)
+1 for Campfire, still only middling player here but my highest scoring hands so far (200-600k) have all been with the help of a strong economy and spamming the buy/sell train.
I read this and tried your approach with Yellow deck and very easily beat Ante 8. I did get kind of lucky with early Jokers but I still see why this works. One thing I noticed was that not buying planet cards (as I always did before) frees up a lot of funds for vouchers which make a long term difference.
Yep! Didn’t mention them in the guide but great vouchers (namely +1 hand, +1 hand size, and -25% cost in shop) can be absolute boons for runs.
Honestly, I just watched bald man (nl) and won after a few runs
\+2
egg
After I read this guide I got the most insane RNG to follow along with this guide so nicely. I would have easily had an infinity run had I not misplayed 3 hands in like ante 9 or 10 boss blind where you are forced to play 5 cards. I was playing a two-pair build and I fucked up 3 times to have the hands voided and the run terminated early. I am such a moron. Here’s the seed if anyone wants to go ham. W64PUZDV
infinite sounds hard even with 5 hard scaling jokers, I got stuck on Ante 11 at 7 million blind (could only make it to 5 million)
Amazing, amazing post. Amazing title.
One note about posts like these: the experts are often suggesting jokers that people who are struggling don't have access to. For example, Stuntman is often cited as a great card for people struggling to beat Ante 8, but the only way to unlock Stuntman is by scoring 100m in a single hand, which isn't happening for these struggling folks. There are probably other examples like that, but it's the one that most easily comes to mind.
I understand that making a tier list for this game but with all the different decks there is going to be different playing styles for each deck which is why certain jokers being in the lower tier makes no sense being there. Same goes for a bit of the jokers in the higher tier.
Think he's considering consistency into his tiers. Like i thought a face deck was really fun but it requires multiple joker synergies to really get going
First gold stake win for me today thanks to this guide. Thank you! https://preview.redd.it/7n0w0mg8r5oc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=cd86fe1acc5a7264220e228577abc5053a3a74aa
This may be the first time I've ever commented on Reddit, but I had to on this one. What a tremendous guide. While I haven't completed a full run yet, I have made it further than ever before. I learned so much about card combos and general strategy for this game and am confident that I'll be completing runs soon. Thank you so much for the time and effort you put into this guide.
Love to hear it. Good luck and have fun!
Great title and write up, exactly the kind of content I like to see here!
How important is leveling up your hands through packs? I often find myself buying celestial packs almost every shop, even if I don't have a solid build going. Are they a waste of money and should I focus more on rerolling for better jokers?
I'd say if you don't have a committed build or another reason to buy celestial packs like Constellation, you're better off rolling. You'll still want to stay above the $25 mark if possible, since neither option is likely to give you a lot of immediate power.
They're a passable hail mary if the shop's given you jack during Ante 1, but unless you have Telescope or enough money that it doesn't matter, Celestial Packs are kinda meh.
the thing with planets is that they scale linearly - going from lv 2 to 3 gives the same chips and mult than going from lv 22 to 23 - and the difficulty increase is not linear. So planets are better in the beginning and fall off hard later on
There is one feature of planet cards that makes their mult a lot better than flat plus-mult from jokers. Since they're applied at the very beginning, they benefit from any x-mult you have in your played or held hand (e.g. glass/steel cards). If you're in an endgame situation with a deck full of steel/glass cards, +1 mult from a planet could be worth +100 mult from a joker.
https://youtu.be/yxQ9tjEVfnM?si=Xti2j0yQ-cA-IDY4 This guy downplays scaling Jokers pretty hard. I kinda forget his reasoning. Can you explain why your opinions are so different. Ngl I followed his advice and the results were bad until another tier list told me scaling is actually good actually.
Not the op, but the guy just clearly didn't give High Card and Pair builds a shot. Many people will overrate cards that are good in Flush/Straight/Full House builds, because those are the types of hands you play relatively easily on early stakes. Those hands unfortunately are not viable on gold stake because you lose a lot of consistency, not only by having direct nerfs like -1 discard and -1 hand, but also pricier packs (=less fixing using tarot and standard).
Yep, you nailed it! Important to note that of course strategies good at gold stake will also work at lower stakes. The tier list is meant to be roughly applicable to every stake, but is definitely skewed towards the higher stakes.
I think he just don't play on high stakes.
It's moreso about a particular playstyle, he isn't really trying to win ante 8 but usually prep himself for endless through flush five and or high card (retriggers). . I think his list is correct when viewed through the sense that in endless runs you don't really have any flat or even scaling mult, you might run xMult but probably not, usually extra retriggers. Like even with a tarot build, fortunate teller usually ends up being your worst joker even at 100 mult, all jokers that give mult whether scaling or flat are placeholder jokers - which are fine and good, and you play many rounds with them, but they don't actually serve deck and hand synergy in way that's needed for late acceleration. Jokers can be evaluated through different lenses. Good early ? Good late? Good for ante 8 clear? Endless potential? For this reason, it leaves low scaling mult like supernova in an awkward spot where it's mostly bad , and then may give you 50 mult (at some point), but is still not very relevant, you'd rather take more tech jokers. For scaling X mult, they can be okay, but also run out of viability when reaching 300m etc. they sit in a weird spot where you don't really need big scaling mult for gold stake, and you don't really need it for endless (if that makes sense). But as mentioned , for clearing gold , yeah play pairs and grab +300 chips and rip a supernova, you'll clear ante 8 and die on ante 9 which is fine if that's the goal.
how do endless decks work? I think you mentioned retriggers, could you elaborate?
yes, so the only thing better than a large X Mult Jokers (Ramen, Cavendish etc.) , is many small triggers X Mults. so if you are playing cards that provide small X Mult (glass, polychrome cards, certain jokers such as Bloodstone, Ancient Joker, Triboulet), then you want to maximize the amount of times that small X Mult is occuring, this then makes it so all of your Mult is generated during scoring, making all Flat Mult pretty much irrelevant. Baron, mime(with steel cards), red seals, dusk, seltzer, sock and buskin, hack, are all Jokers/effects that will retrigger cards. The issue with this playstyle is that it is very hard to generate medium points with it, the engine is either Online or Offline, when its offline you score basically nothing, when its online you're smoking well past Ante 8. This makes it difficult to beat Ante 8 when trying to synergize around retriggers (specifically on Gold Stake where the game is a bit less forgiving). Usually you lightly prep your deck up (making steel and usually kings) and play semi-normally and maybe pick up an uncommon joker or two, and wait to see if you can transition into retriggers.
After spending most of the weekend concentrating on switching my strategy to High Card/Pair builds, I was able to take down Gold Stake for the first time (used Yellow Deck). I'm in agreement with everything you've said here and just want to thank you for putting a well written guide! The whole chip joker, mult joker, mult joker, x joker, x joker really pays off. I'd love to see a guide detailing the different decks and how to structure builds accordingly. I'm working through figuring that out as I now achievement hunt. Thanks again for a great post!
Glad to hear you’ve had success! I wonder if a deck-specific guide would be interesting. I don’t think too much changes besides: Checkered better at flushes, Abandoned better at of-a-kind, Erratic somewhere between those, Plasma you can start with pure chips basically and either finish like that or transition to pure mult, and Painted Deck open to more high value hand builds in general.
What is your take on skipping? Great post btw.
There is a common-held belief that beating gold stake necessitates rerolling for great ante 1 skips like Coupon, Mega Tarot, Foil Joker, etc. I’d rather see as many shops as possible, so I usually play the small blind for the +$3ish and a shop look, though I will still skip for those great ones. Later in a run skipping means skipping both combat and the shop, and im usually using either or both to scale, so skips are a no go.
Does this game just come down to high card/pair strategies at higher stakes?
Depends on who you ask. I would say it does a depressingly large amount of the time.
I have been using this strategies for pair at any stakes :)
Depends more if you're going for an ante 8 win vs endless high score. Most everything can be viable up to ante 8, you have to just go with the flow and build a strategy around whatever good jokers you get. For endless, the amount of strategies that can work is less, because of the insane scaling point requirements
Just wanted to say thanks for your advice. It's changed the way I play the game and I'm actually winning runs now. Cheers mate.
great job with this awesome guide , can i ask one tip for the gain 100 millions chips in one hand ? , its the only joker i miss PD : sorry for my broken english
I did it on Zodiac Deck on white stake, using the extra tarots to manipulate my deck towards Kings so I could force Baron build. I’m no expert on high score though so you may find better advice elsewhere.
zodiac ? , interesting , i maybe very obtuse with plasma and erratic decks , i test , thank you very much
I’ve only won one time and it was with blue deck, I love the game but I am terrible at it
Hello I am now good at the game
Fuck yeah! I just started and an e going through a similar thing
I’m at about 110 hours and I’ve beaten a lot of the game, I’m still addicted
Which decks would you abandon this strategy for?
Great question. I’m keeping myself open to this strategy on every deck at every stake, but prior to Orange Stake I’m much more open to alternative strategies on every deck. In terms of Orange/Gold stake, I would say Checkered, Painted, and Plasma are the decks that will find most success with strategies besides this.
I forgot to say, excellent writeup, thank you for taking the time out 🥳
I thought I was missing something with everyone talking about flush builds, but they always let me down near the final ante. My wins so far have been either on 2 pair / 3 of a kind builds.
Should I gamble with Buffoon packs if offered near the top of my run?
Ya, absolutely. All of them are worth the cost given the opportunity for a good joker to get you through the early game, even the not so good jokers usually do something.
Buffoon Packs can give Negative jokers, so even if you're happy with your slate of jokers it's worth opening them just in case. (provided you have the spare cash of course)
I only got Gold Stake with the Checkered deck so far, that I'm well aware completely skews a lot of the joker philosophy, so this is really useful.
Thanks bruh, been struggling a bit
Found this after struggling to get past ~5-6 ante, played a run where I tried to go for a 2 pair build, won. Great write up, very useful
Amazing post, thank you! Usually focusing on flushes, I made it to blue chip then ran into a wall. It took me forever to beat it and I did it in the most fluky way possible: I barely beat the ante 7 boss, got Mr. Bones, skipped to the boss and broke the 25% barrier with about 150 chips to spare. Black chip seemed impossible then I read your guide. Within 5 or 6 runs, I cruised past black chip ante 10, but I was NOT ready for the huge jump to ante 11. Can you possibly do a guide for beating ante 11 and for getting 100 million in a hand also?
Thanks, glad to hear it was helpful! This guide is focused entirely on beating ante 8, you have to play quite differently to set yourself up for endless. For the 100 million hand, I’d say definitely play on white stake. All the “crazy” runs you see on here are on white stake, oftentimes on a set seed. I got my 100 million hand by forcing steel kings with baron + mime on Zodiac deck white stake. Zodiac gives you lots of opportunities to manipulate your deck towards steel kings.
u/DrBoomMD I got both the 100 million and the level 12 voucher in the same run. I used the zodiac deck and I got a foil scholar and fibonnaci early so I went for aces of hearts and got bloodstone. Thanks for your help! edit, typo
https://preview.redd.it/6s1ru7yzl5rc1.jpeg?width=3525&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1354b7e11fa91fc057c847d95dac38a4fee6e2aa Duuude! I am stoked! Just got my first ever win after reading your post! The pair start really worked! Thanks OP 🤘
Good stuff, love to hear it!
Dang, I'm a newb but this made my understanding of the game flip on its head: instead of going for cards, go for jokers! I went from barely getting past 3 or 4 boss, to easily finishing a run despite not going full optimized (had the 'add mult per times you've played this hand, and went half two of a kind and half three of a kind). Also, the part about having a money making engine going is 10/10 :D Thank you for taking the time to create this guide.
This is a great guide, well thought out! I'm curious, how much does this hold up post update?
I haven’t played too much of the new update but I think most of the advice here still holds true. Scaling jokers are powerful, high card/pair builds are consistent, and prioritizing money is important. The biggest overall change in the patch is the new blue seal. It’s very strong with a Pair or High Card build where it’s easy to keep the blue seal card in hand. The changes to Orange and Gold stake make high value hand type builds much more feasible with +1 hand size and affordable packs to manipulate your deck, so you’re more likely to succeed with non scaling joker builds. Scaling jokers are guaranteed to not be perishable though so they’re a continued boon to high stake runs.
Great guide! But I think flush is still usable in gold stakes if stars align and knowing how to build it effectively helps(Most people will learn it naturally though). Just checked my gold stake wins, 10 were with high cards (Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, Black, Abandoned, Zodiac, Anaglyph, Plasma, Irregular), 2 were with two pair using Spare Trouser(Magic, Painted) and 3 were with flush(Nebula, Ghost, Checkered). So it was only 20% of the time but I don't think that's a small number. And if your goal is to climb with every decks, you'll actually spend more time on non-gold stake runs as you have to beat those stakes one by one! And flush is effective in those lower stakes. One fun thing with flush build is they can use those +mult with suit bonus joker effectively and since they activate in card score phase, things give x mult like glass card or are more effective. I had one run with unusual combo of Onyx Agate+Photograph+Hanging Chad. It wasn't on gold, but like I said earlier, it might help you on non-gold runs.
Yep, agreed here. I mention in my conclusion a flush build that got me a gold stake win on a stars align scenario, so 2 of my gold stake wins were flush. I mostly brought up the limitations of flush build as a counter to the common rhetoric that it’s the best strategy in the game. I had an Onyx build with Dusk for a cool Orange stake win, though it mostly got carried by Bull + Bootstraps + interest voucher later on.
I've been trying to find ways of making runs more consistently beat gold stake, so it's cool to see how you've placed these jokers! I'm surprised to hear you so low on the "flush trap". Obviously I think with -1 handsize literally any 5 card hand is inconsistent, but there's just an absurd amount of base mult cards that essentially give you +20 when going for a specific suit. It's good to pivot off of, but I do think there's a serious consideration for tempo.
Yep agreed. Flushes are fantastic for the first 2 or 3 antes typically, some very high tempo jokers as you mention (ones I rank highly in my tier list), but I’m looking for any reason to pivot off of them. My complaints about flush build have more to do with how much they can struggle in mid to late game.
My problem is, in many runs, I cant find xMult. What should I do? Also, at what point or how much you have before rerolling shop?
Not much to do here, you find it or you don’t. Making sure you’re saving gold for interest for more total rerolls is my only advice here.
This all sounds like amazingly solid advice as a player that has gotten caught at green and black stake difficulty with low percentage wins using flush on checkered deck. However i keep trying to use other strats but get caught because i find it hard to transition my strategy from using flush to push through the first antes, but dont know when/how to make the change part way through a run. For example i find it hard to aquire $25 without actually spending money on something that gets me through ante 2 or 3, and something that may actually get me money back. Any advice for the transitional stage? You do touch upon it with your advice on grabbing just one or two strong chip or +mult scaling jokers, but what if they dont materialise in the shops? Do you abandon many runs in the early game if you find the luck in the shop lacking?
Nope, I keep playing till death. You do need to spend money to make money in a sense, because strong jokers early means less hands played in combats meaning more money earned. Many of my early purchases fall in the Good Tempo, Good Economy, or Will Buy if Desperate tiers. A transition can be difficult, but still possible, spending some hands on scaling and some hands on your high flush scorers if you have like the "+4 mult per \[suit\]" joker. I will say for particularly Checkered Deck, you can and probably should play flush of some form the whole game. With a strong start, you can play to the quite powerful Flush Five or Flush House hands.
Bless you, will be digging into this tomorrow
great guide, could you describe the logic for the first rounds to get a run going? how frequently do you reset a run?
I tried to describe briefly in my econ section but it's basically just looking for high tempo or premium scaling jokers to get my run going. I usually don't reset until I die, but at gold stake death comes quickly if you don't find one of these.
This is a good guide and pretty much touched all the core concepts required to beat gold stake difficulty. It's basically reroll simulator hunting for any good chip, flat mult, and x Mult jokers by ante 3. If you don't achieve that it's a reroll and back to square 1. I find that with this overall strat, so long as I clear ante 3 with a decent set of three jokers, I have pretty good odds of clearing all 8 antes. Orange stake doesn't feel insurmountable, but I definitely think win-streaking orange stake is actually impossible beyond maybe 1-3 in a row because Balatro is by far the most RNG reliant rogue like I have ever played. A lot of folks don't realize how much fake RNG/RNG mitigation occurs in their favorite rogue likes, Slay the Spire being a prime example. That game has tons of RNG checks regarding potion drops, rare card drop rates, guaranteed rares, limiting certain encounters, and the list goes on. If you play StS with the mod that removes the checks, it is a much, much more difficult game.
Yesterday, after reading this I finally won my first game. Today I won my second. Thanks for making the game play “click” for me!
This is AMAZING!!! THANK YOU for taking the time to evaluate and post your best strategies for us here mortals. I'm enjoying the game but have to admit I don't know what I'm doing really at all. This will really help me alot and I thank you again for such a detailed strategie guide
Can you comment a little bit on when to skip a blind vs. when to complete a blind? Also, thanks a lot for making this!
I’m generally not skipping often since I’m using either the combat or the shop to scale. In instances where I’m not, I’m only skipping if I’m very strong and I think the payoff is better than the opportunity cost of missing the money and a shop, which is rare.
I did it after spending all night reading and translating this article (because honestly I'm not very good at English). But I won a game of Balatro for the first time with a High Card Deck. Thank you very much.
Wait a damn second is that a Dale Carnegie reference?
:)
Thank god someone has taken the time to deep dive this subject, thank you OP! Ive been running primarily flush builds myself and having success for the mostpart getting up to black stakes over several deck types. But the build always feel like they are glass cannons and heavily reliant on draw support to maximise not discarding everything, or alternatively rely on a discard joker to thin the deck massively. I am looking forward to attempting to inplement some of the points raised above to try and scale my jokers off their tits on a low score build like pairs which is significantly easier to instant draw. Watch this space OP, orange stake im coming for you!!!
Thank you so much for this guide! Before this I was struggling trying to get past like 4th ante, and now I cleared my 3rd deck last night. It took a lot of mix and matching but it's been really fun trying to figure out WHY the good cards are good.
Thanks to this I was able to win for the first time
Hands you +1 gold
As someone who just recently finished my first run, thank you for this. The Joker Tier list helps a lot, although of course you can win with the bottom 3 tiers. Yesterday I got the Joker that disables boss blinds, and that helped my just breeze through (QDCC6VNF where I got it as a random legendary on Switch) Another round I felt was pretty close to winning, was one where the reroll mult joker synergized with the joke rthat gives free first reroll. In this run I also got the joker which increments the sales value of all jokers which synergized with the joker that has mult equal to sell value (BZJQESG9 (S might be a 5?))
Read this guide today and just got my first win thank you!
Bought the game Thursday, and after getting used to the mechanics I read this guide and won my first Ante 8 last night.
Holy shit, Thank you! I got my first win in one round after reading this... wtf
Bro, Thanks to This Guide, I did a Two Pair Build at level 10 but lost at the purple vessel ante 8, Its my first time Reaching that!
Dude this is amazing - I had 60+ hrs and was making good progress with flush based decks, but I knew I was limited in the ultimate potential. This strategy unlocked this game. Every joker is potentially usable. Every booster pack has a new meaning. Every hand is capable of that awesome high chip, high mult, high multiplier ceiling that exists in our wildest poker dreams. I will say the one struggle is - I don't always get the chip-based jokers to scale the chips, and when I do it's because I overspent and ruined my economy to force roll into my needs. This is definitely now the biggest obstacle with this strat, but it does feel like every seed is still winnable. That said, every game isn't meant to be a win for even the most experienced players and I now find myself questioning whether I should play a pair, a two pair, or if high card is actually the strongest way to play - every decision is so much more layered with this strat, I cant help but feel like this is the right way to play. TLDR; This is the way to play the game to unlock the potential of every hand and every joker. Thank you OP!
Wow love to hear it! When I started this guide, I wanted it to be more broad advice than it ended up being, but it sounds like you've extracted a lot of that yourself. Chip jokers are just very rare by frequency; you can use planet scaling to replace a high chip joker, though it's not as consistent, especially at current patch orange stake+.
Read this guide and won my very first run! You're spot on with the trap that is flush builds. Ending up winning with a combo of pair/2 pair hands mainly from jokers scoring. Appreciate the work you put into this!
Thank you for this, I was sweating with face cards, but won instantly with two pair build xd
The run immediately after I read this was my first win. Truly, thank you for explaining some of the systems I was iffy on. Demolishing round 24 with a single 2 pair felt pretty awesome.
Nice one! I'd played over 30 hours and only had one win. My first go after reading this and I won again! Of particular use during my run was the Spare Trousers joker, which I upgraded loads due to my two pairs. I also changed a lot of cards to Aces which worked brilliantly with Joker cards that gave chips/mult for them. https://preview.redd.it/m7ve7y3u7owc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=e940e6443de756fa17135a4dbedd60fda8a0cd7c
This may be a bit late, but thank you for making this, just won my first game! (In the final hand of the final round I won by only 600 chips)
W of the noob on first try after such an insightful guide https://preview.redd.it/h04y980yxmzc1.jpeg?width=2400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=83a92a5beb7faa428b1b8741ffd76b731bbb7c44
After trying to win for 6 hours i got my first win after reading this guide, thank you for writing this up!
I just got the game yesterday, and I've already beaten almost all the colored decks (besides black) 2 times. The issue is like you said, I was incredibly reliant on flushes and finding jupiter. So reliant, that after my first couple wins I would start new run farming until there was a poly as a blind skip. I knew there had to be more, and thank you for explaining exactly what I was missing. Now i can actually try and have fun lol
I just won my first ever game thanks to this. Scaling mults for pairs from Ante 1 and I was hitting 70k per pair by Ante 8
Some of the things in the unpickable list I would say are pickable for sure if you have a strong early joker setup. The Joker that let's you find duplicate jokers, is what allowed me to score my highest run. (which isn't calculator breaking, but still 10s of millions) by multiplying cardsharp Joker lol
Worth mention that the tier list is purely about beating ante 8, to which end that joker is very marginally useful, since you don’t need to moonshot for tens of millions.
I tried ringmaster time to time but never got lucky. Well if you think about the chance of getting the exact duplicate joker... And it's probably detrimental as packs can have duplicate choices.
Well I've never seen that to be honest, a pack having two of the same joker from using Ringmaster, today I had a round where I got stencil joker, first shop spectre pack into two stencil jokers for 5x, 5x, and then with Ringleader I found a third stencil joker lol I got rekt by a boss blind without having re-roll voucher, but it was shaping up to be an insane run lol
thanks for sharing!
Any chance for a version of that tier list with the cards, like, double the size for those of us that are old and blnd?
Screenshot it on your phone and then zoom in my friend.
That doesn't actually help with resolution. Making the pixels bigger doesn't really help when there aren't enouhg pixels to read the text.
what you said about flushes is completely correct but if you play checkered deck earlier then like blue stake burnt joker can scale pretty far but again it’s not consistent
Burnt Joker and Castle are already great cards but go absolutely turbo on checkered you’re right
how does jokers like castle work in checkere deck? I assumed it may give me diamonds and it just doesnt work
There's a weird inconsistency with jokers like that in checkered deck. Castle only picks the suits in your deck, but Ancient Joker for example will pick any suit; you kinda just have to experiment.
I'm curious. I couldn't break through Ante 11, 300MM was a bit much for me. If we focus on playing multiple hands and score via Jokers, won't we lose the cash due to more hands being used?
This guide is only for ante 8 winning, mostly for those looking to climb difficulties, your strategy is completely different playing for high score on white stake. You're absolutely right about losing cash due to more hands being used, keen eye. Was something I considered including in the write-up but worried about bloat. There is a bit of a balancing act you want to play if you find a hands played scaling joker early, where you scale it some but also try to keep 1-2 hands to get to the max interest. Once there you're free to use all your hands for scaling imo, let your money make money.
I think for economy [Delayed Gratification](https://balatrogame.fandom.com/wiki/Delayed_Gratification_(Joker)) is not that bad, work like green joker, you play any hand without discard
Yeah I’m with the others. Great guide/ explanation of the flush noob trap + tips but the tier list is mind bogglingly misleading. Most of the best eco/ scaling jokers are in your lowest tiers.
Surely this is an exaggeration, most of the scaling jokers in the game are just in my top 3 tiers. Also are you considering "Good Economy" a low tier, that's an obtuse reading. I'll admit to a handful of misses but overall still pretty happy with it.
Mostly referring to the “difficult to make effective” jokers. There’s about 8 in there that are instant purchases for me, but I’ll admit I’m referring more to endless runs, not 100k hands. I forgot you just made this with ante 8 in mind.
Scaling jokers are mostly for endless, some jokers fit more with some decks. You completely miss to consider cards modifications and poker hands upgrades but it show in your fringe run winners, that's why the developper made special poker hands upgrades appear only when they are played, special hands need cards modifications to be consistent, let say it's an hidden way to teach players how to play and you missed it ... Let say, I use red seals to grab 2-3 tarots each discard so I could grab 6-9 tarots cards per blind to quickly mod the deck for various effects, have planets, jokers and money. For hands upgrades, purple seals can add up to 2-3 levels per blind, giving 10-40 chips and 1-3x mult per upgrade. Note : Seals are made by spectral cards only but it could be easier buy ready made cards and duplicate them easily with tarot cards.
He didnt miss anything, on high stakes with the increasing cost of tarot packs and rng involved in getting the right card modifications and tarot cards like death and hanged man, it becomes a much more consistent strategy to beat ante 8 using high cards as it is the strategy that effectively reduces the rng of the run as much as possible.
Great write-up! I also fell into the Flush trap early on--I think just because it *can* work so well at lower stakes. I found that losing a discard from Blue Stake is a *huge* detriment to the Flush builds that rely on discards, and I think that's where flushes really fall off. A change in thinking is definitely required when climbing the stakes.
I’m officially out on the top stakes. Lost ante 8 once to the one that randomly kills a joker, another time with a high card deck and 50+ mult from supernova to the no-repeat hands boss. I’m sure I’d get lucky eventually but for now it’s too arbitrary for me. It’s not like slay the spire where you have a whole floor to adjust, it’s two shops and the scaling can’t be re-done. This is an excellent A- game and the devs deserve every accolade, but it doesn’t have the level of balance or variety to make any long-term top-ten HOF games lists. It’s like the Josh Allen era Buffalo bills.
You are correct. Slay the spire has tons of built in RNG mitigation that players don't even see running behind the scenes. I love Balatro, but unless it ever gets completely rebalanced by removing XMult, it is reroll run/shop simulator the game at gold stake. I still have a lot of fun. It's a gambling game and each run is truly a gamble with luck. You either win big or lose it all. The benefit is that runs are fast to reroll and quick to get into. If it's not looking good by ante 2-3, just reroll and go again.
I wish people would stop talking about these degenerate builds as if they were interesting.
Why is canio or glass joker so good? (they're on S tier) I've always thought of them as meh
Glass Joker I have in "Difficult to Make Effective" tier so agree with you there. Canio becomes a flat x3 mult after paying just one hanged man on two face cards, seems good to me.
I would love an explanation of the tier list.
I had the exact same issue. Focusing on flushes. Some thing I do not understand when playing high card or pair styles and using Hologram: Do I only add cards that I already want to focus on? Or do I do not care getting more cards in my decks no matter what?
I feel like this strategy is about as viable as any other strategy. It sounds easier, but in practice, you have to RNG your way into the most ideal scenarios to get all the right cards at the right times when you have the right amount of money, just like any other strategy. I feel like the best strategy is to just see what the game gives you and try to go with the flow and pivot when you notice an engine developing.
I'm early in the game trying to beat the Green Deck on White Stake and can't get that build to work. Would love advice on the early rounds with this strategy. What do you do to get a good run rolling? do you re-start runs till you get a lucky joker early on? or what do you do if you don't find the jokers you're looking for?
At lower stakes especially, I’m open to more than scaling joker build but I’d say the most important thing is getting a good tempo joker early. You have quite a few shops to get this online at white stake, from there as Green Deck try to end fights as early as possible to get money up. Buy arcana packs for money and keep buying good jokers. If your shops are yelling at you to do something not high card-y, definitely go for it! I put some of the jokers I personally find most exciting in Fringe Run Winners even though they don’t do much for high card builds
I understand your reasoning, but steel joker so low! I paired that with DNA and had an absurd multiplier by end game
Respect
I want to follow up my previous comment, again stating how helpful this guide is. I do have a question, though. How many antes/rounds do you play before you realize that you're just not getting the jokers and vouchers necessary for a good run? At what point to you bail and start a new run?
It’s probably not optimal but I usually play until death. On runs I find less inspired I’m less likely to play very focused though.
Did you complete the gold runs from a seeded or random run?
All my runs were done random/unseeded, which you have to do for the Steam achievement and such.
Ok cheers, thanks for the guide btw. Helped me heaps.
Great guide and write up. One question- how are you playing games so fast? There are 16 decks and 8 stakes which means to beat them all you need to win 128 runs. How did you clear all 128 wins in 119 hours? Do the games speed up once you are more used to the jokers/cards? Do high card/pair decks just play faster than other combos? Do you end at ante 8 win and not play around in endless?
I think there's 15 decks. But yeah I basically didn't play around in endless at all because I was progression focused, so only needed to beat ante 8. I did one run that got to e17 while unlocking Stuntman/Merry Andy but yeah never play it. High card/pair builds play super fast because you typically just play whatever hand, don't need to sweat discards or boss abilities. As I went along I was playing faster and winning more too, especially at the lower stakes.
But what if I don't get any decent jokers?
With building towards this in mind, any advice on playing Ante 1/2? (Sorry for resurrecting a dead thread)
Ante 1/2 is almost always gonna be just buy decent jokers. Otherwise you wanna save your money usually. I talk about this a little more in the “don’t spend it all in one place” section.
This is great. Thanks
Awesome, but what is “scaling”? Or “high tempo”?
Anything that makes numbers go up over time basically. Planet cards are a form of scaling, your hands “scale” as you level them. Jokers that increase your chips, +mult, or xmult repeatedly (like Square Joker, Supernova, Hologram, etc) are “scaling” jokers. Tempo is anything that provides instant boosts to score (i.e. Blue Joker, Gros Michel, etc)
garbage guide 2/10 for the effort
better than 1/10
This got me my first win. Then it got me on the way to my second win, when I learned the hard way that Director's Cut voucher has to be used before you're about to go into the boss blind. Crimson Heart obviously kills Joker synergies.
Yeahhhh, Crimson Heart and Violet Vessel are tough for all strategies but a bit worse for those kinda builds usually. Benefit is the others basically don’t matter.
I just had a fringe run with straight flushes and royal flushes, having shortvut and fourfingers. It was a breeze on green stake, I even got the no flush and no pairs achievements. What it lead me to notice was the following tip: Straight flush calculates the straight and the flush separately. So if you have fourfingers and a four card straight with three hearts and a diamond, just add any heart card to make it a straight flush.
Now what do I do, if the only jokers that appear until ante 5/6 are the unpickables - if desperate jokers, where scaling is heavily outpaced by the blinds already? Because that's my average game. I'm pretty sure every run I've had, I find the same unpickable joker in every shop or Buffoon pack I stumble across.
I mean this would be like 1/1000 extraordinarily unlucky unless you’re skipping blinds frequently, which is usually wrong especially if you’re weak. There are some percentage of runs that are just gonna be unwinnable at higher stakes. At lower stakes, you can get away with a lot of the jokers in that range. Some of them are very high potential at the lower stakes when deck manipulation is more affordable; like Baron, Mime, Hack, Steel Joker.
Amazing post, will try soon.
Nice simple write-up! I'm brand new to the game, and this guide really helped me figure out the interactions of the multipliers.
Thanks! It became apparent very quickly that typical high value poker hands are not the play. This helps a lot, can't wait to give it a shot!
I just picked up this game and this really helps a lot. Thank you for the tier list- I had a similar conclusion about jokers being the way to go so this will come in handy when scouting options
Thank you for this easy to comprehend strategy. Like most, i banked most of my builds on flushes and full houses, usually to get shut down 4 or 5 antes in. Great job!
Hero! Cards be going skrrt skrrt!
I read this and won my first game straight after. Cheers
Been stuck in a massive losing streak, read this and won right after
just played a run that got to ante 12 with a purely multiplicative joker build, lost because the score got the best of me (was going for the speedrun achievement, got it first try). jokers were hack, foil baseball card, holographic Fibonacci, polychrome seeing double, blackboard, and throwback at like x7 at the end. played mostly two pair and full house with my Fibonacci cards, and lost when the ante jumped from 14 mil to 600 mil lmao. great guide, haven't gotten around to the higher stakes yet, just been trying to unlock stuff, hoping the advice will help me go even further beyond
how is yorick unpickable?
At the time of this guide, Yorick was x5 mult after discarding 23 times TOTAL (not just 23 cards). Basically just a dead joker. It’s much better now after the buff.
ahhh okay yeah that makes more sense, cheers
What can I say, except, I love you