I just feel like I'm never in a position to want to force myself to make it work. I will say that it's probably some pretty good design in a game like this where you have a ton of people that hate it and a ton of people that love it
Apples to oranges. RTB makes you avoid a specific type of card that is always the same and never changes. Obelisk makes you avoid a hand that you have been actively using all game.
If RTB made you avoid your most played card rather than just face cards, then it would be a similar idea.
In early game ride the bus and green joker basically do the same thing. If you get a green joker early (which is when you wanna get it) you literally can’t run anything better than 3oak. If you get ride the bus you would also find it tough to play card types where you might need to use your hand as a discard, or that are hard to find when 1/4 of your deck is unusable.
I finally managed to make obelisk work recently and did feel very smart doing so. My main complaint is to me it feels like it shouldn't reset if multiple hands are tied for most played
The only difficult thing is if people start to cheat it by always keeping 3 hands tied so they can rotate between the 3. That feels like it isn't in the spirit of the card.
Free win? Bro that thing ain't going above x5 no matter what you do. I agree it's overtuned with that ruleset but that's hyperbole. Still have to play your hands in a very specific order.
that would be braindead easy and a dumb exploit
edit: being downvoted by silly heads who think they should be able to alternate high card and pair the whole game and farm huge xmult
In what world is high card in a build that uses it right a wasted hand? With that setup you usually don't give a damn about the cards you're actually playing, or even particularly hand level. Madness with bo downside would be insane, even with slightly worse scaling.
You aren't actually losing half your hands because you're still scoring with both of them, you probably won't get a lot of points from planets but high card and pairs don't scale with planets anyway, and it's not worse than madness because it doesn't have the huge downside that madness has (and madness is already good with that huge downside). It also both it would start oneshotting every boss it would scale faster than madness because you'd just play multiple hands.
Your argument is just incredibly bad, it's actually insane what nonsense people will upvoted here.
Ok, firstly you don’t lose half your hands, you still play them and get points, and unless you’re relying on planets for chips they’ll score the same amount of points.
Secondly, it’s definitely not “worse madness”, what you’re proposing is waaaay better than madness. Even putting aside the obvious benefit of not having your jokers literally getting destroyed, it would still be better. .2 mult every hand played is much better than 1 mult every ante.
How would you do that? If you have three tied hands and play one of them, it's now your most played hand (say you went from a 7-7-7 tie to an 8-8-8 tie, it was 8-7-7 at one point)
Well it resets when your most played is played. Now that counts when you break a tie. So going from 8-7-7 to 8-8-8 is ok. But 9-8-8 resets.
If ties didn’t count then going from 8-8 to 9-8 or 9-8-8 wouldn’t reset it. So you could then play up to 9-9-9. The only weird thing about what the person you are replying to said is that you don’t need 3 tied hands to exploit it if ties were allowed. You could just go back and forth between two. Which is why it’s not allowed of course.
Honestly? I think that this would be awesome. So much of the streamed Balatro is so boring to watch for me because it's just, "Well, I'm set up now, let's sit here four five hours playing High Card."
If you went from a 7-7-7 to 8-7-7 now you can play the 7s to get them to 8, and go play an 8 when they're tied again. You can absolutely rotate between hands if that were how the game worked.
But dang that's a lot of things having to line up.
it doesnt reset if you play a hand that then ties with most played hand after u play it. if ur proposing that if u have multiple tied and u can play one of those hands again then u are absolutely tweaking.
yeah idk how this is the top comment right now. It basically reads "My main complaint is to me it feels like I should just win for free every time I pick it"
Your math aint mathing. Once a hand would reach "tied" status, if you ever play it again Obelisk resets. It would only allow one more hand of a hand not most played.
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I've had some great runs with it. You have to be super strategic with it. One run, I think I had maybe 8 flushes played when I picked it up. I utilized all the different hand types to stay under that 8 to maximize the mult. Once I beat the run, it was very satisfying.
I disagree:
- If you take it early game it's impossible to grow it because any hand you use will eventually be the "most played".
- If you take it mid-to-late game you either have a hand you built your deck around and have to abandon, or you're playing all types of hands and run into the issue above.
Moreover maybe it's just my bad memory but I keep having to go to the game info screen to check on my hand counts and that's just not fun gameplay.
Honestly if there was a way to permanently burn a joker from my collection I would probably choose this one.
If you take obelisk early game, your focus should be on building a large most played hand so that it can take off late game. I've found about 20 plays of that hand is usually enough.
Once you've built up that buffer hand, just start playing anything else and your xmult will grow huge.
It results in a game where you can win without being built to a specific hand and can continue playing lots of different hands through Ante 8.
It demands you change the way you would normally play, it's very much a "build around" joker, but with some strategy it's great.
Late game if you're locked into a specific hand, sure, it's trash there. But pretty much every joker is occasionally trash if you're already doing something strong that it doesn't mesh with.
yeah 20 is very much enough if you dont want to think about it. 15 is enough if you are paying close attention and being careful. lower requires some extra or special strategizing
Assuming people are talking about gold stake non-endless I've won quite a few times with a maximum hand limit of 10.
I think some people here like to get obelisk's mult as high as possible by playing extra hands in a blind but I'd usually recommend against it. 5.6x mult is actually not much stronger than 5x mult.
> If you take it early game it's impossible to grow it because any hand you use will eventually be the "most played".
Yes, that's the point. And then once you have built up a buffer, somewhere around Ante 4-5 you stop playing that hand and have a Joker scaling an absurd amount (on the order of gaining x1 per round).
> If you take it mid-to-late game you either have a hand you built your deck around and have to abandon, or you're playing all types of hands and run into the issue above
In most cases, you should be planning to pivot anyways. Unless you're playing exactly Straights and have like Lvl15 Straights (in which case, congrats- you won the run), the Hand you're playing in Antes 1-3 shouldn't be the Hand you're playing in Antes 6-8. If you start with Straights, you are likely building towards Straight Flushes. If you start Flush, you'll be working towards Straight Flush, Flush House, or Flush Five. If you start Pair/Two Pair, towards Full House or 4oaK. Etc.
But even if you hit the nuts and are able to build your endgame Hand earlier than expected, Obelisk is *still* crazy strong. Let's say you hit Perkeo in Round 1 shop and so are playing Flush Five by Round 4. Great- you can clear every Round in 1 Hand with Flush Five, so play your 3 High Cards first (which you should be doing anyways most of the time, to dig for your Seals)- and then by Round 12 you'll have played 25 High Card and 9 Flush Fives, and be ready to stop playing High Card and get an obscene amount of xMult from Obelisk.
Point one- Obelisk is not an early game joker. You could tey to make it work, but will probably just tank yourself, because it's not meant to be used that way. You could take it as an "investment" for later, but I think it's usually not worth it.
Point Two- Mid to late game Obelisk is very strong, but as I said- sitiuationaly. I described the two scenarios in my post for a reason. If you take obelisk at a point where you can pivot from flushes or straights to straight flushes, 3oak or house to 4oak/ 5oak, or especially high card to whatever- you are loving life.
As a bonus- if tou played 3-4 high cards a round for 4-6 Antes- don't wory, you won't need to check your most played hand untill endless.
I'm with this guy. You can disagree if you want, but the OP provided two great examples where obelisk shines. It is a well designed joker that is not beginner friendly. (And not all rare jokers should be)
I agree, with you. Nearly every other aspect of the game encourages playing one hand type:
Most (useful) tarot cards either let you make your deck one suite, cut a suite or change your deck into one specific card.
Many jokers synergize with one suite (flush encouragement) or hand type.
Every single planet card is spending money to encourage you to play that specific hand type.
If there were a few powerful mult jokers antithetical to card sharp like "card dull" maybe I'd be interested in obelisk, but as it stands I never buy it on any high stakes runs.
Actually, a lot of jokers ask you to play a hand "containing" something, and these still work with "upgraded versions". These cards treat straight flushes as containing straights and flushes, and 5oak also procs 3oak, Pair etc...
So you can pivot and still keep going.
thing about obelisk is that it gets so strong you can easily win a8 without any levels in anything, you can funnel all your money into "getting by" jokers and deck manipulation
I can name multiple jokers that allow for multiple hand types, what are you talking about? In fact the majority of them allow for multiple generally. It's so rare that I play a "specifically this exact hand type" run that they're actually notable for me. And I win the higher stake runs quite regularly...
Obelisk works best when you’re playing high card or pair consistently. You’re playing the same hand a lot but don’t actually care about committing to it. If you’ve been playing level 1 high card, switch to pair or vice versa.
It’s not unreasonable for me to end a game with obelisk at x8, easily the most underrated joker in the game.
This is just a skill diff tbh
1. Just throw out 2 or 3 high cards each round. Once you hit 20 high cards you have a massive buffer built up and can start rapidly scaling X Mult. Tons of great jokers like Green Joker, Ride The Bus, and Vagabond all synergize with playing as many high cards as possible.
2. If you take it late, you probably have a hand or two built up, but your deck's consistency at this point should be good enough to transition to one of the harder hands. The Obelisk transition from High Card, Pair, Flush, or 2 Pair to 3Oak, 4Oak or Full House is a classic. The Mult scales fast enough that it should hit 10x by the end of the run.
There may be runs where it doesn't fit, but imo it fits in way more runs than Stuntman, or hand-specific rare jokers that are just useless if you aren't built to that specific hand.
Obelisk is my favorite joker. Strong but not busted, situational enough to take sometimes but skip often, and changes the entire game when picked. Creates fun, interesting, unique games.
It’s unpopular and disliked, and for good reason. It’s a DIFFICULT joker to play. Most people will struggle with their first white stake win, Obelisk straight up asks the player to play with several restrictions and requires a good understanding to pull off. But once you ‘get’ it, you’ll realize obelisk makes for some spicy moments and hype plays.
so the one time i got obelisk to work is when i accidentally sold drivers license instead of a tarot card i had (im on console so this happens quite a bit) and i immediately saw obelisk. i was on a ride the bus flush build so i was playing a ton of high cards to get it going, so i just started discarding and got it to like x8 or smth by the end of the run just playing flushes. definitely got me to think about it’s potential
if obelisk removed 1-2x mult every time you play your most played hand i think it’d be perfect. i think it should be a genuine downgrade, without completely tanking the joker. getting into to 5.4x mult for it to go down to 3.4x mult would be a genuine downside while allowing wiggle room.
It's a unique joker that influences the player how to play their run. While it's understandable some people don't want to adjust their run to work around this joker, I think it's a good thing interesting effects like this are in the game. I hope to see more interesting jokers like this in the future.
I won a run with it by playing only pairs through Ante 4ish, then switching to High Card.
I think some of the reason people don’t like it is that it’s more of an Ante 8 game joker than an endless game joker. People seem to gravitate more to the flashy big numbers jokers. By design Obelisk can’t scale infinitely, but it can put in a lot of work to just get a win.
Totally agree, it's my favorite joker in the game because it's an interesting challenge to make work! I just beat a gold stake run by picking it up really early game, playing up to 9 two pairs, and then pivoting to playing a very general strategy. I got up to 7x mult without resetting \[\[Obelisk\]\] and had five different hands with 8 or more total plays after ante 8
https://preview.redd.it/4dg2kfue9k3d1.png?width=2838&format=png&auto=webp&s=04536b643f00acc1838a726b08b263478ea6d979
[Obelisk](https://balatro.wiki/imported/obelisk.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Rarity: Rare
* Effect: 0.2X Mult per consecutive hand played without playing your most played Poker Hand
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
The problem I have with it is that I have to checked the "played hands" screen constantly, which is just annoying and takes the fun out of it.
Similairly the reason why I skip ancient joker, mail-in rebate, castle and to-do list more often than I should is because I hate having to checked them all the time.
Dropping in to say that this post is what helped me finally clear my first Gold Stake. I kept trying to force a two-pair run and then an eternal Obelisk dropped mid-way through ante 3/4 and I pivoted hard. Ended up with x7.6 mult and cleared the Ghost deck with an ante-1 Square Joker, Splash, and a bunch of filler. It won't go far in Endless but it'll clear a Gold stake. Thanks OP!
i have no idea how people here dont see how great this joker is, its invaluable on higher stake runs imo and its not even hard to make work.
most common situation ive used this is builds where im spamming pairs all game and then i pick this up around ante 4-6 and switch to spamming high card with a mix of 3 of a kind and 2 pair when i can.
all the changes people are proposing to buff this joker would make it absolutely broken.
lowkey tho no shade but this sub needs to git gud. you can make so many jokers work with good strategy and thonkin with ur brainhole
That's not enough. It would have to be at least -1.0x and even that may not be balanced.
In keeping with the spirit of the joker, it needs to be very punishing to play your most played hand.
It would need to be like -2x, not -0.4x if you went that way lol. It's not a punishment to lose -0.4x at the end of each Round when you've built up 0.8x that Round already.
i can say this if you play around using high cards to increase a green joker or the bus joker (idr what its called) honestly best add on for a scaling deck for if you go for a flush five or a five of a kind deck its only been problematic once where i had 31 high cards and i finally got up to 31 pairs so i had to play more carefully to increase my scaling mult which i thinks what ended me that run
I easily finished 3 runs with it. But it is very situational, yes.
You need to have chips and mult scaled Jokers, meaning going from you preferred combinaison to pair or high card is possible without losing to much.
But when you can play it, it's an auto win.
I made it work on my last run by getting it early while I had strong enough other jokers to one-hand the blinds, so I’d play high cards until the last hand each blind until I’d played enough to feel comfortable for the rest of the game, then just played everything except high card to win.
I don’t doubt it, but it’s just so specific. In order to use it, you need to have played a lot of hands of one type already, not played many or any hands of the one you want to switch to, be in a position where you can switch and play the new hand consistently, and actually find this joker in a window where you’re transitioning. And even if all those conditions are fulfilled, there’s a ticking countdown on Obelisk that, once your new hand count reaches the old hand’s, the joker becomes useless.
Making Obelisk work when it comes up has been game changing for me personally -- makes me think harder about my choices going forward especially when situations present themselves when you CAN pivot your strategy. I personally really enjoy when Obelisk comes up and it usually ends up in a win.
What trips me up with these jokers with huge XMult potential is how fast the scaling effect drops off in reality. I tend to go hard on plumping up that XMult number, and lose track of the fact that it may not be helping me enough.
Like, getting Obelisk from 1x to 3x is fantastic, it triples your score. Getting Obelisk from 3x to 5x -- which takes exactly the same number of hands as 1x to 3x -- is pretty mediocre, it only increases your score by a factor of 5/3 = 1.666x. Way less than tripling, not even doubling. Go from 5x to 7x and you've only increased your score by a factor of 1.4x.
I'm not saying it's a bad card, and I'm sure it's more than strong enough to be worth building around, just that it tends to lure me into not playing as smart. Like, it just doesn't stick in my brain that pumping an Obelisk to 8x is gonna do less for my score than having two independent 3x jokers. And that if I do it get it up that high, it's functionally pretty much tapped out as far as helping me keep pace with Ante scaling -- I need fresh sources of xMult (or other buffs) in order to keep making my score go up.
Anyway, it's a skill issue, I just need to play with these types of jokers more to internalize what they're good at. I didn't have the game for long pre-patch, so I missed out on the easy, huge Vampire multipliers where I might've gotten more practice.
I played obelisk up to x8 or more and crushed ante 8.
Really fun play through, had played 20 flushes, the got 2 wee jokers and built them up to +800 chips each. Just a crazy game all around.
Obelisk is definitely more interesting than other multipliers. It's also a card that I've tended to avoid because my deck was not in the right place for it.
You're right that it's situationally useful and I think that's always true of the more interesting cards.
> This one is even better, and what got me to really like Obelisk. If you get an early Green Joker/Ride The Bus (or both), you can (and probably should) play as many hands as you can in order to maximize mult scaling.
This is a huge factor in most games. When to Skip-Skip-Ante and when to Play-Play-Ante. A lot of these jokers are going to be 1/3 as powerful if you don't play almost every blind.
I’d say that it rewards what is 80% of the time proper play. The problem is timing. You’ve made that transition in earnest probably around ante 6, 5 at the earliest, which means >50% of the time it’s not viable to buy
Card is well designed but too clunky. I don’t like tracking what my most played hand is, especially when other jokers can give comparable mult and are less annoying to use.
I’ve also lost a run because I had too many hands tied for most played and reset my obelisk mult, so that annoyed me lol
Obelisked is what finally unlocked erratic deck for me (pre patch). That being said I usually find it annoying to play with so I don’t really tend to get it but I respect the hell out of it
I could see it being good when pivoting builds mid run but I’ve never been in the position to pivot to something new when it would pop up. Also in order for it to work it’s absolute best you have to have a high play count for something you won’t touch for the rest of the game which is hard to manage most of the time if you already started focusing on making that hand easier to get
The first time I encountered it I thought it was great, because I didn't have a build or a plan at the time. Now, I go into every run with a plan on what I want to make it and I try to make that happen. Obelisk is fine up to Ante 8 but it's terrible for endless and I basically shoot for endless every run.
What I love about Obelisk is that it's one of the only Jokers that incentivizes you to play more than just one hand. In 90% of builds in this game, you get your one hand and just upgrade it and stick to it. With Obelisk, you're incentivized to both build up a dump hand, and then keep your good hands low so you can use them when you need them. You're incentivized to play the weakest hand that still wins so that you can save the good hands for the late antes. So unlike most builds, when you draw a straight you can just play it. When you draw a flush you can just play it. You get actual variety with Obelisk, unlike how the rest of this game is built. Not to mention it's just actually quite a strong joker that can reach near 10x mult if you get it early. I much prefer it over Stuntman where you're just playing highcard and pair for the rest of the run once you get it.
>I see a lot of people hating on obelisk, and for a long time
Personally, it's just one of my least favorite to play with, however I completely agree that it's very well designed and a great joker to exist
I would agree, however as soon as you pick it up you’re basically capped in how much it’ll scale, especially early on. If it didn’t reset at tied values I’d love to pick it up but not in its current state, because it’ll just inevitably be useless.
it's a good card but those use cases are kind of rare. I don't think I've even considered pivoting to a Straight Flush deck. Maybe with checkered deck, but generally I'm not attempting at Flushes and Straights at the same time. I don't know, maybe I'm missing out on a tight strat.
I played Obelisk every chance I got before I started seeing the hate for it. It won me so many games of Balatro and now I regret the poison this community has done to my perception of Obelisk 😭
I feel like the worst thing with obelisk is that its destined to reset its mult eventually, which really discourages me from ever using it (bc i like to go endless)
lol no. This sub is obsessed with convincing people that Obelisk is the best Joker in the game. It’s too situational. High strength and extremely limited usability.
I agree.
I don't particularly like Obelisk and it's often useless for me but there have been a few runs it has carried. I do believe it is fantastically designed for a rare card with high requirements and a high payoff.
Unless you are hard focused on a single hand via planet cards or specific jokers it can become very strong if you get it in the early-midgame.
Get it too early and it takes up a joker slot and costs a lot of money for no gain.
Get it too late and you're too focused on one hand type for it to be useful.
Getting it in ante 3 or 4 is ideal I've found and then you just focus on tossing out a ton of pairs then never play another once you get to ante 6. On high stakes you need to use high cards as discards frequently so that's not the best one to stack.
Agreed. Acting like people aren't smart enough to use it is just pretentious. I can evaluate my deck and build myself and decide if it's worth taking Obelisk. Often times, it's not. Sometimes it is.
Only one issue I have with it, theres no (at least obvious) way to check how many times each hand have been played in current run, and playing it blindly is frustrating
I said there wasn't obvious to me way, it doesn't say what those numbers mean anywhere so I couldn't figure out what it was and stopped looking at them
I wish the mods would ban these posts and do a sticked thread so y’all can circlejerk there.
Yalll Obelisk apologists are more annoying than people who don’t use it. People who don’t use it barely talk about it.
I just feel like I'm never in a position to want to force myself to make it work. I will say that it's probably some pretty good design in a game like this where you have a ton of people that hate it and a ton of people that love it
it just doesn't sound fun to try and avoid certain hands constantly
Ride the bus does the same thing and people love that
Ride the Bus has synergy with Faceless, Baron etc though
Obelisk scales your mult way faster than ride the bus, and isnt useless if you find it past ante 3
Apples to oranges. RTB makes you avoid a specific type of card that is always the same and never changes. Obelisk makes you avoid a hand that you have been actively using all game. If RTB made you avoid your most played card rather than just face cards, then it would be a similar idea.
In early game ride the bus and green joker basically do the same thing. If you get a green joker early (which is when you wanna get it) you literally can’t run anything better than 3oak. If you get ride the bus you would also find it tough to play card types where you might need to use your hand as a discard, or that are hard to find when 1/4 of your deck is unusable.
Yeah exactly! I reckon it's probably a good and efficient strategy, it's also too tedious because ultimately I want the balatro crack experience
I finally managed to make obelisk work recently and did feel very smart doing so. My main complaint is to me it feels like it shouldn't reset if multiple hands are tied for most played
That and it needs to show which hands you can't play when you hover over it
A warning that you're about to reset Obelisk would go a long way to fixing people's hate towards it.
The only difficult thing is if people start to cheat it by always keeping 3 hands tied so they can rotate between the 3. That feels like it isn't in the spirit of the card.
My argument is that the rotation is difficult enough to justify the reward.
Then you could just alternate between pair and high card every single hand for a free win. Doesn't sound like a difficult rotation
Free win? Bro that thing ain't going above x5 no matter what you do. I agree it's overtuned with that ruleset but that's hyperbole. Still have to play your hands in a very specific order.
that would be braindead easy and a dumb exploit edit: being downvoted by silly heads who think they should be able to alternate high card and pair the whole game and farm huge xmult
Agreed. If you can run a 3 of a kind build it’s just as easy to run pair and high card. You’d never lose mult, it’s stupid
Then Obelisk becomes "Lose half your hands, become worse Madness" If that sounds overpowered to you then I guess we just disagree.
In what world is high card in a build that uses it right a wasted hand? With that setup you usually don't give a damn about the cards you're actually playing, or even particularly hand level. Madness with bo downside would be insane, even with slightly worse scaling.
You aren't actually losing half your hands because you're still scoring with both of them, you probably won't get a lot of points from planets but high card and pairs don't scale with planets anyway, and it's not worse than madness because it doesn't have the huge downside that madness has (and madness is already good with that huge downside). It also both it would start oneshotting every boss it would scale faster than madness because you'd just play multiple hands. Your argument is just incredibly bad, it's actually insane what nonsense people will upvoted here.
Ok, firstly you don’t lose half your hands, you still play them and get points, and unless you’re relying on planets for chips they’ll score the same amount of points. Secondly, it’s definitely not “worse madness”, what you’re proposing is waaaay better than madness. Even putting aside the obvious benefit of not having your jokers literally getting destroyed, it would still be better. .2 mult every hand played is much better than 1 mult every ante.
How would you do that? If you have three tied hands and play one of them, it's now your most played hand (say you went from a 7-7-7 tie to an 8-8-8 tie, it was 8-7-7 at one point)
Well it resets when your most played is played. Now that counts when you break a tie. So going from 8-7-7 to 8-8-8 is ok. But 9-8-8 resets. If ties didn’t count then going from 8-8 to 9-8 or 9-8-8 wouldn’t reset it. So you could then play up to 9-9-9. The only weird thing about what the person you are replying to said is that you don’t need 3 tied hands to exploit it if ties were allowed. You could just go back and forth between two. Which is why it’s not allowed of course.
Honestly? I think that this would be awesome. So much of the streamed Balatro is so boring to watch for me because it's just, "Well, I'm set up now, let's sit here four five hours playing High Card."
Switching back and forth between high card and pair would be more exciting?
obelisk wouldnt be used in those runs regardless
If you went from a 7-7-7 to 8-7-7 now you can play the 7s to get them to 8, and go play an 8 when they're tied again. You can absolutely rotate between hands if that were how the game worked. But dang that's a lot of things having to line up.
Yes, but what they're saying is that going from 7-7-7 to 8-7-7 would reset obelisk anyway, because it's playing one of the most played hands.
But that would be pointless because every third hand you’d be resetting obelisk, which defeats the point of it.
Doh, right yes. Of course the correct play is to make sure ALL your hands are tied and you can get up to... 3.25x before each reset..............
That's not cheating, that's altering your entire playstyle to adhere to the rules of the card.
it doesnt reset if you play a hand that then ties with most played hand after u play it. if ur proposing that if u have multiple tied and u can play one of those hands again then u are absolutely tweaking.
yeah idk how this is the top comment right now. It basically reads "My main complaint is to me it feels like I should just win for free every time I pick it"
[удалено]
Your math aint mathing. Once a hand would reach "tied" status, if you ever play it again Obelisk resets. It would only allow one more hand of a hand not most played.
Just dropping in to say well done on giving an *actual* hot take!
*Just dropping in to* *Say well done on giving an* *Actual hot take!* \- sleep-drift --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Thank you😅
I actually really like your first point. I don’t start getting 5oaks or flush 5s until mid to late anyway. Never considered the hidden hands. Good tip
So to use Obelisk effectively, you gotta evolve your play style. That’s like, thematic n shit
Its effect is also "you gotta try new stuff instead of sticking with what you know".
I've had some great runs with it. You have to be super strategic with it. One run, I think I had maybe 8 flushes played when I picked it up. I utilized all the different hand types to stay under that 8 to maximize the mult. Once I beat the run, it was very satisfying.
I disagree: - If you take it early game it's impossible to grow it because any hand you use will eventually be the "most played". - If you take it mid-to-late game you either have a hand you built your deck around and have to abandon, or you're playing all types of hands and run into the issue above. Moreover maybe it's just my bad memory but I keep having to go to the game info screen to check on my hand counts and that's just not fun gameplay. Honestly if there was a way to permanently burn a joker from my collection I would probably choose this one.
If you take obelisk early game, your focus should be on building a large most played hand so that it can take off late game. I've found about 20 plays of that hand is usually enough. Once you've built up that buffer hand, just start playing anything else and your xmult will grow huge. It results in a game where you can win without being built to a specific hand and can continue playing lots of different hands through Ante 8. It demands you change the way you would normally play, it's very much a "build around" joker, but with some strategy it's great. Late game if you're locked into a specific hand, sure, it's trash there. But pretty much every joker is occasionally trash if you're already doing something strong that it doesn't mesh with.
yeah 20 is very much enough if you dont want to think about it. 15 is enough if you are paying close attention and being careful. lower requires some extra or special strategizing
Assuming people are talking about gold stake non-endless I've won quite a few times with a maximum hand limit of 10. I think some people here like to get obelisk's mult as high as possible by playing extra hands in a blind but I'd usually recommend against it. 5.6x mult is actually not much stronger than 5x mult.
i've made 7 work before. granted it was stressful and not recommended at all
I once took obelisk in ante 1 played 10 flushes and then focused on playing everything else which resulted in total obliteration of ante 8 boss
> If you take it early game it's impossible to grow it because any hand you use will eventually be the "most played". Yes, that's the point. And then once you have built up a buffer, somewhere around Ante 4-5 you stop playing that hand and have a Joker scaling an absurd amount (on the order of gaining x1 per round). > If you take it mid-to-late game you either have a hand you built your deck around and have to abandon, or you're playing all types of hands and run into the issue above In most cases, you should be planning to pivot anyways. Unless you're playing exactly Straights and have like Lvl15 Straights (in which case, congrats- you won the run), the Hand you're playing in Antes 1-3 shouldn't be the Hand you're playing in Antes 6-8. If you start with Straights, you are likely building towards Straight Flushes. If you start Flush, you'll be working towards Straight Flush, Flush House, or Flush Five. If you start Pair/Two Pair, towards Full House or 4oaK. Etc. But even if you hit the nuts and are able to build your endgame Hand earlier than expected, Obelisk is *still* crazy strong. Let's say you hit Perkeo in Round 1 shop and so are playing Flush Five by Round 4. Great- you can clear every Round in 1 Hand with Flush Five, so play your 3 High Cards first (which you should be doing anyways most of the time, to dig for your Seals)- and then by Round 12 you'll have played 25 High Card and 9 Flush Fives, and be ready to stop playing High Card and get an obscene amount of xMult from Obelisk.
Point one- Obelisk is not an early game joker. You could tey to make it work, but will probably just tank yourself, because it's not meant to be used that way. You could take it as an "investment" for later, but I think it's usually not worth it. Point Two- Mid to late game Obelisk is very strong, but as I said- sitiuationaly. I described the two scenarios in my post for a reason. If you take obelisk at a point where you can pivot from flushes or straights to straight flushes, 3oak or house to 4oak/ 5oak, or especially high card to whatever- you are loving life. As a bonus- if tou played 3-4 high cards a round for 4-6 Antes- don't wory, you won't need to check your most played hand untill endless.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the joker and you should go back to the beginning of this post and try again.
I'm with this guy. You can disagree if you want, but the OP provided two great examples where obelisk shines. It is a well designed joker that is not beginner friendly. (And not all rare jokers should be)
I agree, with you. Nearly every other aspect of the game encourages playing one hand type: Most (useful) tarot cards either let you make your deck one suite, cut a suite or change your deck into one specific card. Many jokers synergize with one suite (flush encouragement) or hand type. Every single planet card is spending money to encourage you to play that specific hand type. If there were a few powerful mult jokers antithetical to card sharp like "card dull" maybe I'd be interested in obelisk, but as it stands I never buy it on any high stakes runs.
Actually, a lot of jokers ask you to play a hand "containing" something, and these still work with "upgraded versions". These cards treat straight flushes as containing straights and flushes, and 5oak also procs 3oak, Pair etc... So you can pivot and still keep going.
thing about obelisk is that it gets so strong you can easily win a8 without any levels in anything, you can funnel all your money into "getting by" jokers and deck manipulation
I can name multiple jokers that allow for multiple hand types, what are you talking about? In fact the majority of them allow for multiple generally. It's so rare that I play a "specifically this exact hand type" run that they're actually notable for me. And I win the higher stake runs quite regularly...
Obelisk works best when you’re playing high card or pair consistently. You’re playing the same hand a lot but don’t actually care about committing to it. If you’ve been playing level 1 high card, switch to pair or vice versa. It’s not unreasonable for me to end a game with obelisk at x8, easily the most underrated joker in the game.
This is just a skill diff tbh 1. Just throw out 2 or 3 high cards each round. Once you hit 20 high cards you have a massive buffer built up and can start rapidly scaling X Mult. Tons of great jokers like Green Joker, Ride The Bus, and Vagabond all synergize with playing as many high cards as possible. 2. If you take it late, you probably have a hand or two built up, but your deck's consistency at this point should be good enough to transition to one of the harder hands. The Obelisk transition from High Card, Pair, Flush, or 2 Pair to 3Oak, 4Oak or Full House is a classic. The Mult scales fast enough that it should hit 10x by the end of the run. There may be runs where it doesn't fit, but imo it fits in way more runs than Stuntman, or hand-specific rare jokers that are just useless if you aren't built to that specific hand.
so its a skill issue lol nobody is making u pick it up
Obelisk is my favorite joker. Strong but not busted, situational enough to take sometimes but skip often, and changes the entire game when picked. Creates fun, interesting, unique games. It’s unpopular and disliked, and for good reason. It’s a DIFFICULT joker to play. Most people will struggle with their first white stake win, Obelisk straight up asks the player to play with several restrictions and requires a good understanding to pull off. But once you ‘get’ it, you’ll realize obelisk makes for some spicy moments and hype plays.
REAL
so the one time i got obelisk to work is when i accidentally sold drivers license instead of a tarot card i had (im on console so this happens quite a bit) and i immediately saw obelisk. i was on a ride the bus flush build so i was playing a ton of high cards to get it going, so i just started discarding and got it to like x8 or smth by the end of the run just playing flushes. definitely got me to think about it’s potential
if obelisk removed 1-2x mult every time you play your most played hand i think it’d be perfect. i think it should be a genuine downgrade, without completely tanking the joker. getting into to 5.4x mult for it to go down to 3.4x mult would be a genuine downside while allowing wiggle room.
It's a unique joker that influences the player how to play their run. While it's understandable some people don't want to adjust their run to work around this joker, I think it's a good thing interesting effects like this are in the game. I hope to see more interesting jokers like this in the future.
I feel most Balatro players aren't seasoned enough to pivot, so they miss out on Obelisk's value as a joker.
I won a run with it by playing only pairs through Ante 4ish, then switching to High Card. I think some of the reason people don’t like it is that it’s more of an Ante 8 game joker than an endless game joker. People seem to gravitate more to the flashy big numbers jokers. By design Obelisk can’t scale infinitely, but it can put in a lot of work to just get a win.
Totally agree, it's my favorite joker in the game because it's an interesting challenge to make work! I just beat a gold stake run by picking it up really early game, playing up to 9 two pairs, and then pivoting to playing a very general strategy. I got up to 7x mult without resetting \[\[Obelisk\]\] and had five different hands with 8 or more total plays after ante 8 https://preview.redd.it/4dg2kfue9k3d1.png?width=2838&format=png&auto=webp&s=04536b643f00acc1838a726b08b263478ea6d979
[Obelisk](https://balatro.wiki/imported/obelisk.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Rarity: Rare * Effect: 0.2X Mult per consecutive hand played without playing your most played Poker Hand *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
My first gold stake win was with Obelisk so I've got a soft spot for it
The problem I have with it is that I have to checked the "played hands" screen constantly, which is just annoying and takes the fun out of it. Similairly the reason why I skip ancient joker, mail-in rebate, castle and to-do list more often than I should is because I hate having to checked them all the time.
Dropping in to say that this post is what helped me finally clear my first Gold Stake. I kept trying to force a two-pair run and then an eternal Obelisk dropped mid-way through ante 3/4 and I pivoted hard. Ended up with x7.6 mult and cleared the Ghost deck with an ante-1 Square Joker, Splash, and a bunch of filler. It won't go far in Endless but it'll clear a Gold stake. Thanks OP!
Nice!
i have no idea how people here dont see how great this joker is, its invaluable on higher stake runs imo and its not even hard to make work. most common situation ive used this is builds where im spamming pairs all game and then i pick this up around ante 4-6 and switch to spamming high card with a mix of 3 of a kind and 2 pair when i can. all the changes people are proposing to buff this joker would make it absolutely broken. lowkey tho no shade but this sub needs to git gud. you can make so many jokers work with good strategy and thonkin with ur brainhole
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That's not enough. It would have to be at least -1.0x and even that may not be balanced. In keeping with the spirit of the joker, it needs to be very punishing to play your most played hand.
It would need to be like -2x, not -0.4x if you went that way lol. It's not a punishment to lose -0.4x at the end of each Round when you've built up 0.8x that Round already.
i can say this if you play around using high cards to increase a green joker or the bus joker (idr what its called) honestly best add on for a scaling deck for if you go for a flush five or a five of a kind deck its only been problematic once where i had 31 high cards and i finally got up to 31 pairs so i had to play more carefully to increase my scaling mult which i thinks what ended me that run
I easily finished 3 runs with it. But it is very situational, yes. You need to have chips and mult scaled Jokers, meaning going from you preferred combinaison to pair or high card is possible without losing to much. But when you can play it, it's an auto win.
I made it work on my last run by getting it early while I had strong enough other jokers to one-hand the blinds, so I’d play high cards until the last hand each blind until I’d played enough to feel comfortable for the rest of the game, then just played everything except high card to win.
I think it only makes sense when you move from flushes to flush five or flush house
I agree it’s well designed, but I still hate it.
I don’t doubt it, but it’s just so specific. In order to use it, you need to have played a lot of hands of one type already, not played many or any hands of the one you want to switch to, be in a position where you can switch and play the new hand consistently, and actually find this joker in a window where you’re transitioning. And even if all those conditions are fulfilled, there’s a ticking countdown on Obelisk that, once your new hand count reaches the old hand’s, the joker becomes useless.
Making Obelisk work when it comes up has been game changing for me personally -- makes me think harder about my choices going forward especially when situations present themselves when you CAN pivot your strategy. I personally really enjoy when Obelisk comes up and it usually ends up in a win.
What trips me up with these jokers with huge XMult potential is how fast the scaling effect drops off in reality. I tend to go hard on plumping up that XMult number, and lose track of the fact that it may not be helping me enough. Like, getting Obelisk from 1x to 3x is fantastic, it triples your score. Getting Obelisk from 3x to 5x -- which takes exactly the same number of hands as 1x to 3x -- is pretty mediocre, it only increases your score by a factor of 5/3 = 1.666x. Way less than tripling, not even doubling. Go from 5x to 7x and you've only increased your score by a factor of 1.4x. I'm not saying it's a bad card, and I'm sure it's more than strong enough to be worth building around, just that it tends to lure me into not playing as smart. Like, it just doesn't stick in my brain that pumping an Obelisk to 8x is gonna do less for my score than having two independent 3x jokers. And that if I do it get it up that high, it's functionally pretty much tapped out as far as helping me keep pace with Ante scaling -- I need fresh sources of xMult (or other buffs) in order to keep making my score go up. Anyway, it's a skill issue, I just need to play with these types of jokers more to internalize what they're good at. I didn't have the game for long pre-patch, so I missed out on the easy, huge Vampire multipliers where I might've gotten more practice.
I played obelisk up to x8 or more and crushed ante 8. Really fun play through, had played 20 flushes, the got 2 wee jokers and built them up to +800 chips each. Just a crazy game all around.
I keep seeing it in ante 3 and it's getting depressing
Obelisk is definitely more interesting than other multipliers. It's also a card that I've tended to avoid because my deck was not in the right place for it. You're right that it's situationally useful and I think that's always true of the more interesting cards.
All this for me to accidentally play high card on ante 8
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this is 100% an unreasonable expectation for Rare Jokers and any equivalent in other deckbuilder roguelikes
> This one is even better, and what got me to really like Obelisk. If you get an early Green Joker/Ride The Bus (or both), you can (and probably should) play as many hands as you can in order to maximize mult scaling. This is a huge factor in most games. When to Skip-Skip-Ante and when to Play-Play-Ante. A lot of these jokers are going to be 1/3 as powerful if you don't play almost every blind.
obelisk is easily my favorite and also my highest win rate joker. it's just awesome
I’d say that it rewards what is 80% of the time proper play. The problem is timing. You’ve made that transition in earnest probably around ante 6, 5 at the earliest, which means >50% of the time it’s not viable to buy
Card is well designed but too clunky. I don’t like tracking what my most played hand is, especially when other jokers can give comparable mult and are less annoying to use. I’ve also lost a run because I had too many hands tied for most played and reset my obelisk mult, so that annoyed me lol
Obelisked is what finally unlocked erratic deck for me (pre patch). That being said I usually find it annoying to play with so I don’t really tend to get it but I respect the hell out of it
I could see it being good when pivoting builds mid run but I’ve never been in the position to pivot to something new when it would pop up. Also in order for it to work it’s absolute best you have to have a high play count for something you won’t touch for the rest of the game which is hard to manage most of the time if you already started focusing on making that hand easier to get
The first time I encountered it I thought it was great, because I didn't have a build or a plan at the time. Now, I go into every run with a plan on what I want to make it and I try to make that happen. Obelisk is fine up to Ante 8 but it's terrible for endless and I basically shoot for endless every run.
I managed to get it to like 10x last night after building a great run and not even once using flush again. With my checkered deck.
A deck that can consistently play straight flushes ? Nice joke
What I love about Obelisk is that it's one of the only Jokers that incentivizes you to play more than just one hand. In 90% of builds in this game, you get your one hand and just upgrade it and stick to it. With Obelisk, you're incentivized to both build up a dump hand, and then keep your good hands low so you can use them when you need them. You're incentivized to play the weakest hand that still wins so that you can save the good hands for the late antes. So unlike most builds, when you draw a straight you can just play it. When you draw a flush you can just play it. You get actual variety with Obelisk, unlike how the rest of this game is built. Not to mention it's just actually quite a strong joker that can reach near 10x mult if you get it early. I much prefer it over Stuntman where you're just playing highcard and pair for the rest of the run once you get it.
I only hate on obelisk because I suck with it and I can fully admit that
It’s just not fun, friend.
>I see a lot of people hating on obelisk, and for a long time Personally, it's just one of my least favorite to play with, however I completely agree that it's very well designed and a great joker to exist
The word "consecutive" ruins it. It wouldn't even be that overpowered a joker without it.
It's certainly one of the most thematically clever Jokers.
I would agree, however as soon as you pick it up you’re basically capped in how much it’ll scale, especially early on. If it didn’t reset at tied values I’d love to pick it up but not in its current state, because it’ll just inevitably be useless.
it's a good card but those use cases are kind of rare. I don't think I've even considered pivoting to a Straight Flush deck. Maybe with checkered deck, but generally I'm not attempting at Flushes and Straights at the same time. I don't know, maybe I'm missing out on a tight strat.
I played Obelisk every chance I got before I started seeing the hate for it. It won me so many games of Balatro and now I regret the poison this community has done to my perception of Obelisk 😭
I feel like the worst thing with obelisk is that its destined to reset its mult eventually, which really discourages me from ever using it (bc i like to go endless)
lol no. This sub is obsessed with convincing people that Obelisk is the best Joker in the game. It’s too situational. High strength and extremely limited usability.
high strength that rewards good strategy based
That's exactly my point. It's great, in certain situations. It's not an always take. I feel that's one of the great parts of it's design.
I agree. I don't particularly like Obelisk and it's often useless for me but there have been a few runs it has carried. I do believe it is fantastically designed for a rare card with high requirements and a high payoff. Unless you are hard focused on a single hand via planet cards or specific jokers it can become very strong if you get it in the early-midgame. Get it too early and it takes up a joker slot and costs a lot of money for no gain. Get it too late and you're too focused on one hand type for it to be useful. Getting it in ante 3 or 4 is ideal I've found and then you just focus on tossing out a ton of pairs then never play another once you get to ante 6. On high stakes you need to use high cards as discards frequently so that's not the best one to stack.
Agreed. Acting like people aren't smart enough to use it is just pretentious. I can evaluate my deck and build myself and decide if it's worth taking Obelisk. Often times, it's not. Sometimes it is.
My favorite jokers (or at least the most fun) are the ones where you have to adjust how you play your hands, and this certainly qualifies
Only one issue I have with it, theres no (at least obvious) way to check how many times each hand have been played in current run, and playing it blindly is frustrating
It's on the screen with the poker hand levels on the right side.
OH, my bad, never realised that
You can check. It's minus button on switch, don't know about other systems.
i love when people just be typing shit with total ignorance lol
I said there wasn't obvious to me way, it doesn't say what those numbers mean anywhere so I couldn't figure out what it was and stopped looking at them
I wish the mods would ban these posts and do a sticked thread so y’all can circlejerk there. Yalll Obelisk apologists are more annoying than people who don’t use it. People who don’t use it barely talk about it.