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StarTopic Balatro |ST| Ode To A Card Shark

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A roguelike deck-builder based on poker! Bend, break and absolutely disintegrate the rules of the classic card game.
 
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Balatroooo!!

I continue unlocking new decks and new difficulty levels, the game is sooo good. So far, I think one of th ebest decks to win is the yellow one, starting with some extra cash helps a lot through the first Ante. At higher difficulties, a lot of runs can end in Ante 1 because of bad luck due to no multi Jokers appearing on the first two shops. The yellow deck allows for at least one reroll and some room to buy a few things to help you progress on those initicial stages.

Also, I don't know if I was lucky, but I found two legendary Jokers already.
 
I managed to win a High Card run last night, which was something I had been really hoping to do.

  • Joker that added +Mult for each time you have played that hand -> This is great, because each round takes 3-4 hands, so it gets really high.
  • Splash Joker - Scores all played cards -> Feels almost mandatory, so you can score all of the cards you play as opposed to just 1.
  • Joker that adds +1 Mult every played hand, -1 Mult every discard -> You generally never have to discard if you are playing high card, so this got a very high +Mult modifier.
  • x3 Mult if hand has been played this round -> This was a key Joker that I picked up toward the end that pushed me over the edge. First high card of the round didn't get the bonus, but the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th hand would usually have x400+ Mult with this.

The biggest challenge was a Boss blind on Ante 7 which required 100,000 on a single hand, which was especially difficult because I wouldn't be able to trigger the x3 Mult. Luckily was able to discard into hand full of enhanced cards that barely got me past the goal.
 
Joedev said:
I managed to win a High Card run last night, which was something I had been really hoping to do.

  • Joker that added +Mult for each time you have played that hand -> This is great, because each round takes 3-4 hands, so it gets really high.
  • Splash Joker - Scores all played cards -> Feels almost mandatory, so you can score all of the cards you play as opposed to just 1.
  • Joker that adds +1 Mult every played hand, -1 Mult every discard -> You generally never have to discard if you are playing high card, so this got a very high +Mult modifier.
  • x3 Mult if hand has been played this round -> This was a key Joker that I picked up toward the end that pushed me over the edge. First high card of the round didn't get the bonus, but the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th hand would usually have x400+ Mult with this.

The biggest challenge was a Boss blind on Ante 7 which required 100,000 on a single hand, which was especially difficult because I wouldn't be able to trigger the x3 Mult. Luckily was able to discard into hand full of enhanced cards that barely got me past the goal.
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That's a pretty elite group no matter what tbh. I did that with the jeans one and just did tons of two pairs.
 
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Also here is a small tip of something that I didn't realize, but in some cases can make a differences - you can reorder the cards you are playing from your hand (hold 'A' when selecting a card, and move it left or right). If you have Jokers that apply xMult when scoring, it can be best to put those on the far right.

The same is obviously true for Jokers too, but I didn't realize you could do it for the hands you playing.
 
Joedev said:
Also here is a small tip of something that I didn't realize, but in some cases can make a differences - you can reorder the cards you are playing from your hand (hold 'A' when selecting a card, and move it left or right). If you have Jokers that apply xMult when scoring, it can be best to put those on the far right.

The same is obviously true for Jokers too, but I didn't realize you could do it for the hands you playing.
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I've found this especially useful with the Death card (select two cards, turn the left into the right)
 
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i put about five hours into the prerelease demo and probably about as much into the full game so far, and while I have some hangups about a game being so clearly intended to be addictive (and maybe I'm just especially susceptible lol), there's no denying it's an incredibly well-designed game. in particular, I find the way it uses its music and background visuals to make the whole package so cohesive to be really something special.

i enjoyed this interview with the developer:
www.gamesradar.com

Exploring Balatro's hype, its ingenious twists on poker, and its mysterious creator

Interview | "I'm sure I'm not done with this game," says Balatro's anonymous, humble designer
www.gamesradar.com www.gamesradar.com
 
slide's said:
i put about five hours into the prerelease demo and probably about as much into the full game so far, and while I have some hangups about a game being so clearly intended to be addictive (and maybe I'm just especially susceptible lol), there's no denying it's an incredibly well-designed game. in particular, I find the way it uses its music and background visuals to make the whole package so cohesive to be really something special.

i enjoyed this interview with the developer:
www.gamesradar.com

Exploring Balatro's hype, its ingenious twists on poker, and its mysterious creator

Interview | "I'm sure I'm not done with this game," says Balatro's anonymous, humble designer
www.gamesradar.com www.gamesradar.com
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I definitely know what you mean with the bolded, but at the end of the day, as you say, the game is very well-designed and it's just plain fun. It's also only $15 and has no microtransactions or anything like that. So IMO it's pretty easy to forgive the game for so blatantly scratching that "hehe number go up" itch
 
Joedev said:
Also here is a small tip of something that I didn't realize, but in some cases can make a differences - you can reorder the cards you are playing from your hand (hold 'A' when selecting a card, and move it left or right). If you have Jokers that apply xMult when scoring, it can be best to put those on the far right.

The same is obviously true for Jokers too, but I didn't realize you could do it for the hands you playing.
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excuse me...
 
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Dumb question, how the heck do I use "reroll boss blinds" voucher properly?

I swear I bought that a couple of times, but unless I wasn't paying attention, the boss blind ability didn't change.
 
darthdiablo said:
Dumb question, how the heck do I use "reroll boss blinds" voucher properly?

I swear I bought that a couple of times, but unless I wasn't paying attention, the boss blind ability didn't change.
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iirc there will be a button prompt on the upper left of the Blinds screen that tells you how much it costs to reroll
 
Unlocked black stake. Got the baseball card with 5 uncommon Jokers alongside it, pretty ridiculous. This is getting spicy!

Also, the Vampire joker with the golden face one which transforms every face card played into a gold card, goes crazy. Got a x10 multiple into it.
 
Got a consistent crash and it’s after opening a legendary joker damn it lol
 
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linkwashere said:
Unlocked black stake. Got the baseball card with 5 uncommon Jokers alongside it, pretty ridiculous. This is getting spicy!

Also, the Vampire joker with the golden face one which transforms every face card played into a gold card, goes crazy. Got a x10 multiple into it.
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I got that with the Joker that treats all cards as face cards and vampire got to x38
 
Did another two runs last night. I don't fully remember the first one, but I do remember that I had the Jokers which make every card a face card and give face cards +4 mult. I think I might also have had a +20 mult when playing three cards or less. It was a fun deck and I was easily winning every round until I got to the boss blind of Ante 8, who had an extra large blind of 300,000. Didn't quite make that one.

The second run was quite weird and a lot of fun. I had:
  • A Joker which gave +1 mult for each consecutive hand without face cards. Got to like, +45 in the end
  • A Joker which gave +3 mult for every booster pack skipped. At first I thought meant simply not buying them lol, but no, you have to actually spend the money and then press X. But it was still good for around +50 in the end
  • A Joker which gave (1 + s)x mult where s was the number of cards sold that Ante. This was a big one. I would usually have a spare Joker slot and some cash so I would start each Ante by buying some Joker or tarot/space card and then immediately selling it (unless it was a pair space card, in which case I'd use it). Very helpful
  • A Joker which gave ×4 mult every 6 hands. This led to an interesting strategy: I'd stall on small and big blinds (basically, playing single non-face cards; a pair of 2s would typically win me the round so it really was stalling), so I could use this card on the boss blind
  • Finally, a Joker which mimicked the effect of the Joker to its right. I'd move this around to be on the left of the two previous ones, depending on which was giving me a higher mult that round
Made it to the big blind of Ante 10 before my luck ran out. I probably should have invested in some more steel cards...
 
hologram said:
  • A Joker which gave +3 mult for every booster pack skipped. At first I thought meant simply not buying them lol, but no, you have to actually spend the money and then press X. But it was still good for around +50 in the end
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the wild thing with that one is that it still works if you hit skip after taking the first card from a mega pack. it blows my mind how many little intricacies they wrung from every single mechanic, even if you only see some of them one time in fifty runs.
 
Black stake conquered with a pair build! By a small margin because I had five eternal jokers and could not pivot in the late game. I even had to skip a legendary one because I couldn't sell any of them to make room for it.

Now let's go for the purple!
 
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Another couple of runs last night, although no wins. I had one run where I went for a "play lots of lesser scoring hands" strategy; I had 8 Hands and 0 Discards per round, and had a 4x mult every 6 hands, plus some other bonuses here and there. It was going very well until the Boss Blind debuff was "you can't play the same hand type twice" which predictably destroyed me lol
 
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They should work around some boss debuffs, it just feels bad when you put the effort into building some strategy just to be destroyed by a random debuff. For exemple, having available always the option to pay some amount of money for rerolling the debuff would be enough. I know there are some vouchers that do that, but you are again in the luck of finding them. So, if a voucher lets you reroll a boss debuff for 10$, just make it paying 20$ or 30$ always an available option from the store.

There should be some kind of risk-reward mechanic in relation to boss debuffs. Letting everything to chance doesn't feel right.
 
Got my first two wins back-to-back this morning! 🎉
 
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linkwashere said:
They should work around some boss debuffs, it just feels bad when you put the effort into building some strategy just to be destroyed by a random debuff. For exemple, having available always the option to pay some amount of money for rerolling the debuff would be enough. I know there are some vouchers that do that, but you are again in the luck of finding them. So, if a voucher lets you reroll a boss debuff for 10$, just make it paying 20$ or 30$ always an available option from the store.

There should be some kind of risk-reward mechanic in relation to boss debuffs. Letting everything to chance doesn't feel right.
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I disagree. You can luck into good combinations of Jokers early on which trivialize most rounds - if there's no potential of a game-ending debuff (or at least one that requires a pivot) then the game risks losing its sense of danger
 
linkwashere said:
They should work around some boss debuffs, it just feels bad when you put the effort into building some strategy just to be destroyed by a random debuff. For exemple, having available always the option to pay some amount of money for rerolling the debuff would be enough. I know there are some vouchers that do that, but you are again in the luck of finding them. So, if a voucher lets you reroll a boss debuff for 10$, just make it paying 20$ or 30$ always an available option from the store.

There should be some kind of risk-reward mechanic in relation to boss debuffs. Letting everything to chance doesn't feel right.
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I mean, it's a poker game. It being based on luck makes sense and just means that your particular build should have some plan B to it, as it's you who built your Hearts Only Faces Only Flush run. It's always nice to buff some hands you're likely to use that's not your main one and keep an eye on Jokers that aren't OP for the build but help enough and provide for some alternative planning.

Granted, I don't follow that advice myself, but if I encounter a boss that disables my strategy fully, I also get it completely. Such is life. (But also rerolls are fairly common so I'd say you have 30-40% chance of encountering one up to ante 8)
 
hologram said:
I disagree. You can luck into good combinations of Jokers early on which trivialize most rounds - if there's no potential of a game-ending debuff (or at least one that requires a pivot) then the game risks losing its sense of danger
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I got a legendary Joker (my 3rd one) yesterday that disables all boss abilities. First thing I did after looking at my upcoming boss blinds? I sold the legendary joker, lol. Didn't have much need for it when I was at 7/8, it was taking up the last slot and I saw something else I wanted more in the Shop.

(happy to report I did end up winning that run overall)
 
hologram said:
I disagree. You can luck into good combinations of Jokers early on which trivialize most rounds - if there's no potential of a game-ending debuff (or at least one that requires a pivot) then the game risks losing its sense of danger
Click to expand...

See, I am all in into having that luck factor present and I think you should account for it in your runs. However, it's important to keep de risk-reward tension through the game and that you only do when you offer the player some alternatives at the cost of other things.

Jokers you get are random. But you can reroll at the cost paying some extra money for the reward of finding something better or that suits your strategy more. The same way you can do this in relation to Jokers, I think the game would be better if a similar principle applied to boss debuffs. I know you can find that Joker that disable debuffa or the voucher that let you reroll then, but again, an extra mechanic that let you pivot the moment you see the boss blind would be interesting.

If you get a bad boss bling for your build and you can't do anything about it, the game gets harder but also less interesting. Instead, if when you see the boss blind you have some room to pivot at the cost of maybe hurting your build and next Ante, that's the kind of risk-reward situation that makes the game more interesting.

Slay the Spire, for instance, is full of this kind of mechanisms and they don't make the game easy by any means.
 
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I was happy to be able to reach ante 12 last night for the first time. I went from that boss blind being around 14 million to the next small blind being 300 million though. I skipped that and the big blind (had the Joker that increases x mult for each blind skipped), but I wasn't able to make it close enough to the 600 million for the boss blind lol. Still a really fun run.
 
Nice fun run tonight, won the run

Started with Abandoned Deck

Lusty +4 multi every heart
Greedy +4 multi every diamond
Mystic Summit (+15 multi when 0 discards remaining)
Burglar (gives +3 hands, takes all discards, perfect synergy with Mystic Summit)
Baseball Card (1.5x for every Uncommon, which synergies with Mystic, Ramen, Troubadour)
(Negative) Smeared Joker (diamonds = hearts, spades = clubs)
(Negative) Troubadour +2 hand size, -1 hand

Through manipulation using spectrals and tarots, I had tons of wild cards (which would count for both Lusty/Greedy, totaling +8 multi per heart/diamond), as well as tons of hearts or diamonds. Only a few non-wild-card clubs/spades remained.

Past Ante 8, I know I had to find a better multiplicative Joker, I scored a holographic Ramen card, but it ended shortly after that.

I think I can get to Ante 8 and win the run fairly regularly now, it's the endless run I need to work better at.
 
Niraj said:
I was happy to be able to reach ante 12 last night for the first time. I went from that boss blind being around 14 million to the next small blind being 300 million though. I skipped that and the big blind (had the Joker that increases x mult for each blind skipped), but I wasn't able to make it close enough to the 600 million for the boss blind lol. Still a really fun run.
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Holy shit lol, the furthest I've got is Ante 10 and my best hand has been a few hundred thousand, no way I could get close to those numbers ☠️

Wonder what the highest anyone has ever got is?
 
Had my first run that lasted to the 10th ante this morning, came juuuuust short of beating the boss’ $1.1 million blind. I would have cleared it handily if I had considered every ripple effect before swapping a joker!

Dang this game is good.
 
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I bought this and booted it up for the first time to kill a half hour

....that half hour disappeared so fast it felt like I just blinked and it was over or something
 
the scaling on the endless mode gets crazy fast

I was crushing everything in one hand up to ante 11 but then it went from 500k to 7 million and I just hit a wall
 
Just finished a real juicy run. 1.5x mult for each Uncommon Joker, with 5 Uncommon Jokers, one of which gave +0.25x mult for each playing card added to my deck and ended up at over 5x.
rickyson33 said:
I was crushing everything in one hand up to ante 11 but then it went from 500k to 7 million and I just hit a wall
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And then this happened lmao
 
I have made it to the Ante 10 boss a couple times now but just miss the blind. Nice to know that it immediately gets way way harder 💀

I’ve racked a win with every deck!

Galgavias said:
The magic number to beat...52,582,203
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👀
👀
I am not worthy
 
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Got my first crash on ode 7/8 of a Green Stack run :/

Any comments from the developer on those?
 
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16df5d949cb697c21ff7605599bdea76.png


still couldn't quite get past ante 11 although I did get past the first blind and almost the second

I was basically being carried by a two joker combo of the +0.25x multi for every playing card added and the +0.1x multi for every planet card used one for a combined 32x multiplier by the end between them and another joker I had that happened to be polychrome(6.5x3.3x1.5)

I also had a level 20 or so straight by the end from buying all the planet cards I saw and a seltzer I found at the start of ante 11 doubling everything
 
The Legendary Jokers are really fun. Just had a run with the one which duplicates a consumable. I used the Copycat Joker to create two copies of Tarot Cards, which then boosted my Tarot Joker by +50 Mult.
 
Galgavias said:
Got to up my game clearly, still stuck at my previous record. Though I have been managing to consistently win runs and unlock some of the remaining jokers. Now trying my hand at some of the higher stakes.

What a game this is
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I was annoyed that I lost where I did (just some unlucky draws+boss blind), because I think I really could have had something special there. I had the legendary joker that creates a negative copy of a random consumable each blind along with the voucher that gives x1.5 mult for each planet card if you play the corresponding hand. So it was basically like having a bunch of steel cards in my inventory without taking up deck space. Maybe it'll happen again someday.
 
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