The Balatro Thread

[Touring Mars]

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Balatro - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

As if Balatro was not enough of a time sink, I thought I'd start a thread on it here for players at GTP to share their experiences, advice etc.

I only bought the game on PS5 5 days ago, and it's already giving GT7 (and everything else for that matter) a run for its money in terms of competing for my attentions.

This thread is for general discussion of the game, but please make use of the spoiler (and ispoiler) tags if you think something merits it. My buddy at work has already dropped a couple of spoilers while we've been chatting about it 😅

@Spacegoat @Joey D @-Fred- @RYAN @Stilva @Touring Mars

 

[Joey D]

I bought it during the Steam holiday sale, and it's the best thing to play during conference calls, which I have no desire to be on. It's challenging, but not so challenging that it's impossible. I have something like 20 hours on it, which is a ton for me with a game.

 

[FuriousDemon]

I got it around New Year's on the iPhone and I managed to beat it with maybe 4-5 different decks. It was very exciting early on, but after about a week with it I pretty much haven't opened it up. It's a cool game, but not as replayable as I thought it would be. In the end, it's pretty much poker with a twist. I'll probably try it out again, once they release that shiny big new patch.

 

[Touring Mars]

I got it around New Year's on the iPhone and I managed to beat it with maybe 4-5 different decks. It was very exciting early on, but after about a week with it I pretty much haven't opened it up. It's a cool game, but not as replayable as I thought it would be. In the end, it's pretty much poker with a twist. I'll probably try it out again, once they release that shiny big new patch.

Yeh, I think there is plenty of scope for expansion.

I've beaten the game 3 times now, and each time I've not made it past Ante 10 - it's very cool though, as you start to realise that just 'winning' is not enough, but that you need to be thinking much earlier on in the game about how to cope with the exponentially higher scores required to survive.

My trick in the last two games has been to level up the lower ranked hand types - particularly Two Pairs by spamming Uranus. That produces amazing scores by Ante 7 or 8, but it starts to become a bit of a problem when you encounter Boss Blinds like the one that just killed my most recent game, where you can only play each hand type once - I was getting something like 300,000 points per hand of Two Pairs, but I needed 1,200,000 in 6 Hands - easy if I could just spam Two Pairs, but almost impossible when I could only play it once.

Lesson learned though - spamming Uranus can be a lot of fun, but it becomes more painful as time goes on.

 

[FuriousDemon]

Yeh, I think there is plenty of scope for expansion.

I've beaten the game 3 times now, and each time I've not made it past Ante 10 - it's very cool though, as you start to realise that just 'winning' is not enough, but that you need to be thinking much earlier on in the game about how to cope with the exponentially higher scores required to survive.

My trick in the last two games has been to level up the lower ranked hand types - particularly Two Pairs by spamming Uranus. That produces amazing scores by Ante 7 or 8, but it starts to become a bit of a problem when you encounter Boss Blinds like the one that just killed my most recent game, where you can only play each hand type once - I was getting something like 300,000 points per hand of Two Pairs, but I needed 1,200,000 in 6 Hands - easy if I could just spam Two Pairs, but almost impossible when I could only play it once.

Lesson learned though - spamming Uranus can be a lot of fun, but it becomes more painful as time goes on.

Yeah for sure, you need to plan ahead. Sometimes though, that would get me in trouble since I'd plan too far ahead and lose in the first like 3-4 Ante

 

[Spacegoat]

particularly Two Pairs

Two Pairs are what I always fall back on. Think the Flushes and Straights are the best strats to go for but for obvious reasons, Pairs and Two Pairs are just so much easier to come by. Stuck trying to get the last deck unlocked. For the life of me, I just cannot beat the Purple Stake difficulty.

Have you attempted any of the challenges yet? Some of those can be a bit of fun just to mix things up a bit. Altho, the "Double or Nothing" challenge that debuffs every card you play can go to hell.

spamming Uranus can be a lot of fun, but it becomes more painful as time goes on.

 

[-Fred-]

I've found not upgrading the hands until you reach the later part of the game, around ante 5-6, and focusing on the mult and chip Jokers instead works a treat, especially the ones that are "X" instead of "+" and finding ones that work together to add bonuses. Of course that's down to luck and a lot of re-rolling jokers, so it doesn't always work. The run I won yesterday, I had a Joker that gave me a completely new seal card for every round I played, one that added an X Mult for every card I had in my deck over the original 52 (by the end of the run I had 84 cards, good for something like a 7x mult), one that scores cards as colors no matter the suit, and one that kept giving me the planet card for the hand I was playing, which came in handy because flushes become really easy to do if clubs and spades are scored as the same suit, for instance. I was pulling million plus scores by the end of ante 6, which made it easy. Getting the Joker card that gets rid of the boss blind also really helps.

Heaps of fun, especially for the price.

 

[Spacegoat]

especially the ones that are "X" instead of "+"

Think multipliers are the way to go. Hit a new personal high score this morning and finally got past Ante 11. Got the Joker that adds X0.1 for every Planet card you use. The Joker you were speaking of that gives X0.25 for every card added to the deck, put that next to the Blueprint Joker that copies of the ability of the one to the right, along with the one that adds a stone card for every blind selected and the one that adds +2 chips for every card left in your deck. Three X Jokers did the trick quite nicely.

(Sorry for the crappy mobile phone pic. Took this while holding the Switch lol)

 

[EngieDiesel]

Think multipliers are the way to go. Hit a new personal high score this morning and finally got past Ante 11. Got the Joker that adds X0.1 for every Planet card you use. The Joker you were speaking of that gives X0.25 for every card added to the deck, put that next to the Blueprint Joker that copies of the ability of the one to the right, along with the one that adds a stone card for every blind selected and the one that adds +2 chips for every card left in your deck. Three X Jokers did the trick quite nicely.

(Sorry for the crappy mobile phone pic. Took this while holding the Switch lol)

View attachment 1421777

X-mults are very powerful when used in the right combination, and building around them is almost always a viable strategy though it does depend somewhat on getting lucky in the early rounds. You need to be modifying your deck to take full advantage of them and that gets difficult later on when you've passed over the chance to add, burn off or enhance cards. If you get it all lined up right though you don't even need to play actual poker hands, you can throw out whatever five cards you want and still get ridiculous scores from all the multipliers and bonuses.

Another thing to remember is that the scoring processes from left to right, so the order of your jokers is important too. Dragging them around so that the ones that add chips are on the left, Plus-Mults in the middle and X-mults at the right will maximize the amount of chips you get. That also goes when you get jokers that affect the ones to the right or left of them, you can swap them around to get the best result on each hand if need be. (And if you somehow get Brainstorm and Blueprint in the same run, you've basically got an I Win button.)

 

[Touring Mars]

I succumbed and bought Balatro on my iPad as well as having it on my PS5 - it's a pity that they are two separate instances of the game, but it's great being able to play it on the train - the time flies past!

I beat the game using the Yellow Deck for the first time last night, but yet again the pesky 840,000 Big Blind tripped me up. My joker deck was pretty strong, and I had two jokers with decent X-mults (Throwback was at 3.75X, and Hologram was also on about 3X), so they were doing a lot of the heavy lifting - but alas I fell short on Ante 8 yet again.

I find it amazing how difficult it is to drop the natural tendency to play 'the best' hand; every time I get 4 of a Kind, I think I'm going to score huge, only to find that it would actually kill my hand, and 3 of a Kind is a far better choice. I've only had the 4X Mult joker for 4 of a Kind once and it was pretty useless (and I lost before I could use it!).

My favourite combo for now is to level up 2 Pairs, 3 of a Kind and Full House; and I'm also finding the Half Joker (play a max of 3 cards) valuable - however I think this was part of the problem in my last game, as it is very valuable in the first 8 Antes - but beyond that it starts to become too weak.

-

It's also starting to dawn on me that I'm not very good at this game 😅

 

[Touring Mars]

I discovered a bug in my iPad version of Balatro, which is apparently a well known bug.

I beat the game using the Abandoned Deck on Base difficulty (white chip), but the chip isn't showing on the deck, as if it hasn't been done. I did think that I had already done it - it's pretty easy to beat and I really enjoy the limited deck, and last night I well and truly beat it, getting to Ante 11. I also happened to take a screenshot, so I now know it's not my imagination.

It's a real shame, because apparently there isn't a fix yet.

-

I'm also genuinely struggling to beat the Black Deck - I haven't beaten it yet on either my iPad or PS5 versions of the game. Some of the boss blinds are very difficult with only 3 hands, especially 'The Water' which removes your discards. I did have one game where I got 'The Grabber', which adds an extra hand, but even then I still lost before I reached the end of Ante 8.

 

[Touring Mars]

I finally beat the Black deck, and in some style... but not without a horribly idiotic moment than I was sure would ruin my game. I got to a great position but accidentally discarded the hand instead of playing it, and at that point I was sure I had killed the game, but it turned out not to be so bad... after I discarded, I still ended up with a killer full house, which smashed my previous records by a country mile...

The Black Deck is pretty hard because you start with just 3 Hands and 3 Discards, and thus far my goal has been to stay alive until I can get "The Grabber" (+1 Hand) and play the rest of the game 'normally'. Tonight's game was astonishing in a few ways - and I broke all of my most important records, despite not ever getting beyond 3 Hands, and also (amazingly) not a single Polychrome (or even enhanced) Joker in the entire game.

Spoiler

I started by getting a Legendary Joker, "Triboulet", which gives x2 Mult on every K and Q played. This is the best Joker I've had so far, and is very powerful if you load your deck with those cards. I also got a killer combo Joker called "Sock & Buskin", which retriggers every face card, which combined with Triboulet could give MASSIVE mults, esp. with K Q combos, and a KKQQQ full house would give 2^10 (1024) mult.

My last hand was a KKQQQ full house, that yielded a staggering 11 million mult, and 2.9 billion points in one hand!!

Spoiler: Seed

4EIJBHL3

My joy, however, was pretty short-lived. Despite beating the Ante 12 Boss Blind by a massive margin, the Small Blind in Ante 13 was just mind-blowing... and it felt a bit like this:

Spoiler

Boss Blind in Ante 12 = 300,000,000

Small Bline in Ante 13 = 47,000,000,000 😵

 

[Touring Mars]

I had another great game last night - my first ever victory using the Green Stake, which should have unlocked a new deck... unfortunately, however, it didn't unlock, so that's now two bugged Stakes I've found (using the mobile version of the game).

It's a pity, because it is not only annoying not to have your achievement(s) rewarded, but it's actually preventing me from accessing content of the game too. Fortunately, however, it would appear that the PS5 version of the game is not bugged, and since I kept the seed of the game, I will re-play it on PS5 tonight.

-

Full disclosure - I won this particular game on my second attempt - I knew straight away that I'd missed an open goal when I stupidly passed up what turned out to be a killer Joker for my deck, so I played it again.

I had the card that gives 50 Chips per Spade scored, and also had Brainstorm (which duplicates the leftmost joker) to basically double the score to 100 Chips per Spade. So every time I got a Spade flush, it was scoring 500 extra chips, which was in effect a 5X Mult.

I then got Smeared Joker, which treats all cards of the same colour as the same suit, which I stupidly passed up the first time, but realised that I'd made a huge mistake, since it basically gave me automatic flushes that scored 500 extra points every time. With those three jokers combined with a couple of X Mult jokers, I made it to Ante 11.

Spoiler: Seed

7S3LVZLA

 

[Spacegoat]

Apologies for the crappy mobile phone image again. Took this of my Switch in handheld mode. But finally! After countless hours and too many attempts to count. I have beaten the Purple stake.

Didn't skip any blinds. So to let both the Hologram and Blue Joker take advantage of having 2 cards added to my deck each round (Hologram was 11.5x by the end). Hammered Two Pairs and Straights, with the occasional Pair and High Card played along with a stone card or two to pump them up. All that's left now is the Orange Stake, so I can finally unlock the last deck. That might take a long while though.

 

[-Fred-]

I'm slowly getting better at this and understanding it's not an actual poker game.

 

[RX-7_FD3S]

Complete my first win yesterday got lucky as I got a joker with +10 multiplier on the first big blind, from then on, it was an easy win.

Starting to understand it, I fear it lack a bit of variety but we'll see. So far stacking mutliplier and focusing on leveling a easy result to do (pair for example) can net a huge boost. My pair of 4 or 10 was worth like 25k at the end. But it sure has some interesting mechanics. I still prefer slay the spire but I like that the game themselves are shorter on balatro.

 

[Lain]

Whew, finally beat the Jokerless challenge:

 

[Touring Mars]

Just when I think I'm getting good at the game, I sink to a new level of almost unbelievable stupidity.

I almost won my first ever game on Purple Stake, and was hitting around 400k on a single hand on Ante 7, so I was very confident I would beat the Boss Blind on Ante 8, which was Verdant Leaf (must sell a Joker to debuff cards) and a total of 400k needed.

My joker deck was sweet. I had Smeared Joker (all same colored suits regarded the same), Shortcut (straights with gaps) and the big one - Obelisk with a 5.6x Mult; and I had Flush, Straight Flush and 3oaK levelled up; the big trick was that I had played loads of pairs (13) early doors so Obelisk would level up, and it worked a treat - although I did have to play High Card quite a lot, and avoid Flushes, to keep that Mult growing - hence why Straight Flushes (thanks to Smeared Joker and Shortcut) was paying dividends. I also had the card that paid off 3x Mult if all cards held in hand were black...

With one round to play before the Big Boss, I got dealt an enhanced 5 of Hearts that paid off quite nicely when played (instead of wasting a precious discard) - plus, it was the only red card in the deck, so it would score the 3x bonus and have a 50/50 chance of leaving me with all blacks and another 3x on the next turn, so - without thinking much more about it, I played it to score about 20k for nothing, but... I didn't notice that High Card was now equal to my highest played hand type, and Obelisk reset to 1x Mult In other words, game over

I was so pissed at myself that I didn't even save the seed.

 

[Lain]

Just when I think I'm getting good at the game, I sink to a new level of almost unbelievable stupidity.

I almost won my first ever game on Purple Stake, and was hitting around 400k on a single hand on Ante 7, so I was very confident I would beat the Boss Blind on Ante 8, which was Verdant Leaf (must sell a Joker to debuff cards) and a total of 400k needed.

My joker deck was sweet. I had Smeared Joker (all same colored suits regarded the same), Shortcut (straights with gaps) and the big one - Obelisk with a 5.6x Mult; and I had Flush, Straight Flush and 3oaK levelled up; the big trick was that I had played loads of pairs (13) early doors so Obelisk would level up, and it worked a treat - although I did have to play High Card quite a lot, and avoid Flushes, to keep that Mult growing - hence why Straight Flushes (thanks to Smeared Joker and Shortcut) was paying dividends. I also had the card that paid off 3x Mult if all cards held in hand were black...

With one round to play before the Big Boss, I got dealt an enhanced 5 of Hearts that paid off quite nicely when played (instead of wasting a precious discard) - plus, it was the only red card in the deck, so it would score the 3x bonus and have a 50/50 chance of leaving me with all blacks and another 3x on the next turn, so - without thinking much more about it, I played it to score about 20k for nothing, but... I didn't notice that High Card was now equal to my highest played hand type, and Obelisk reset to 1x Mult In other words, game over

I was so pissed at myself that I didn't even save the seed.

On the note of not saving the seed, that's probably my biggest gripe with Balatro... I really, really wish it had a robust run history similar to Slay the Spire.

 

[Touring Mars]

On the note of not saving the seed, that's probably my biggest gripe with Balatro... I really, really wish it had a robust run history similar to Slay the Spire.

Yes, that would be a great addition to the game, and presumably very easy to implement.

I regret not saving that seed because it was really just a stupid mistake which ruined an otherwise great game! That said, it's more like punishment to myself for not paying close enough attention, and going back to do it all again would feel a bit like cheating 😅