Balatro (Steam/PS5/Xbox Series X/Switch)

[Nu-Eclipse]

Official Balatro merch, anyone?

https://www.playbalatro.com/merch

[hudson]

Ghost Deck / White Stake

Seed: Q6I2LNYX

[hudson]

Been trying to do Nebula Deck on white stake for a week. Did it. Just levelled up 2 pair.

Seed: FUK3C8Z9

[Nu-Eclipse]

Came close to completing a Green Deck/White Stake run, bottomed out on Final Boss Blind (Crimson Heart) by 20k-ish.

Seed: E25JP33V

[Nu-Eclipse]

Yellow Deck/White Stake run completed!

Not a perfect run but job done - defeated The Final Boss Blind (Verdant Leaf) by 408 chips!

I was able to spam levelled-up two pairs constantly (as well as a few other levelled-up hands) and stack the deck with multipliers and triggers. Got the choices of Joker spot-on and they scaled surprisingly nicely in the later antes and blinds.

Seed: HQ282ICB

[fuse]

In a bit of a gaming funk lately and this is just at the right level of engagement that I can handle. Slowly working through the basic stakes on each of the decks, trying to build up the collection, and generally just learning its ways. Observation-wise, even building a solid deck and joker combo that focuses on multiplications rather than additions, the jump between ante 10 and 11 (500k -> 7m) has been a very clear roadblock where the growth is really looking for something more from the player.

Obviously though, having watched a video or two, YouTube is insistent on ruining my fun and is regularly showing me folks who are out there theorycrafting the upper limits of the game and pushing seeded runs and scoring to their absolute limit. Going back to my own unseeded runs after feels a bit like watching aerospace engineering to then returning back home to play with my Duplo.

Another friend commented on how it's so slickly presented and info about it trickles out and surprises you in such a way that you suspect there is perhaps something more to it, but that you then realise that no, it's not that - it's really is just what it presents itself as, just with mountains of depth to plumb, and that's just fine. It is a good game.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Finally!

Completed a Blue Deck run with the standard White Stake.

Again, spammed levelled-up pairs and scaled my jokers with multipliers and built retriggers into the deck. Also...thank f--- for the Joker that disables the Boss Blind when you sell it - took the target from 300k back down to the default 100k - far easier!

Dabbled with a bit of Endless Mode after for LOLz. Bottomed out around 10th Ante Big Blind but only missed by about 20k - not bothered by that point.

Seed: P965R2FW

[Nu-Eclipse]

Failed yet again at the final boss blind on standard Blue Deck/White Stake. Spammed levelled-up pairs and set up multiplier jokers to get all the way there, only to f--- it up on the last hand, 25k chips out. Annoying.

Seed: P3B2IH1M

[Atticus]

Just picked this up on Switch. Absolutely class game. When those Jokers start multiplying it’s so good. Perfect handheld gaming too 👍

[Nu-Eclipse]

BIG update coming next week-ish...

Looks like a significant rebalancing!

[hudson]

BIG update coming next week-ish...

[Lebowski]

All the draws are random. That’s expected. A boss removing all discards so I have only a single random hand to hit a high number (which I lost) or a boss where I can’t actually see what cards I’ve drawn (which I won but took zero satisfaction from) both remove everything but the random element. Maybe if I had some consumables to counter those, not sure I’ve seen one that could yet. But those were examples where there was literally nothing but the random and that’s just not for me.

Like I say, it’s not that I’m trying to say this is bad game (it’s clearly not). this could be just about whether it’s a fit for my personality. I like to feel I can have some influence.

This peed me off at first, i had a cracking round where i had a real good set of jokers then got destroyed by a boss that would only let me do one type of hand, which was pretty much impossible with the jokers i had. The thing i learned was I wasn't changing my deck in useful ways enough to tip things in my favour, adding loads of multipliers or removing cards really helps, I had one run where I managed to change a ****load of standard cards to kings so was constantly getting 4 of a kind with all kings, My buffs where all about face cards so was scoring crazy points per hand with this strat, Another run I had crazy multipliers and a card that let you jump numbers in a straight so I could constantly pull straights out of nothing, this made the "one had only Boss" a walk on the park.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Still not quite able to complete a Blue Deck run, but got to the final ante so that's something at least (even if I did fall 30k short in the actual Final Boss Blind). Face multipliers really helped here.

969Q5IZ4 is the seed if anybody wants to try it.

[Dogg Thang]

I stuck at this and won a run. Mostly by playing full houses or straights and almost nothing else, with a decent but not special combo of jokers that favoured face cards. Big thing for me was realising I could reorder the jokers - that changes how much you can get on mults. But I also got very very lucky on the last boss, who had an ability that honestly wasn’t an issue and skipping the previous round gave me a massive advantage to beat it. So I got lucky.

Done now.

[MartyG]

This might be an interesting seed to try - some cool jokers appeared in this one, reckon with the right choices you'd get further than the Ante 4 boss as I only missed by 900.

And this one worth a look


Boom ...


And who doesn't like having Aces in their hand?