Haven't won a run yet :|

[Sir Brane Damuj]

I've got 5 hours in the demo and I haven't won a run yet lol. I've gotten into a "last hand" situation in the last or penultimate boss multiple times but it never quite shakes out

loving the game though just wondering if people are finding it as hard as I am or if I just suck!

[Lavindyr]

A little from column A, a little from column B. I can't seem to make it past the 2nd boss, myself lol

[muted]

I've been playing with the deck that gives you a double tag when you beat a boss. You can skip some blinds and get some good deals with packs or even income. This last run I had was my best yet. I was lucky to get the right jokers and unlike my other runs I only used one planet. I've played a lot of runs spending money on tarot/planets and that works too. You'll get the hang of it depending on the jokers you find.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197969246695/screenshot/2347007377571536992/

[monoria2]

I have similar problems, though I managed to win once. I agree on the hard part of your comment though.

[FFFluoride]

Honestly, not really. I agree that getting a streak going and maintaining it is hard, but if you just restart until you get some pretty good tags for skipping blinds or even just a hard boss early (for example, the one that discards two cards when you play a hand), it generally goes very well, I have won dozens of times and even got A five's flush (or whatever it's called)

[Sir Brane Damuj]

got it so the key to success is to abandon most runs I think that means it's hard.

[Epigone]

Just won for the first time (with a decent 66k). Many strategies are possible BUT you really want modified jokers (foiled, chromatic, etc.). I feel it's really those that catapult the run into the stratosphere.

Flush are great early game, easy to do.
Get to 25$ as fast as possible, to get that sweet income.
Focus on one planet.

Anyway, great demo, great game ! I can't wait for the final product <3
Great work, devs !

[Shot_Trip]

Mult multipliers are often how I shove my way into a win, along with canny flush enabling (often you need to be clever/lucky enough to have card removal or conversion each blind's shop to pull it off). Editions, enhancements, and seals are a bigger help than they seem, and more than one run has been won thanks to a great spectral pull.

Don't forget to arrange your jokers properly: Polychrome and other multmults (like ramen) go all the way to the right, chip bonuses to the left.

Don't underestimate Hack, don't sleep on Vagabond, Baseball Card is honestly a bit busted, and check your Tags: Consider skipping your initual blind if the opening tag either gives you more than 7 dollars OR gives you something of similar worth (like a Mega pack)

[bluemoon72]

Uh, yeah...I've got 29 hours into the game. Made it to the final boss twice, haven't beaten it yet. AAARGH!

[Rook Me Amadeus]

There's a few tricks to it:

1. The right Jokers/Multipliers make a HUGE difference. Look for a way to balance out some bonuses to chips for the hand with multiplier boosts. The right Joker or two can let you win the early blinds in one hand.

2. Always check what tags you get for skipping a blind. If you can deal with a harder than normal blind for your first or second round, you can get some massive buffs early. Possibly including things like guaranteed holographic jokers in the shop or every item other than vouchers in the shop being free. A little early risk can set you snowballing early to a much easier time.

3. Use the tarot cards to manipulate the suits/ranks of your deck. Pushing your deck toward being all 1-2 suits makes it easier to rack up (straight) flushes. Also, this might change in the full game, but one boss blind makes all club cards worthless. Get clubs out of your deck if at all possible.

4. Get planet cards whenever you can to boost the payout of certain hands your deck is geared to get easily. Or, if you haven't made too many changes, go for boosting pairs, two pairs, and 3 of a kinds. A couple levels up on those can make them stupidly powerful.

[Starwisp]

My breakthrough came when I understood how important the order of the jokers is.
Let me try to explain and correct me if I'm wrong.

The game does the calculations like this: hand value x multiplier.
Leveling with the planet cards will change the base hand value, as will using higher cards for the combinations e.g. a pair of aces vs a pair of twos, and cards with +x chips on them.
Multiplier = base multi (jokers with e.g. +4 multis) x multiplication factor (jokers with e.g. "x2" on them) . So it is important to first add up the multi AND THEN apply the multiplication factor. So put the base +x jokers left and the jokers with factors (e.g. x2, x1.25) right.

According to that the full calculation would be:
final calculated value = hand value (base hand value is calculated by card combinations like full house, 2 pairs etc. and modified by planet cards,+x chips jokers, +x chips foil cards, stone cards etc.) X multi (base multi [+x jokers, holographics, etc.] x multi factor [e.g. x2 on regular jokers, or as part of modified cards e.g. steel cards and modified jokers].

So 2 things are important:
1. Apply at least one multi factor card AFTER calculating the base multi -> put the joker with the factor to the right side.
2. Achieve a high enough hand value before the multi is applied.

[almondblossoms]

Its been said here a few times but multipliers will be your best friend, that being said I don't want to spoil too much. Look at skipping blinds & the benefits that come along with it (skipping can be quite good in certain circumstances) good luck!

[Amaranth]

Originally posted by Sir Brane Damuj:

got it so the key to success is to abandon most runs :mhwgood: I think that means it's hard.

This is a misleading takeaway, you can win most seeds if you play them correctly. I'd estimate I win 70%+ of my attempts, currently on a winstreak of 7, and I'm definitely not playing perfectly. There's a lot of depth, and some seeds are better than others, but you definitely don't need to reset most runs or even any runs to win consistently.

(I realized this comment reads kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-y when I didn't really mean to. The point is: yes there is depth to this game that you are currently missing, it's hard but it's also possible to get good enough at it that you can win a lot)

[Onefatcow]

My experience is close to Amaranth's. Win more often than not and usually when I lose it's because I've made some kind of miscalculation (greed). It's possible to have an extremely dry run that feels unwinnable, but these are very rare.

Learning the ropes will come with time, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you desperately want to improve, I would recommend watching someone else more experienced play for a bit. There's a lot of depth to this game, and it can be easy to miss things.

My extremely, extremely shallow guide to your first win would be:
1) Beat the first small blind in one hand, just reset if you can't get a sufficiently large full house or straight.
2) Get an early +mult joker and use that to beat early blinds in 1 hand each
3) Save up $25 early, skipping weaker jokers, tarot, planets, and card packs
4) Sit on your $25 and spend only the interest on good jokers, tarot cards, card packs, and relevant planet cards (don't buy planet packs)
5) Look for xmult jokers (examples: hologram, baseball card, throwback). A 3x mult joker with a passable build will blow everything out of the water.
6. Don't forget to spend everything right before the final boss, no point saving cash (well, unless you have bull)

Alternately
1) Get vagabond in your first shop
2) faceroll your way to a new highscore

[Tentakeltier🦑]

It took me a while to get to consistent wins against the final boss too, the first few hours of playing the game I thought it was impossible and was in awe of the people showing screenshots of 100k point hands. And even now I'm pretty much only at a 50/50 win rate, but I can usually tell if it's a lost cause by the 2nd boss and just start a new run if RNG screwed me over too much.

What jokers you take, the order of the jokers and the order in which you play cards can all be huge factors. Getting the right synergies is crucial. The Vagabond joker pairs extremely well with the credit card. Four Fingers and Shortcut are super useful when you focus on flushes/straights. Hack pairs super well with Even Steven and/or Odd Todd etc. (In the demo there's only 45 jokers, I wonder how easy it will be to get good synergies going with all 150 jokers in the full game.)

Anything that ups the chance for special foil cards to appear is always the best choice imo. Getting those jokers glammed up is just so helpful.

Getting multipliers for face cards and extra chips on lower number cards was super helpful too for me. Also, in this demo it is wise to get rid of clubs (either delete or change to other suit) because of the club negating boss (that is going to change in the full game when all of the suit negating bosses will be available).

Good luck to all of you who still struggle! :)

[Myr Superion]

This demo is a little more difficult than the last one.