How long did it take to get your first win?

[kaybub]

I've been playing the game for around 15 hours. At first I was hooked and was having a ton of fun. But now after 15 hours and never getting past the 7th ante, I've really been losing motivation to even continue trying. I always just hit a wall thats feels impossible for me to overcome. Meanwhile I have multiple friends who have won multiple times in under 10 hours...

[Winter Wolf]

13 hours, and then 3 more soon after then I hit that wall. Hard. (See my post to see what I mean.)

And it really can feel like a wall if you don't grok the subtleties.

The things people said that helped me and things I figured out on my own:

-- Pay a lot of attention to not only the position of your Jokers but also your played Hands. Left most for chips totals and right most for multipliers. If you have a card/joker with more than one type, value them in the following order: xmult, +mult, then +chips. Going right to left. Of course some jokers require another joker to the right or left (or leftmost).

-- Be sure to track all the text on every Joker. Some of them seem like one thing but are another if you understand the subtext.

-- READ THE BOSS BLIND every single round before you even decide whether to play the small and big blinds. There is one in particular that wants you to skip the blinds leading up to it (The Pillar).

-- Blocked cards are not useless. Sometimes you can make a hand that scores well enough even if some cards are not scored in it.

-- Discard away cards you are not like to be able to use. Look at your deck contents before each hand and decide what is most likely to be useless. (Flush in a particular suit is unlikely if a) you don't have many in hand and b) there aren't many in deck. Same rule applies to straights.)

-- Open Boosters when you can afford them. Boosters provide a few triggers and can give fresh blood to your run when your deck or jokers are seeming anemic.

-- Speaking of affording while it is important to build up $$ ($25 is a safe amount to save for maximum round interest) when buying items would just be wasting the $ it is also important to not pass up building up your resources. In particular you want a full compliment of jokers as soon as you can get them.
Caveats:
a)But don't buy just any joker. Think about whether some other joker is serving the same purpose and whether this purchase will be redundant.
b)Same goes for planet and tarot cards and vouchers. Think about how these things will help you.

c) Ideally you want your chips and multiplier scores to be able to beat any ante you can encounter including "The Wall" Boss blind. Which means you want your jokers to have a balance between multiples (+mult) and multiple multipliers (xmult),. Conditional multipliers are fine if you can ensure using them. Less so if they are chancy. Chip adders are also good if they give a good amount of $$ but they can also be a weakness if you need more multiples to keep your score high.

d) When a joker becomes obsolete (no longer is giving you much bonus compared to the minimum ante, sell it. Hopefully you will start to see where this is key *before* you need worry about it. Especially important: keep an eye on the very good but temporary cards like Banana, Popcorn and Ice Cream. Don't value them over more permanent jokers that fix gaps in your build.

e) shiny jokers (holo, poly, and foil) are good but the best is poly which has a flat 1.5x multiplier. Particularly if you have good mults already. This applies to deck cards as well.

-- Take care of how you add cards to your deck too. Too many cards can dilute your ability to draw what you want. However if you can put some cards in and take out the ones that you don't want you will find draws a lot smoother. There are some spectral cards that help with that.

Hopefully these help a bit. I am by no means an expert having still 2 unlocked decks and 3 locked ones to beat on white but when I made my own post about the wall, I had 3 white wins and one red. In other words these tips helped me a lot. (Also be sure to read various other threads for more advice. The best players here give great advice.)

[JudgeTy]

~3 hrs.
Learn placement for your selected hand. Don't just click the cards... move them around after selecting. Same with Jokers.
Check your odds on discard. If your going for a flush of hearts.. check the odds of getting a heart first.
Learn when to skip blinds. Watch a streamer/youtuber for examples on expected plays. There's some easy progression unlocks that make the game easier.
Try the other decks.

[Jakkson K]

On the first demo I played for like 13 hours and won the demo 3 times.
My first run of full game was a win and on white stake to black stake I win very consistently on everything but Black and Painted decks.

[wakasm]

I didn't play the demo and went into this game blind (recommendation from a friend).

I won on my first two plays (on the first two difficulties) simply by getting my income high. I had no clue about how a lot of the mechanics worked at all, but as soon as I saw "you earned $ in interest" I just leaned into that and was able to win on the first two plays. I ended up just leaning into the interest, buying packs, and letting all the card boosts with a few OK jokers win. I don't even think I saw many xMulti cards the first few games.

In fact, I ended I almost ended getting $400 achievement on my second game, but I didn't know about it and didn't try for it.

Once I started switching decks or trying to unlock stuff is when the more frequent losing began. I still can't play some of the decks reliably at lower levels while having won on Gold difficulty on some others. The deck choice can really matter.

There was a lot of stuff I didn't know either, like, I didn't even realize you play less than 5 cards until like 4-5 games in. Or that you could reorder your cards (especially the jokers). I don't even think I saw many xMulti cards those first plays either. I was mostly carried by just the card upgrades.

This could be a path that works for you, you just have to be very tight with money, picking up like only 1 or 2 cheap +chip or +multi jokers in the first 6 blinds or so. Once you get to around 20-25 chips, you can start spending more liberally.

[Siozen]

15 hours or so, then a couple more wins after that. Joker placement as others have said and cards that boost chips every round along with xmulti jokers are pretty much required.

[Stochastica]

Somewhere around the 30 hour mark. I'm not a strategic thinker and although I think I understand what I should be doing I still struggle.

[Deadweight]

about 2-3 hours. I've beaten the game with all the white stake decks (haven't unlocked any decks that require higher stakes) after about 15 hours roughly. Wasn't too impressed with red stakes, so have been trying on and off to try it with the first deck and enjoying other normal runs.

[anima132000]

Around 3 hours with the blue deck. I could've gotten it sooner had I known you could move Joker's around...

[Zelxios]

game honestly isnt TOO difficult first round is a simple puzzle though you can get screwed on the first boss if your blind skips werent good enough. i think just an hour for an official win, played alot of the demo. current best deck for me is abandoned on black stakes

[Alphabetatralala]

About 1 hour and a half ig.

[Sm Izumi]

1st try, i played the demo, so far i've played pretty slowly.
I've almost unlocked all the decks, i win pretty much 1 game out of 2 everytime i play it.

[ima]

1st run too, but I had around 25h in the demo and I have 600h in Slay the Spire, so I was swimming in familiar waters

[JudgeTy]

If you want a cheat sheet of my runs priorities:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/JudgeTy/screenshots/#scrollTop=0

Here's just the Jokers:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3173086354

[VastGirth]

2nd run, but I think that was a lucky fluke more than anything. Wasn't very long after that I fully understood everything. Now I win about 1 in 3 games.

[Black Hammer]

Two tips:

1. Generate revenue. Having interest money isn't the best way to do it, but sometimes it's your only option for keeping cash flow up.

2. Red multipliers do not add to total multiplier, but increase it multiplicatively. They are key to big scores. You nearly always want at least one by Ante 6 or so.