Can't seem to beat Ante 12

[ApathicAlpaca]

I got an extry lucky run with 2x ante reset, in the end I had x3 multiply, x8.25 multiply and x11 multiply jokers plus observatory (another 1.5x mult since I was not lucky and had only 1 fitting planet) and flush with 4 cards on every hand played but my score per hand was 3 million on average.
The small blind in ante 12 requires 300 million (!) score. Even with much better combinations that'd really hard to reach.
Sure, I can theoretically imagine other combinations that can increase the score per hand easily (like massive +base mult or more observatory planets) but that'd be like a one-in-a-million chance to get.

Is it intended to beat ante 12 only on the occasional freak run or is there some overlying strategy I am missing?
(btw I played on base difficulty)

[Jakkson K]

ante 12 is the farthest the game expects you to go and the highest you get rewarding for going. Anything higher is your own personal goals.

Now the main way people get past ante 12+ is to break the game at its core and abuse mechanics in likely un-expected ways. Mainly through the legendary joker, Perkeo to create infinite spectral cards. Alongside multiple blueprint and brainstorm jokers.

Then all you need is to multiply your score by 1.5^100 and win the entire game.

[Goblin]

For builds mainly relying on just xMult jokers like yours, it's usually a hard target to beat yes. For hands using xMult per trigger/held in hand, especially with any form of re-triggering, it's easy. Even a bad run like those will go into billions for a 5 card hand, or far beyond that. If you get one with DNA and start duplicating some ideal card like red seal polychrome 5 with Hack

Other than that, negative jokers. Anaglyph deck + negative tag goes BRRRR.

Of course, those runs do tend to be rarer than the ones where you just win ante 8 through xMult, but even getting ante 12 is supposed to be an achievement and not something you do on the regular. Going beyond is for the "holy crap check this out" runs.

[sab0t]

i've gotten to the boss blind of ante 12 once and that is the farthest i've gotten. this was done by having a very strong set of jokers, and lots of steel cards and red seal cards. to get farther than this i think involves combinations like mime re-triggering a hand full of red seal steel polychromes, which results in all of those triggering an absurd number of times.

[Ronald Brain]

Originally posted by Goblin:

For builds mainly relying on just xMult jokers like yours, it's usually a hard target to beat yes. For hands using xMult per trigger/held in hand, especially with any form of re-triggering, it's easy. Even a bad run like those will go into billions for a 5 card hand, or far beyond that. If you get one with DNA and start duplicating some ideal card like red seal polychrome 5 with Hack

Other than that, negative jokers. Anaglyph deck + negative tag goes BRRRR.

Of course, those runs do tend to be rarer than the ones where you just win ante 8 through xMult, but even getting ante 12 is supposed to be an achievement and not something you do on the regular. Going beyond is for the "holy crap check this out" runs.

I was able to reach Ante 12 boss via a super strong pair run with lots of Steel, Glass, Red Seal and Burnt Joker to level up Pair to consistently go into millions. Careless play + bad RNG draw at the boss blind = loss with 1 million gap lol.

In a nutshell, Ante 12's scale is the first true "challenge" to your build, the first 11 scales very lenient, but this one will show how strong you actually are.

[malogoss]

Red Seal + Steel Kings.
Baron.
Mime.
Blueprint(s).

Profit.

[ApathicAlpaca]

Thanks guys, will give it a try with the tactics mentioned here. However I think it's pretty damn rare to get any of these to work (because of RNG).

[BeautifulFlowerField]

repeats and red seals are what you want. anaglyph deck and you can go absolutely stupid if you hit more than one negative joker tag. i got quadruple negative in one tag and had so much money i rerolled into two more negatives. i didn't crack 300mil but i got pretty bad luck with the negatives i rolled considering how many it was.