Super rare hands--are they actually useable?

[brickey.8]

The game seems to have a couple super-rare hands which have separate levels from their normal versions. The two I've seen are 5-of-a-kind and Flush House. I only saw them in the preview though, because both of them would have used abysmal level-1 stats instead of the highly leveled hands I was actually trying to play.

I'm assuming that if you actually form one, it'll unlock something, and I'm scared that something will be an extra planet that waters down the pool.

Is there any way to actually make productive use of these things? Five-of-a-kind I suppose could be playable if you thin out your deck absurdly well, but flush house seems like it can only possibly come up if you're doing a 100% specialized flush-only run, and will still only show up occasionally. Feels like all it exists for is to surprise you by making your hand not count as the thing you wanted.

[Jay]

Yeah, these are heavily specialized and it'd take a lot of planning + some luck to do them consistently I think.

There are planet cards for 5 of a kind at least. I think it was called planet x? Not particularly worth upgrading unless you're really focusing on it.

[Shot_Trip]

So here's the thing.

You might have noticed when using planets that the lower hands don't just start with lower points, they also *scale* slower, too. High card gets 15/1 chip and mult per level, IIRC. Higher hands scale faster from planets - they get more chip and mult - and this applies to the secret hands, too. Some of them are shockingly easy to build for, too. Five of a kind simply requires focusing Death on one rank - I like Aces - and often leads to building Flush Five. (There's also standard packs to add in more aces, and Hanged Man to remove non-ace cards. DNA joker early also lets you build for it as well.)

The thing is you have to use the secret hand for its planet to appear. However, if you mistakenly put together a secret hand, and don't want to level it, hold its planet in your consumables. Unless you have the right joker, that planet won't show up anywhere else while it's there.

[sab0t]

i believe you're correct that it will dilute the planet card pool if you play one of the special hands, as the corresponding planet card will become available from then on ONLY for that specific run. it won't show up in future runs (until you play it again for that specific run).

they seem highly situational, if you are able to convert a ton of cards in some way or another. but by then usually a different hand is already leveled up significantly so i have never had a run where i ended up specializing into one of the rare hands.

[Jay]

Originally posted by Shot_Trip:

So here's the thing.

You might have noticed when using planets that the lower hands don't just start with lower points, they also *scale* slower, too. High card gets 15/1 chip and mult per level, IIRC. Higher hands scale faster from planets - they get more chip and mult - and this applies to the secret hands, too. Some of them are shockingly easy to build for, too. Five of a kind simply requires focusing Death on one rank - I like Aces - and often leads to building Flush Five. (There's also standard packs to add in more aces, and Hanged Man to remove non-ace cards. DNA joker early also lets you build for it as well.)

The thing is you have to use the secret hand for its planet to appear. However, if you mistakenly put together a secret hand, and don't want to level it, hold its planet in your consumables. Unless you have the right joker, that planet won't show up anywhere else while it's there.

I had no idea holding planets worked that way! That's a really good tip

[Shot_Trip]

Originally posted by Jay:

Originally posted by Shot_Trip:

So here's the thing.

You might have noticed when using planets that the lower hands don't just start with lower points, they also *scale* slower, too. High card gets 15/1 chip and mult per level, IIRC. Higher hands scale faster from planets - they get more chip and mult - and this applies to the secret hands, too. Some of them are shockingly easy to build for, too. Five of a kind simply requires focusing Death on one rank - I like Aces - and often leads to building Flush Five. (There's also standard packs to add in more aces, and Hanged Man to remove non-ace cards. DNA joker early also lets you build for it as well.)

The thing is you have to use the secret hand for its planet to appear. However, if you mistakenly put together a secret hand, and don't want to level it, hold its planet in your consumables. Unless you have the right joker, that planet won't show up anywhere else while it's there.

I had no idea holding planets worked that way! That's a really good tip

Yeah, because cards don't show up twice if they're already present, you can even do this with Tarot or Spectral - inversely, if you LIKE a consumable, it's better to use it quickly, so its 'buddy' doesn't hold it back from spawning. This gives whole new meaning to the Fool, I think - it's the only way to hold *two* of a tarot.

[sab0t]

this is great advice, thanks Shot_Trip. didn't realize i could affect card packs / shops by holding onto cards, that is really smart.

[symphony]

Originally posted by Shot_Trip:

Originally posted by Jay:

I had no idea holding planets worked that way! That's a really good tip

Yeah, because cards don't show up twice if they're already present, you can even do this with Tarot or Spectral - inversely, if you LIKE a consumable, it's better to use it quickly, so its 'buddy' doesn't hold it back from spawning. This gives whole new meaning to the Fool, I think - it's the only way to hold *two* of a tarot.

I didn't know blocking a card was a mechanic until this thread. There's a joker that says something like "x cards have a chance of showing up multiple times" I never really understood what that meant but maybe it's specifically referring to this?

[Shot_Trip]

Originally posted by symphony:

Originally posted by Shot_Trip:

Yeah, because cards don't show up twice if they're already present, you can even do this with Tarot or Spectral - inversely, if you LIKE a consumable, it's better to use it quickly, so its 'buddy' doesn't hold it back from spawning. This gives whole new meaning to the Fool, I think - it's the only way to hold *two* of a tarot.

I didn't know blocking a card was a mechanic until this thread. There's a joker that says something like "x cards have a chance of showing up multiple times" I never really understood what that meant but maybe it's specifically referring to this?

It is! Specifically it turns off this mechanic. I've never really been able to apply it, but it's handy to know not to hold on to planets most of the time (unless you're trying to avoid that hand?)

[brickey.8]

Funny thing, immediately after making this thread (and before seeing the replies) I had a run where I cloned the same card a dozen times, got 5 of a kind, leveled it up several times and actually had it be relevant. Guess I wasn't patient enough.

Flush House still seems like nonsense though. You can't just clone one card for that, you'd have to centralize on multiple numbers while also having a flush build.

[Kadarus]

Originally posted by brickey.8:

Flush House still seems like nonsense though. You can't just clone one card for that, you'd have to centralize on multiple numbers while also having a flush build.

If you succeed at converting most of your deck to one suit (a lot of suit-changing tarots, Hanged Man, Sigil and/or Smeared Joker) you will get flush houses relatively frequently, but by that point they might actually be undesirable if you leveled up regular flush high enough.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by brickey.8:

Flush House still seems like nonsense though. You can't just clone one card for that, you'd have to centralize on multiple numbers while also having a flush build.

Flush House is way easier to get consistently than flush five, a single suit changing tarot can enable it whereas five of a kind requires at least a few copies of one single card to be somewhat consistent. Flush Five is even harder to make since you have to luck into seeing not just the same rank but the same suit when you get to copy something. There's more ways to use tarots to build towards flush house than flush five.

[Draco18s]

Flush House isn't actually all that hard to pull off. If you get the Smeared Joker (or use a lot of suit conversion tarot cards) as well as a few Death/Strength tarot and card purchasing, it actually becomes viable to level it (ergo a planet card for it).

I'm only missing one planet at this point (likely Five of Kind or Five Flush) which is a bit trickier to build. I have managed to play both (took having about 8 copies of the card in my deck before it happened), but whatever the planet I'm missing is either (a) didn't show up after I got the hand (likely) or is unrelated.

Edit:
Got the planet. Had to do it TWICE actually, despite having acquired it twice during one game, it didn't count towards the collection.