Am I extremly unlucky or just bad at the game?

[thesja]

I'm 10 hours into Balatro and I love it! But I still haven't managed to win 8 antes with a beginner deck on base difficulty - now I wanna know if it takes some time or if I make stupid choices.

I usually play around the jokers I get, there have been at least 8 games where the jokers were absolute crap and I struggles to horde money as it took all hands for the first blinds. Additionally I try hitting max interest as soon as possible, only investing in Jokers early on and not buying boosters, vouchers only if they are really good. Still, ate 4 to 5 is where I just lose to an insane boss matchup.

My last attempt was pretty solid and lot's of fun: Had two jokers for clubs and spades x4, one that considered any card a face, one that triggered face cards twice (so every card) and the one that considers spades and clubs the same. Antes 1-6 were super easy and I bought every tarot and celestial booster, going for flushes which is an easy strategy i've read. Ante 8 boss: very large blind of 300.000...

It feels like no matter what I do, there's at least one boss blind that completely counters me. Am I just unlucky and I'm supposed to take more than 10 hours to win a match or am I doing something profoundly wrong?

[Goblin]

First check is always: do you understand the difference between +mult and xmult, and how important joker order is with the latter? Xmult is usually instrumental to winning the game.

Sounds like your overall gameplan is good, though your joker choices may not be. For instance:

Originally posted by thesja:

Had two jokers for clubs and spades x4

I assume you mean Gluttonous and Wrathful joker, and having both is kind of a waste usually. On a flush they give +20 mult (+15 in the next update actually), which you doubled with retriggers, for 80 mult total. This used 4 joker slots.
With just one of those two jokers and xmult jokers, even at only x2, two xmults would have given you +80 as well (Start with +20 -> double to +40 -> double to +80) and a third would have pushed it to 160. But lots of xmult jokers are x3, or growing jokers, so a lot of them would have made a great replacement for one of your two +mult jokers. For you, available jokers that would have been great to get as replacement would be Campfire, Baseball Card, Card Sharp, Throwback, Blackboard, or Cavendish. Smiley Face could have replaced your wrathful or gluttonous and would have allowed you to sell smeared, although with some of those xmults you'd want to keep it.
Pareidolia + Sock and Buskin can be a great combo, but for you it was two jokers for effectively a single x2 effect. Ideally you'd want to have more jokers that use face cards, but there's not a ton of those. One of the legendaries would be a dream matchup, but good luck getting one of those. Or just glass cards, but those involve a risk of breaking. Any card enhancement is good with infinite retriggers, in fact.
So in a way, you were using 5 jokers to do the work of 3, and not quite using the other strengths they offered.

Using xmult, it's not unusual to get thousands of mult, to the point where you may even oneshot that very large blind.

[desveritas]

I'd say you are maybe a bit unlucky because what you're doing doesn't read all that wrong. Some general tips that may help you:


- You don't really need that much to beat the stages in Ante 1. Any good Flush with 2+ cards scoring 10 chips is around 300 Points without any modifier, which means you can beat Ante 1 with just fishing for any Flush two times. Maybe throw in another pair and you're good.

This means that you can focus on getting some cash first in the three stages. Since you have yet to beat a run I wouldn't recommend skipping for now, just play Small, Big and Ante and if you don't see anything good in the shops, start saving a bit first. You really only start to need Joker support in A2.


- You don't need to buy Packs, but I would strongly advise you to do so. While single Playing cards added will not have that much of an impact at first, leveling your Poker Hands through Planet Cards is an easy way to scale your overall score, and is definitely needed to beat the Very Large Blind for example, if your Jokers aren't fire until then.

Also Tarot Cards offer VERY powerful deck manipulation options. Take the Smeared Joker w/ clubs = spades or what it is. This sounds powerful, but there are Tarot Cards which permanently change the color of your cards to specific suits. These are even considered to be among the weakest I think, but this method is still way better if you're going for Flushes, because it frees one Joker slot where you can instead put one that gives money or more score.

Also there's a Tarot Card which gives you the sell value of all your Jokers and one that doubles your money (max 20$). On White Stakes, both cases often mean buying a pack for 4$ and getting back 12-20$ from it. And lastly, keep in mind that legendary Jokers can only appear in Spectral or Arcana Packs (with a probability of 0,3% I've read, but hey...).


- You probably figured this out by now, but from how your post reads, maybe consider focusing on getting +Mult-Jokers in the first shops? While the endgame with e-scores and all that clearly is all about xMult-scaling, I've found that two decent +Mult-Jokers to build on early on should really get you there eventually. Consider for example Jokers like Abstract Joker, Supernova or the one which scales for each Tarot card played.

You want to get something, anything that gives you a somewhat reliable 10-15 +Mult on every played hand. This should really free you up to keep the interest going while using Planets, Tarots, and looking for synergistic Jokers.



If you want to brute force this: start coloring your deck in 1-2 colors through Tarot Cards, pick/unlock Telescope Voucher and use as many Jupiter Cards as possible. Then hope for Flush support and hope that you can dodge any Game Over-Antes (there are also Vouchers and Jokers for this). As a general remark; while Flushes are among the easiest decks in the beginning, their support cards scale the worst and imo they have the most Antes directly countering them. Therefore it's better to not try brute forcing them, but this is still pretty viable on White Stakes.

[DopaTrain]

I'll admit it took me a while to realise the difference between +mult and x mult...

[Godhand]

It'll always be a little bit of both. You can do many things wrong yourself, but the shop and the cards you draw and the boss blinds you get, can screw you over multiple times in a row if you're unlucky.

I suggest you try to unlock more jokers. Some of them are really powerful and can carry your run.

Also the Checkered Deck is fun to play and quite beginner friendly (you unlock it by winning with the Green Deck if I remember correctly.)