Some of the boss blinds are just terribly unfair.

[thebugmancometh]

I've been playing pretty solidly for a couple days. Nearly had my first win last night but couldn't quite scrape the points together.

I've learned that rerolling or disabling boss blinds is pretty important, because some are just run enders.

Cards drawn face-down after playing a hand or discarding? May as well just quit. That was AFTER my only re-roll (I usually try to leave them if they're not too bad, but this one was all face cards debuffed, which I wish I'd just left alone.)

The amount of sheer luck it requires to navigate this game is ridiculous. I have a better win/loss ratio against real humans in real poker, without cheating, lol.

Anyone have any advice, or is it literally "build the best synergies you can and cross your fingers?"

It's not like most other roguelikes I've played where bad luck can often be overcome by skill and/or careful planning, but I've had some banger builds in Balatro just fall apart in a single blind, even when I try to squeeze out extra hands and discards, pile on multipliers and upgrade the ♥♥♥♥ out of my hands.

(edit) Just had another run lose to the "play only one hand" boss. I had a fun build going too, where every card that scored was getting an extra 30 chips and turning into a gold card. I was starting to rake in the money, which I was using to basically clear every shop I hit, and that still wasn't enough.

Even if I'm going to lose, this game doesn't give you much time to play with your builds. :(

[Mel Gibson]

The boss which makes cards be drawn face-down after playing a hand does not affect how cards are drawn after discards. So if you plan ahead you can use your discards in your favor.
Face-down cards are indeed annoying, but you can often have some idea of what you've got by carefully analyzing how cards are ordered and how they change by reordering by rank or by suit via those two buttons at the bottom of the screen. Having a face-down card selected while you toggle these buttons are especially useful.
And of course always take a good look at your deck to have an idea of what cards are still remaining.

There is obviously a lot of luck involved in the game, but you can often navigate through a streak of misfortune with very careful decision-making.
Whenever you are in a promising run but have a high risk of losing, take your time instead of just blindly playing whatever hand you first notice in front of you within 3 seconds. Otherwise, sure, just keep restarting until the game gives you a dream roster of jokers and feel proud of your accomplishment of beating the game without actually having played it.

Back to the bosses, I find most of them a fun enough and their specific mechanics add a nice bit of flavor to the game.
That said, I do have a problem with The Wall (extra large blind) and, slightly less so, with The Needle (play only one hand). Not only they are extremely lazy game design wise, but often end up as a filter to runs where you always barely have "just enough", which I find the most fun. They are pretty much incentives to the boring play style I described above, where people just restart until they get lucky enough to one-shot everything.

But let's be honest: these ARE the target public of the game. For some reason beyond me, people LIKE to play these dead, soulless, thoughtless runs, and are even willing to play seeded runs (!!!), which for some reason they find more appealing than just watching a playthrough on youtube or something. Might as well make a power point with screenshots of the game with your score going to infinity and patting yourself in the back after you have "finished it".

[thebugmancometh]

Originally posted by Mel Gibson:

The boss which makes cards be drawn face-down after playing a hand does not affect how cards are drawn after discards.

I think there are a couple different face-down card blinds. My discards were coming back face-down as well. I played all 4-5 of my hands and by the end could only see two cards. I did try sorting them, and got lucky once, but that's actual card-counting ♥♥♥♥. Way, WAY beyond my skill level, and not a skill I wish to develop for the sake of a questionably-balanced roguelike.

Originally posted by Mel Gibson:

There is obviously a lot of luck involved in the game, but you can often navigate through a streak of misfortune with very careful decision-making.
Whenever you are in a promising run but have a high risk of losing, take your time instead of just blindly playing whatever hand you first notice in front of you within 3 seconds.

I don't know why you think I do. I use the hell out of my discards to try and put together good hands, but you're still beholden to the luck of the draw. It doesn't matter if you have two-pair (an easy af hand to get, usually) maxed out when the game just doesn't want to give them to you. Then you have 0 discards left and are boned.

Originally posted by Mel Gibson:

For some reason beyond me, people LIKE to play these dead, soulless, thoughtless runs, and are even willing to play seeded runs (!!!),

Can we not be dramatic and gate-keepery? I'm asking for advice to improve my runs, and pointing out that some of the blinds, (like the two you mentioned, and the all face-down cards after the opening hand, are just arbitrary run-killers if you can't re-roll or disable them (afaik only two items exist for that, and they don't show up consistently every run.)

I dunno. I know it's doable, obviously, I just don't know how. Should I not be spreading out my planet cards (just focus on two or three?), what sorts of things should I look for in the first couple shops when I barely have money? Should I prioritize planets, tarot, spectral, or enhanced playing cards?

I'm playing the way that comes naturally and makes the most sense to me, but it's obviously not working.

[Mel Gibson]

Originally posted by thebugmancometh:

Originally posted by Mel Gibson:

take your time instead of just blindly playing whatever hand you first notice in front of you within 3 seconds.

I don't know why you think I do.

I really didn't mean to imply you play like that, I just wanted to make a caricature of what not to do to sell my point.

It's hard to give advice since I don't know what is making you struggle, you mentioned the face-down bosses so I only talked about that. But here are some (potentially redundant) basic tips:

1) I would start by having a good understanding of how these three types of jokers help you score:
- chips jokers
- mult jokers
- X mult jokers
Quick rundown: at the beginning, mult jokers are the best. X mults are not good until you have high base mults (via mult jokers and planets). As your mult gets higher, chip jokers get more and more important. Keep your X mult jokers to the right of your mult jokers.

2) Save some money to earn more at the end of each round. The Hermit tarot card (doubles money, capped at +$20) is also obviously more useful when you have more in your wallet.
So once you get a run going, try not to go below, say, $20 unless you got a very good shop. Apparently you often get the reroll voucher. It's situational, but I rarely find myself in a position where burning $10 on this one seems worth it.

3) Yes, focusing on one or two planet cards is usually better than spreading out.
Focusing on flushes is probably a good choice for beginners (and even later on). And they are easy to get, even against face-down bosses, with the reordering shenanigans I mentioned earlier.
Straights are somewhat harder to get, but scale faster with planets since the last update, so they can be very strong too.

The rest comes with time. You get a better idea of which jokers are good, which are probably not worth to buy, what synergies work, when to buy a pack or just save your money instead, etc, etc.

[thebugmancometh]

So, I finally got my first win (of course it's right when I start to ♥♥♥♥♥ about it, lol.)

This time, I focused all my planets on straights. Lucked out early with a foil (the x10 mult one) joker that added 100 chips for a straight. Near the end of the run I lucked into another joker that allowed me to make straights with a gap (previously I've seen one that allowed straights and flushes to be made with 4 instead of 5 cards, that was super nice.)

Between those, buying a voucher to make my most used hand show up in celestial packs, and skipping some rounds to get free foil jokers, Ante 8 fell pretty easily (thankfully the blind was easy, I think it disabled a joker every hand. Good lord what a difference between blind difficulties!)

Lesson learned...quit spacing out the planet cards and focus down on one (maybe two) things. I had Straights up to level 11 or 12 by the Ante 8 boss round and up to 14 by the time I croaked on Ante 10, lol.

Also focused more on stacking my deck (something I'd been neglecting, and will start to try and do more of.)

So yes, there was plenty I could change. I'm still going to say I wouldn't have done it without a hefty serving of luck, especially on the boss blinds this run.

[malogoss]

GG!

The game has a really high skill ceiling. Keep playing. Right now you feel like a win is a fluke. You should reach a point where that one loss in ten runs will be the odd one. And you won't even see it as odd, you'll see it for what it is, a bunch of misplays by you.

To be clear, I'm talking about white stake.

[Ronald Brain]

Originally posted by thebugmancometh:

Cards drawn face-down after playing a hand or discarding? May as well just quit. That was AFTER my only re-roll (I usually try to leave them if they're not too bad, but this one was all face cards debuffed, which I wish I'd just left alone.)

The Fish will draw card face down after each hand PLAYED, not DISCARD. One way around this is to burn a couple of hands as Discard, then use your Discard to see new face-up cards. Alternately, if you carry a suit-changer Tarot into the boss blind, one neat trick is to select 3 face down card, use them - they will flip up momentarily, allow you to discover their rank (Turn down game speed to x0.5 helps)

Originally posted by thebugmancometh:

(edit) Just had another run lose to the "play only one hand" boss. I had a fun build going too, where every card that scored was getting an extra 30 chips and turning into a gold card. I was starting to rake in the money, which I was using to basically clear every shop I hit, and that still wasn't enough.

Even if I'm going to lose, this game doesn't give you much time to play with your builds. :(

The Needle seems very tough, but it has the standard chip requirement as the Small Blind. It's always recommended to build your deck to win with one hand, and you can use the 2 stores before The Needle to try to dig for score enhancing Joker (Your setup with Scary Face and Midas' Mask isn't very good, you need at least one +Mult and one xMult Joker). Dusk and Acrobat can save you in a pinch as they activate instantly against The Needle, and if you find Burglar, the +3 hands will neutralize The Needle completely (This Joker also counters The Water, as you lose all Discards so the +3 hands let you dig freely).

[Coffee]

The flipped cards are fine if you have discards but yeah some high score ones are still unfair. Unless you are one of these genius who do gold challenge like crazy

[snakeskip]

Check out Balatro University:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdNGt-ihEAcEY9VVwmqT4V80xWG9ZWA14

He's currently on a streak of about 20 victories on Gold Stake. So he knows the game. And he does an exceptional job of explaining the details.

[thebugmancometh]

Originally posted by Ronald Brain:

The Needle seems very tough, but it has the standard chip requirement as the Small Blind. It's always recommended to build your deck to win with one hand, and you can use the 2 stores before The Needle to try to dig for score enhancing Joker (Your setup with Scary Face and Midas' Mask isn't very good, you need at least one +Mult and one xMult Joker). Dusk and Acrobat can save you in a pinch as they activate instantly against The Needle, and if you find Burglar, the +3 hands will neutralize The Needle completely (This Joker also counters The Water, as you lose all Discards so the +3 hands let you dig freely).

This sounds like good advice, thank you.

Originally posted by snakeskip:

Check out Balatro University:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdNGt-ihEAcEY9VVwmqT4V80xWG9ZWA14

He's currently on a streak of about 20 victories on Gold Stake. So he knows the game. And he does an exceptional job of explaining the details.

Cool, I see he has a nice tutorial playlist. I'll check it out!