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Simple practical tip, you should always try to beat the first small blind, at ante 1, by playing a single hand worth 300+. It's free extra money, by doing so.
Similarly, new players sometimes don't discard aggressively enough. Which means they play hands scoring less chips, on average. Or they'll not use that last remaining discard to dig a bit and have a chance to find a gold card worth +3$, even if the next hand they play is guaranteed to beat the blind, no matter what.
Often the best joker to pick first is a joker that gives +mult, unconditional to what cards/hands you play. An example is Abstract joker. Very simple, yet it is one of my favorite early on.
Economy is important. Often in the form of an economy joker, like Golden joker. But always in the form of keeping a bankroll that will generate interest every round. (This is a big advantage of not skipping blinds, as I said earlier, because skipping blinds means no interest.) You don't want to be so greedy that you won't beat the next few blinds, but at the same time, greedy enough that if possible, you leave all shops with 20-25$. For example, I'll always buy a score joker at the first shop if I have the opportunity, not doing so is a bit too greedy. After that first shop, not buying anything at a shop is not necessarily bad.
This tip will sound contradictory to the previous one, but you want to build a lineup of 4-5 jokers early. Jokers give you a plan, a direction. You can always sell them later if they become mediocre. As a general tip, you want to have 4 or sometimes 5 jokers in your lineup at the end of ante 2 or the start of ante 3.
Vouchers, at ante 1 and 2 in particular, are often best left there. Spending 10-20$ on vouchers that early is a huge commitment, because of all the reasons mentioned previously. You'd rather have that money in your bankroll or spent on jokers.
Once you have a nice bankroll, arcana packs are pretty much always worth it. The Hermit card alone is a big reason why.
When in doubt, have and keep a joker that gives +chips. It can make a big difference on the scores.
Obviously, +mult jokers and xmult jokers are important too. You want to place the xmult jokers at the right end of your lineup, for scoring reasons.
Any scoring joker that scales, if found early, can make a big difference. Fortune Teller, Runner, Vampire, things like that. Some of those kind of fall flat if found too late though, like at ante 5 or later. Fortune Teller would be an exception to that rule. Also, if you have one such scaling joker, it is often worth going out of your way to make it scale an extra time when facing a blind. Those extra boosts add up.
When you beat a boss blind, the first reflex you should have is to go to Run Info and have a look what the next boss blind will be. You have 3 shops to prepare, you don't want to get screwed because you missed an opportunity to switch a crucial joker or something like that.
Best of luck, feel free to ask specific questions if you have any.
I swear, one day I'll just write a short guide to help players like you. You're not alone, many play 15-20 hours without a win. This post here would be a good starting draft for such a guide.
For most average people (like me), the learning curve is steep. So it's pretty normal if your first two-three days will only occasionally result in wins and 95% of failed runs.
However, once you get the basics, you ratio will improve to 30/70. Don't forget, like any card game it's still a game of chance at its core albeit your strategy and decisions do matter a lot here.
To get the basics faster, try this:
-Play challenges (they aren't really challenges but rather a harsh tutorial mode that teaches you economy, joker synergy and deck modification)
-Start with Checkered Deck (it allows you to focus solely on Flushes and pay more attention to other aspect of the game like improving your deck and exploring joker synergy without too much stress)
-Don't mindlessly skip blinds (I'd suggest to avoid skipping alltogether until you get the basics)
-Balance your Chips (Blue +), Mult (Red +), and Mult X (Multiplies Mult). For most decks you need them to work in tandem to make things work (Plasma Deck is the only exception). Seemingly modest 50 Chips x 50 Mult x 2 is far better (5000 total) than 200 Chips x 10 Mult x 2 (4000 total).
-Try to get used to using scalable jokers whenever possible (It's much better having a common/uncommon joker (For Chips: Square Joker, Runner, Wee Joker / For Mult :Green Joker, Spare Trousers, Fortune Teller) that can be improved over the course of your play than a rare one that is has its value fixed)
At the end of the day, take it at your own pace and have fun!
I didn't want to look up strategies / guides when I was discovering the game and I don't regret it in the slightest. Makes you appreciate the sheer amount of variety Balatro has to offer a lot more!
Flushes are one of the easiest hands to play (other than 3 of a kind and below) and gets 5 cards scored, full house is more powerful of a hand, and only slightly a harder hand to play/build.
First ante, you should always be able to beat the first small blind with one hand, every time (300 points) for the extra money of saved hands. Any high flush/house/straight gets it. Both big and boss are also achievable with just two hands as well even without a joker if you get decent draw. I almost always open a joker pack ante 1 or buy one if I see a fun one in shop but you really don't HAVE to, so you can rack up the economy early on without issue and make sure you just have something for the small after first boss.
First ante, never play ANY low hands like two pair, high card etc unless for a specific reason/scaling joker. Only when you cant get two hands done with discards and have to play some crap to refresh your cards. Every hand "costs money", focus on discards first and win with one good hand for every blind, which shouldnt be much of an issue with 1-2 jokers ante 2.
Some tips I have amassed though:
- You 100% want to have the ticket that lets you reset the boss for 10$. If you get to the final, and you have to go up against the big-bad boss version of "The Wall", you're screwed. You, outside of a few niche game-breaking set ups I'm not familiar with, are NOT going to be able to obtain 300,000 chips.
- Cash is king. Particularly early on. Tickets that make things cheaper, taking the egg joker early on, skips that give you all 4 shop items for free, it all adds up quickly.
- There is a HIDDEN MECHANIC with tickets. Like for instance the "does nothing" ticket. It doesn't ACTUALLY do nothing. Think of it like a "tier 1" ticket, you have to buy that ticket in order to potentially find the "tier 2" of that ticket, and the tier 2 of the "does nothing" ticket is called "Antimatter" and it lets you bring in an extra joker, but you'll never see it if you haven't purchased the tier 1 useless one.
- Synergy among cards is grand, but it's super important that you learn to be flexible with your jokers. It can be deceptive where you think cards are good enough just because they compliment each other, yet they're all still common/uncommon regular jokers. If you're going to pass ante 8, you're likely going to want some polychromatic jokers.
- Planet cards are always a solid choice. Most tarot cards are too. There are two jokers which actively give you multipliers based off the number of planets or tarot cards you've activated and they can be game-changing if you're able to use something like the cloud-9 joker to make a steady income and continuously purchase more planets and tarots each round.
- Pick two card types and stick with them. As early on as you can, you should be using death tarots, hangman tarots, sun/star/world/moon tarot, and strength tarots to manipulate your deck to get all of your unwanted card types out of there. If you want to work with spades and clubs, the less heart and diamonds you have the easier it's going to be to make flushes. Alternatively, it can also be a good idea to try and get all the cards you don't want to keep to have a purple seal, as those grant a free tarot if you discard them (which your strategy wants you to do anyways).
The problem is, skipping means you lose out one shop, payout for that particular blind and chances to earn more (if you have Lucky Cards or Econ Jokers). Some tags aren't worth skipping, while some is a gamble by itself (Negative is easily the biggest beginner's trap, you're screwed if you end up with a food joker).
That said, skipping plays a role in advanced strategy, and sometimes you have to skip in order to guarantee your victory. These includes:
-Scaling Throwback if you get it early. 1 skip per blind should be good enough.
-"All [suit] cards debuffed" boss coming up, and you need your Ancient Joker to pick a suit that isn't the debuffed suit. If it's already a different suit on Big Blind, skipping ensure you don't roll into the debuffed suit.
-Keeping food jokers around for longer. Skipping means less blind played so you don't eat Ramen, Ice Cream, Popcorn, Turtle Bean, Seltzer too quickly and it might save the run.
You're not 100% wrong.
However, if someone is 20h in and has yet to win, they are making a lot of bad judgement calls. Never skipping takes one such judgement call out of the game and does not hurt chances of winning, especially at white stake, where SB's give a money reward.
Never skipping builds better habits. See more shops, bank more interest, make more money, scale jokers faster. At gold stake I'll often end runs skipping 0 or 1 blind total.
Also, you might want to reword that, because no tag gives two Mega Arcana Packs.
Not to mention, that tag is not good. The pack is worth $8, at most. By skipping, that's likely 10$+ you won't make (blind reward + interest + remaining hands + economy joker), and a shop you won't visit, that could very well have offered you an arcana pack. Or actually two. Plus at least a joker, on average.