Great run, great build, sorry you lose

[Effluvial Kraken]

Hey, I'm back after quitting in protest of perishable jokers being added. Turns out I was overreacting. Now I'd like to overreact about something else: Violet Vessel.

So I had a Green Joker with over +30 mult, Runner with over 300 chips, Blue Joker for 80+ chips, Card Sharp for 3X mult, and POLYCHROME RAMEN for 1.5X and 2X mult. I also had 5 hands and several levels in high card, so it all added up to a maximum potential of around 950,000 chips.

NOT ENOUGH FOR VIOLET VESSEL THOUGH. Realistically, if you see Violet Vessel, then your run has just ended due to bad RNG. I had $80 in the bank and rolled all the way down, finding absolutely nothing that could disable the boss blind. At no point in the entire run was the boss reroll voucher ever offered.

Now I'd like to remind you that there's an ante 8 boss blind that literally just debuffs all your playing cards. There's one that shuffles your jokers around, meaning that it usually hinders you for 1 hand before you nullify it by briefly paying attention. So the difficulty of ante 8 boss blinds randomly ranges from "nothing" to "DIE".

I get that the randomness helps maintain your interest in the long run, but I'm really tired of ante 8 just having this Russian Roulette element where sometimes you basically just get executed regardless of what you do. It's damn frustrating when you're really happy with your build and your RNG, right up until you hit ante 8 and learn that you were doomed from the start.

[w0rM.9™]

Same brother, same.

[ulzgoroth]

You understand that's an okay build, not a great one? Top ante Violet Vessel is, if the wiki is accurate, 1.2M target score. The pain is being ready for that at ante 8 boss despite high stake penalties, not in being able to exceed it at all.

Specific notes: Card Sharp and Polychrome Ramen aren't bad xmult jokers but neither is actually a top play.

Blue Joker is a dead card (because your strong Runner totally overshadows it). Even another good +mult could beat it. Depending on your cards and hands, Half Joker might be better.

Your green joker was good to have, but not an outstanding +mult example.

Imagine if you replace Blue Joker with Driving License or Blueprint. Or get a scaling xmult joker like Hologram up to 6x or better. Suddenly...there you are, you've won.

[RazzberryMocha]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

You understand that's an okay build, not a great one? Top ante Violet Vessel is, if the wiki is accurate, 1.2M target score. The pain is being ready for that at ante 8 boss despite high stake penalties, not in being able to exceed it at all.

Specific notes: Card Sharp and Polychrome Ramen aren't bad xmult jokers but neither is actually a top play.

Blue Joker is a dead card (because your strong Runner totally overshadows it). Even another good +mult could beat it. Depending on your cards and hands, Half Joker might be better.

Your green joker was good to have, but not an outstanding +mult example.

Imagine if you replace Blue Joker with Driving License or Blueprint. Or get a scaling xmult joker like Hologram up to 6x or better. Suddenly...there you are, you've won.

Exactly this. +30 is pretty weak for what green joker is capable of and blue joker was a dead slot. Literally any Xmult joker or burglar in this position would have been enough to win. I have no clue when they picked up green joker but it doesn't seem like they intentionally tried to scale it, as once again +30 is pretty low for it and just an extra +15/20 mult anywhere would be probably enough to clear 1.2 mil here.

[malogoss]

Blue Joker was bad.
+30 mult from Green joker is low.

Seeing it as a 950k potential is kind of generous, unless your HC level was higher than you're making it look like.

Next time move your jokers around, scale green joker more by playing more hands each round, and that was a win. Replace Blue joker with one of many possible upgrades, even just a Raised Fist would have done a better job.. Or find Luchador. Find Mr Bones.

In the end sure, VV can be brutal, but it seems like you had a concrete chance of beating it. No need to overreact.

[RazzberryMocha]

Also worth pointing out that since blue joker was useless and runner was already established most of the run along with the build being capable of beating any ante 8 boss besides Violet Vessel that they should've picked up an insurance joker just in case in a previous ante (given that one appeared of course).

[srn347]

For the most part, that build is solid. Of your 5 jokers, 4 are great. That said, on gold stake you usually can't afford 1 dead joker. If blue joker had been any source of xmult (let's say an easy 2x mult like duo or seeing double), you probably would've won.

[Lickizard]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

You understand that's an okay build, not a great one? Top ante Violet Vessel is, if the wiki is accurate, 1.2M target score. The pain is being ready for that at ante 8 boss despite high stake penalties, not in being able to exceed it at all.

Specific notes: Card Sharp and Polychrome Ramen aren't bad xmult jokers but neither is actually a top play.

Blue Joker is a dead card (because your strong Runner totally overshadows it). Even another good +mult could beat it. Depending on your cards and hands, Half Joker might be better.

Your green joker was good to have, but not an outstanding +mult example.

Imagine if you replace Blue Joker with Driving License or Blueprint. Or get a scaling xmult joker like Hologram up to 6x or better. Suddenly...there you are, you've won.

1.2mil divided by 6 is 200k

lets call it 400 chips flat with a 30x and you'd get 12000 times 5 is 60k which is 30% of the required blind. The multiplicative jokers literally knock off 1 million mathematically and thats excluding the hand level.

Is it bad to hold that much money sure but this game can be broken down into a mathematical method of playing it. Commons jokers are 70%, uncommon 25%, rare 5% and on top of the 30% percent check for a joker to have perishable (and in some limited cases rental and eternal) it is very reasonable to say that some things could be rebalanced.

To use more math 14 of the 20 rare jokers are multiplicative (this includes literally all of them even unpopular ones like Obelisk) for a 3.5% chance and 18 of the 64 uncommons (again regardless of popularity or conditions) are multiplicative totalling give or take 7.1%. This leaves a roughly a 10.6% chance that any joker you encounter is multiplicative

(using distribution this pretty much means every 1 in 10 jokers seen has a multiplicative multi and this does not guarantee its usable)

and personal preference is used to determine how much you slice that number down but most of those jokers do not work with each other (or even alone) 90% of the time in my subjective opinion.

If we call daredevil the best single chip joker in the game for 250 chips and create a hypothetical 50 multi joker you would end up with 12500 score on that hand, you would need to make that amount multiplied by 96 in order to beat violet vessel. Of course thats in somewhat in bad faith due to me assuming a basic starting points of 1 chip and 1 multi but you probably know all the bells and whistles of hand level interactions.

Not to mention most scaling card have anti-synergy with strong flat cards preventing you from building up those scalers as insurance. You'd only really be able to aim for consistency, planets, income, synergy scaling (DNA generating a bunch of same suit cards as an example) or a small bump to your stats.

I think that considering the % chances and the stickers that the stakes pile on combined with the unnecessary nature yet large abundance of flat additions that its fair to have a problem with the balance of the violet stake.

Also in my personal opinion saying stuff like "Imagine if you replace Blue Joker with Driving License or Blueprint. Or get a scaling xmult joker like Hologram up to 6x or better. Suddenly...there you are, you've won." is a really bad faith way of putting things. Its like if I said "add 1 million chips and suddenly you've won" the sane persons response to that would be "and how do I obtain this 1 million chips?" and the answer provided to the question should be your statement instead.

[RazzberryMocha]

Originally posted by Lickizard:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

You understand that's an okay build, not a great one? Top ante Violet Vessel is, if the wiki is accurate, 1.2M target score. The pain is being ready for that at ante 8 boss despite high stake penalties, not in being able to exceed it at all.

Specific notes: Card Sharp and Polychrome Ramen aren't bad xmult jokers but neither is actually a top play.

Blue Joker is a dead card (because your strong Runner totally overshadows it). Even another good +mult could beat it. Depending on your cards and hands, Half Joker might be better.

Your green joker was good to have, but not an outstanding +mult example.

Imagine if you replace Blue Joker with Driving License or Blueprint. Or get a scaling xmult joker like Hologram up to 6x or better. Suddenly...there you are, you've won.

Also in my personal opinion saying stuff like "Imagine if you replace Blue Joker with Driving License or Blueprint. Or get a scaling xmult joker like Hologram up to 6x or better. Suddenly...there you are, you've won." is a really bad faith way of putting things. Its like if I said "add 1 million chips and suddenly you've won" the sane persons response to that would be "and how do I obtain this 1 million chips?" and the answer provided to the question should be your statement instead.

I personally feel replacing blue joker (or at least attempting to) was the correct play still and is valid. Unless it was eternal it was just dead weight that should've been sold much earlier with the already established runner. Just an extra +20 or so flat mult, a single multiplicative joker (besides something like the family/order), or mr. bones/luchador should've been picked up as violet vessel was the one boss they couldn't clear and they knew that long ago. If none of those showed up then sure, but it was telegraphed a long time ago the one weakness of their build and they didn't seem to play around it.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Lickizard:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

You understand that's an okay build, not a great one? Top ante Violet Vessel is, if the wiki is accurate, 1.2M target score. The pain is being ready for that at ante 8 boss despite high stake penalties, not in being able to exceed it at all.

Specific notes: Card Sharp and Polychrome Ramen aren't bad xmult jokers but neither is actually a top play.

Blue Joker is a dead card (because your strong Runner totally overshadows it). Even another good +mult could beat it. Depending on your cards and hands, Half Joker might be better.

Your green joker was good to have, but not an outstanding +mult example.

Imagine if you replace Blue Joker with Driving License or Blueprint. Or get a scaling xmult joker like Hologram up to 6x or better. Suddenly...there you are, you've won.

1.2mil divided by 6 is 200k

lets call it 400 chips flat with a 30x and you'd get 12000 times 5 is 60k which is 30% of the required blind. The multiplicative jokers literally knock off 1 million mathematically and thats excluding the hand level.

Is it bad to hold that much money sure but this game can be broken down into a mathematical method of playing it. Commons jokers are 70%, uncommon 25%, rare 5% and on top of the 30% percent check for a joker to have perishable (and in some limited cases rental and eternal) it is very reasonable to say that some things could be rebalanced.

To use more math 14 of the 20 rare jokers are multiplicative (this includes literally all of them even unpopular ones like Obelisk) for a 3.5% chance and 18 of the 64 uncommons (again regardless of popularity or conditions) are multiplicative totalling give or take 7.1%. This leaves a roughly a 10.6% chance that any joker you encounter is multiplicative

(using distribution this pretty much means every 1 in 10 jokers seen has a multiplicative multi and this does not guarantee its usable)

and personal preference is used to determine how much you slice that number down but most of those jokers do not work with each other (or even alone) 90% of the time in my subjective opinion.

If we call daredevil the best single chip joker in the game for 250 chips and create a hypothetical 50 multi joker you would end up with 12500 score on that hand, you would need to make that amount multiplied by 96 in order to beat violet vessel. Of course thats in somewhat in bad faith due to me assuming a basic starting points of 1 chip and 1 multi but you probably know all the bells and whistles of hand level interactions.

Not to mention most scaling card have anti-synergy with strong flat cards preventing you from building up those scalers as insurance. You'd only really be able to aim for consistency, planets, income, synergy scaling (DNA generating a bunch of same suit cards as an example) or a small bump to your stats.

I think that considering the % chances and the stickers that the stakes pile on combined with the unnecessary nature yet large abundance of flat additions that its fair to have a problem with the balance of the violet stake.

Also in my personal opinion saying stuff like "Imagine if you replace Blue Joker with Driving License or Blueprint. Or get a scaling xmult joker like Hologram up to 6x or better. Suddenly...there you are, you've won." is a really bad faith way of putting things. Its like if I said "add 1 million chips and suddenly you've won" the sane persons response to that would be "and how do I obtain this 1 million chips?" and the answer provided to the question should be your statement instead.

Do you have a cohesive argument somewhere? It seems like you're dropping lots of tiny numeric fragments with no associated point. Are you trying to say that it's unreasonable to score that many points? I can empirically tell you it is not. My last build was only so-so but I believe it handily scored enough. As have many other builds.

Calling something a great build while carrying a joker that's this weak is either being far too generous, or just being mistaken. I recently won a run with a mediocre fortune teller (around +30 I think, honestly was overshadowed by pre-joker mult a lot of the time at the end), +100 chips for 3-of-a-kind (overshadowed pretty badly by hand chips), polychrome photograph (a bad filler for me, created by neglecting to sell a photograph I was carrying on unfulfilled hopes before using a Wheel of Fortune), the Trio, and a last-second clutch Blueprint. Aggressively leveled three of a kind and somewhat concentrated my deck, and beat mid-tier Violet Vessel without much trouble I believe (possibly in one hand?). (I almost lost at several earlier points, though.) That was not a great final build. A great build with the same approaches could score much better. I don't know whether I missed opportunities to reach a great build that run or not - but I didn't get there, for sure.

I don't know what you mean about anti-synergy between flat cards and scalers. You dropped that without expansion and it seemed potentially interesting. Just that hand-played scalers need you to play hands so scoring a lot with strong flats tends to prevent?

[Lickizard]

Before you enter ante 8 and see if its violet vessel you can calculate your score by going right to left on your joker slots. If you have 300 chips, 30+ multi, 2x multi, 2x multi, 3x multi it looks like this

1.2mil/3
400k/2
200k/2
100k=X

300 chips + hand level chips + card chips (lets say 200 here for card chips you can either assume the lowest or highest of numbers its usually the same diff without enhancements)

30 multi + hand level multi (lets say 20 here)

Chips x multi = 25000

25k x number of hand (4 here)

100K so you'd barely be able to beat it with the variables you assumed when you calculated the score.

If you do that every time you are on a good run, are going into ante 8 or just when your trying to consider the picking up a joker you start to notice what makes a difference and how reasonable that is to obtain given the knowledge of the joker odds if you are in need of your empirical evidence. In that sense I think of maxed out violet vessel as unfair.

I think scaling cards are anti-synergy with flat for that reason I also think on a more wide way of putting it scaling cards heavily discourage you from making any decent money,

With a first hand victory every time you can make $39 across the 3 blinds of an ante and considering most scaling jokers also encourage opening packs, buying jokers or rerolling the shop that cuts heavily into your ability to get lucky enough to hit the jokers you need. Even more so if you consider that rental activates before interest is calculated and minus' that by $9.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Lickizard:

Before you enter ante 8 and see if its violet vessel you can calculate your score by going right to left on your joker slots. If you have 300 chips, 30+ multi, 2x multi, 2x multi, 3x multi it looks like this

1.2mil/3
400k/2
200k/2
100k=X

300 chips + hand level chips + card chips (lets say 200 here for card chips you can either assume the lowest or highest of numbers its usually the same diff without enhancements)

30 multi + hand level multi (lets say 20 here)

Chips x multi = 25000

25k x number of hand (4 here)

100K so you'd barely be able to beat it with the variables you assumed when you calculated the score.

If you do that every time you are on a good run, are going into ante 8 or just when your trying to consider the picking up a joker you start to notice what makes a difference and how reasonable that is to obtain given the knowledge of the joker odds if you are in need of your empirical evidence. In that sense I think of maxed out violet vessel as unfair.

I think scaling cards are anti-synergy with flat for that reason I also think on a more wide way of putting it scaling cards heavily discourage you from making any decent money,

With a first hand victory every time you can make $39 across the 3 blinds of an ante and considering most scaling jokers also encourage opening packs, buying jokers or rerolling the shop that cuts heavily into your ability to get lucky enough to hit the jokers you need. Even more so if you consider that rental activates before interest is calculated and minus' that by $9.

And I say to you: build better. +30 multi is actually weak. x12 multi is okay, but not great. You're presuming a quite strong chip adder, but that's not the best place to be strong, your mult is weak. Maybe factor in some card enhancements? A couple steel cards goes a long way if you've upgraded your played hand and/or got +mult cards.

300k in one hand at ante 8 is not that big a demand.

[Bad Medic Buddy]

My definition of a great build is one that can one shot violet vessel. Your build sounds mid. You need to alter your expectations for your builds, it sounds like you got complacent and thought you had a better build than you did. You basically never want multiple chip jokers, especially when one of them is significantly stronger than the other. If you had ditched the blue joker for any number of jokers, particularly scaling jokers earlier on, you would have easily won.

The fact you were only looking to disable the boss blind instead of beating it is also an issue. Even if it was too late to get a great build going, you can use temporarily strong jokers or consumables to get you past the finishing line. A single glass or steal enhancing tarot card would have done it. Campfire or turtle bean (assuming you had a hand better than high card, which given how little you leveled it and the fact you had $80 should have been easy to achieve) could help you win even though they're not great long term. And as I said, above, there are plenty of jokers that are better than blue joker you could have switch to for a better long term hand.

[Lickizard]

Originally posted by Bad Medic Buddy:

My definition of a great build is one that can one shot violet vessel. Your build sounds mid. You need to alter your expectations for your builds, it sounds like you got complacent and thought you had a better build than you did. You basically never want multiple chip jokers, especially when one of them is significantly stronger than the other. If you had ditched the blue joker for any number of jokers, particularly scaling jokers earlier on, you would have easily won.

The fact you were only looking to disable the boss blind instead of beating it is also an issue. Even if it was too late to get a great build going, you can use temporarily strong jokers or consumables to get you past the finishing line. A single glass or steal enhancing tarot card would have done it. Campfire or turtle bean (assuming you had a hand better than high card, which given how little you leveled it and the fact you had $80 should have been easy to achieve) could help you win even though they're not great long term. And as I said, above, there are plenty of jokers that are better than blue joker you could have switch to for a better long term hand.

You can disable extra big blinds?

[RazzberryMocha]

Originally posted by Lickizard:

Originally posted by Bad Medic Buddy:

My definition of a great build is one that can one shot violet vessel. Your build sounds mid. You need to alter your expectations for your builds, it sounds like you got complacent and thought you had a better build than you did. You basically never want multiple chip jokers, especially when one of them is significantly stronger than the other. If you had ditched the blue joker for any number of jokers, particularly scaling jokers earlier on, you would have easily won.

The fact you were only looking to disable the boss blind instead of beating it is also an issue. Even if it was too late to get a great build going, you can use temporarily strong jokers or consumables to get you past the finishing line. A single glass or steal enhancing tarot card would have done it. Campfire or turtle bean (assuming you had a hand better than high card, which given how little you leveled it and the fact you had $80 should have been easy to achieve) could help you win even though they're not great long term. And as I said, above, there are plenty of jokers that are better than blue joker you could have switch to for a better long term hand.

You can disable extra big blinds?

Luchador and Chicot just set them to be the same requirement as the small blind (ante 8 violet vessel goes from 1.2 mil to 200k).

[Lickizard]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by Lickizard:

Before you enter ante 8 and see if its violet vessel you can calculate your score by going right to left on your joker slots. If you have 300 chips, 30+ multi, 2x multi, 2x multi, 3x multi it looks like this

1.2mil/3
400k/2
200k/2
100k=X

300 chips + hand level chips + card chips (lets say 200 here for card chips you can either assume the lowest or highest of numbers its usually the same diff without enhancements)

30 multi + hand level multi (lets say 20 here)

Chips x multi = 25000

25k x number of hand (4 here)

100K so you'd barely be able to beat it with the variables you assumed when you calculated the score.

If you do that every time you are on a good run, are going into ante 8 or just when your trying to consider the picking up a joker you start to notice what makes a difference and how reasonable that is to obtain given the knowledge of the joker odds if you are in need of your empirical evidence. In that sense I think of maxed out violet vessel as unfair.

I think scaling cards are anti-synergy with flat for that reason I also think on a more wide way of putting it scaling cards heavily discourage you from making any decent money,

With a first hand victory every time you can make $39 across the 3 blinds of an ante and considering most scaling jokers also encourage opening packs, buying jokers or rerolling the shop that cuts heavily into your ability to get lucky enough to hit the jokers you need. Even more so if you consider that rental activates before interest is calculated and minus' that by $9.

And I say to you: build better. +30 multi is actually weak. x12 multi is okay, but not great. You're presuming a quite strong chip adder, but that's not the best place to be strong, your mult is weak. Maybe factor in some card enhancements? A couple steel cards goes a long way if you've upgraded your played hand and/or got +mult cards.

300k in one hand at ante 8 is not that big a demand.

But barely anything consistent gives greater than a 30+ flat with practically the only reliable jokers being scalars.

The steel card is nice but it only multiplies 'on-score' jokers like Fibonacci (Each played Ace, 2, 3, 5, or 8 gives +8 Mult when scored). If you use something like Tarot or Green joker is will multiply before they apply the +multi (Baron: 1.5x multi for every king in hand. Also has this problem, it essentially turns every king into a steel card it should honestly be a uncommon).

Its definetly doable but I'm not comfortable with how many runs are just doomed from the start due to all the RNG if you get violet vessel. Early jokers can't have rental or eternal, scaling jokers shouldn't have rental and can't have perishable, strong late game jokers acquired early or mid can't have perishable or rental.

I don't feel like all of these changes at once are needed but I feel like red deck +2 discard, sticker chance lowered to 15% (if rentals are kept), removal of rentals (sticker chance 25%, change reroll price to $4 (you earn 13 with max interest, first hand victory on a boss fight that leaves $13 for packs if you are scaling with them and rerolls which are needed to give a statistical chance of hitting multiplicatives), have skip blinds for hands target hands that your hand frequently contains or the most used hand itself (excluding pair and high card) and I feel like the first bafoon pack should be immune to stickers as they usually kill most cards you get.

Edit: also change wheel of fortune to 50%, polychrome is only 3.5% and holo is 8.75% per use of wheel so its not very strong rn or maybe make nope give $1 instead.