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.

[Pain]

Lol, I just now had my first gold stake win and I was up against the Violet Vessel.

[Lickizard]

Originally posted by Effluvial Kraken:

Originally posted by RazzberryMocha:

idk man you literally provided the details of your run down to the numbers on your scaling jokers, seems like enough of a view to at the very least attempt to provide some insight. Maybe instead of assuming that you know everything about the game and complaining about a non-issue you listen to the loads of advice people have given you.
The only thing a know-it-all mindset will do is make you run in circles.
Also, the point of risk/reward is totally accurate. If you look at all of the hand types top to bottom you will see it goes from high scores, but harder to achieve to lower scores, but easier to achieve (with flush being an exception of course). This also translates to jokers. Jokers like green, ride the bus, and red card aren't strong because they score absurd amounts of chips, they're strong because they're consistent and easier to achieve in most scenarios than most other jokers. There is a reason that duo and tribe are x2, trio and order are x3, and family is x4, the riskier the playstyle the greater your reward. By choosing to play a high card build you should be under the impression that you are more limited than other builds, and good players will know when the safest play is to play towards riskier strategies, yet you can't (or rather refuse to) comprehend that.

The sum total of all advice so far has been "roll for these jokers" and then if I say "but I did roll for them" then the advice becomes "roll sooner for these jokers". Only you have said to do anything else, and what you're saying seems to be "aim for a flush five build from the start solely and exclusively in case you run into Violet Vessel", which is obviously nonsense.

Very few have actually engaged with the topic of this thread, which is whether Violet Vessel is actually balanced and whether it should be changed.

Just ignore him at this point, I listed pure objective statistics and his response was that he knew better because he had experienced it "empirically" as if your own personal experiences can beat literal objective statistical fact.

From what I see people have 2 view points:

"Balatro is a rougelike so its reasonable to lose 50% (or whatever number it comes out to) of games."

"Balatro should try to aim to allow players to beat the blinds near 100% of the time (or some number around there"

I've also heard that gold stake is winnable practically everytime and while it may be possible I would need to see it. Its not enough if someone is stronger than you if you don't understand how they are strong then you can't just transfer the credibility they have over to yourself. Link the 100% win raters, try to explain it that will give the violet vessel answers the topic is seeking.

Its strange too that for a game built on numbers with all of them laid out for searching that no one provides any of them. Let alone, like you said any actual advice.

I'd say for advice roll when shop is $5 or maybe even $6 if econ is good enough to maximize joker odds.

Try not to take rentals before $23 as rental tax applies before interest is calculated and you want to actually be making a decent amount. You can take a lot of rentals if the build is already finalized and not in need of additonal money to win.

Its fine to have a singular joker slot for a consistency card (ex. straights and flushes can be made with 4 cards, heart and diamond as well as clubs and spades all count as the same suit) as long as you are using a big enough hand with some levels on it.

If perishables save you a hand every blind they'll most likely make the money you spend on them back.

If a joker is a 'on score/when scored' joker then it activates before steel cards and jokers like 'The Baron' (held kings give 1.5x multi) essentially held in hand cards. Where as jokers with no condition like the basic flat 4+ multi joker activate after held in hand cards like the baron.

Wheel of fortune has the same odds of giving the different joker enhancements as the shop so you should never expect the polychrome roll from it and the flat multi roll is also pretty rare.

The +1 hand voucher is +$1 usually making it super worth if you aren't getting it really late.

[CMDR Shven]

Originally posted by RipoffPingu:

Originally posted by Dildo STONKS:

Users like CMDR Shven and RazzberryMocha hang out on this forum anytime and just complain about how others play, it's pathetic. Meanwhile I doubt they play the game themselves and are just here to troll. lol

Their advice has the same content as "put your head on the keyboard roll it over".

do you have any source for the claim they don't play the game, especially considering they have the mouse next to their username on the forums (indicating that they do actually own the game)?

also, i haven't seen any of this advice be comparable to "put your head on the keyboard and roll it over", nor have i see them complain about how others play the game; rather, i've just seen them give advice.

Dildo Stonks is just a troll who thinks the best way to play the game is to reroll every run over and over until he gets whatever he thinks is a good first blind skip and refuses to listen to any advice from better players and whines that the game is RNG. And then accuses better players of being delusional and "making the game our personality" and thus incapable of accepting "criticism" (bad advice and objectively untrue statements) or seeing his truth.

He also never directly responds to questions or messages pointing out that he has made incorrect statements and likes to necro old threads just to post that the game is unfair or "an R button simulator" regardless of what the topic was even about.

[QuantuuM]

Yeah I've thrown my fist through a keyboard over Violet Vessel at least once. Wouldn't have it any other way.

[snakeskip]

Originally posted by Pain:

Lol, I just now had my first gold stake win and I was up against the Violet Vessel.

I just managed to beat the Jokerless Challenge against Violet Vessel. Scored about 360 000 with the final hand.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Triple:

with the way some regulars here defend this game, you'd think they got paid for it. :emofdr:

You wouldn't think that they just dislike people being wrong on the internet?

[snakeskip]

Originally posted by Lickizard:

I've also heard that gold stake is winnable practically everytime and while it may be possible I would need to see it. Its not enough if someone is stronger than you if you don't understand how they are strong then you can't just transfer the credibility they have over to yourself. Link the 100% win raters, try to explain it that will give the violet vessel answers the topic is seeking.

I don't think Gold Stake is always winnable -- and I've never seen anyone claiming it is -- but it certainly looks like it is winnable at least 95% of the time. Balatro University has recorded 40+ winning streaks on Gold Stakes while rotating decks and quite often deliberately making suboptimal moves just to keep it interesting.

He's currently on a 19 game streak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOhSxeTo7N4

[CMDR Shven]

Originally posted by Triple:

with the way some regulars here defend this game, you'd think they got paid for it. :emofdr:

Oh look it's that person who got into a long argument with a bunch of veteran players a few weeks ago and then deleted all their posts so no one would know they were wrong.

Also apparently now "calling people out for giving bad advice or making false claims about how the game works and blaming RNG while refusing to engage in any self reflection" now just equals blindly "defending the game." That's some interesting mental gymnastics.

[Lickizard]

Originally posted by snakeskip:

Originally posted by Lickizard:

I've also heard that gold stake is winnable practically everytime and while it may be possible I would need to see it. Its not enough if someone is stronger than you if you don't understand how they are strong then you can't just transfer the credibility they have over to yourself. Link the 100% win raters, try to explain it that will give the violet vessel answers the topic is seeking.

I don't think Gold Stake is always winnable -- and I've never seen anyone claiming it is -- but it certainly looks like it is winnable at least 95% of the time. Balatro University has recorded 40+ winning streaks on Gold Stakes while rotating decks and quite often deliberately making suboptimal moves just to keep it interesting.

He's currently on a 19 game streak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOhSxeTo7N4

Now this is what im talking about thank you.

[Pain]

Originally posted by snakeskip:

Originally posted by Pain:

Lol, I just now had my first gold stake win and I was up against the Violet Vessel.

I just managed to beat the Jokerless Challenge against Violet Vessel. Scored about 360 000 with the final hand.

Nice, I didn't have that high scoring hands, about 200k a hand, but I had 9 hands because of the joker that mutates the discards for hands and dorito hands. I think I had 1 or 2 hands left when I went (slightly) over 1'200'000 chips.

[RipoffPingu]

Originally posted by Triple:

with the way some regulars here defend this game, you'd think they got paid for it. :emofdr:

>sees blatant misinformation about the game with a blatantly incorrect title
>sees people clarifying the misinformation and offering genuine advice
>makes a nothingburger remark (clarifying misinformation about a game is inherently defending it) and says it as if it actually has any meaning behind it
most intelligent steam forums user

[Lickizard]

Originally posted by Lickizard:

Originally posted by snakeskip:

I don't think Gold Stake is always winnable -- and I've never seen anyone claiming it is -- but it certainly looks like it is winnable at least 95% of the time. Balatro University has recorded 40+ winning streaks on Gold Stakes while rotating decks and quite often deliberately making suboptimal moves just to keep it interesting.

He's currently on a 19 game streak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOhSxeTo7N4

Now this is what im talking about thank you.

Ok so after looking at how he plays he likes to have a different couple of subsets of how he structures his final state of jokers.

You wanna keep a lot of money on hand instead of hovering around $30 like I used to. I'd say $50 is good. In order to gain flat chips he has 3 methods that I can see:

Boost the original hand to such a high degree that it essentially replaces flat jokers. (This idea can use held in hand effects, hand leveling effects, on score and probably others)

Use 'on score' cards with 'held in hand' effects like the silver cards in order to spike your original hand by a lot (this strat doesn't depend on hand level but does benefit healvily from it)

Multiplicative jokers combined with strong flat numbers as the default strategy you were originally using. (this is probably the most rigid way of doing things)

Besides that he seems to have general guidelines:

Fill empty slots with economy and of course whatever you need to survive.

Keep the build fluid and uncommitted so that you can go into any of these general compositions in the mid game

Its fine to take rentals early if you can offset them with economy jokers.

If you question if a skip is worth you should ask yourself what will give you a powerspike earlier skipping or not skipping

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by Triple:

with the way some regulars here defend this game, you'd think they got paid for it. :emofdr:

You wouldn't think that they just dislike people being wrong on the internet?

I'm not saying you're wrong that people are like this, I'm saying that they should feel bad for being like this. That one XKCD comic was supposed to be a criticism, you know.

[VintenDio]

Bruh I don't even understand how anyone can win this game... I died so many times to the 1 000 000 blind this is so unfair sometimes

[Gwyn]

I just got killed by this. Just started playing the game, only four runs played. This last run, I was doing well and earning ~30K/hand, and just clobbering the various blinds up to ante 8.

Then of course, I hit this Violet Vessel. Needs 300K chips to clear the boss blind and win my first run. Which, of course, was impossible, as this required 60K chips/hand and my absolute best hand to-date has been 48K.

Made me go from feeling like I was finally going to win my first run to "well this was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥"