100,000,000 Help Please

[w0rM.9™]

I'm coming up on 160 hours in the game and I've never come even remotely close to 100,000,000 in one hand. What am I missing?

Everything I look up online just says "oh just get blueprint, and this rare joker and make 15 steel cards and put red seals on everything and blah blah blah"

In 160 hours I've gotten blueprint maybe three times? I don't know that I've ever had the opportunity to create half of deck full of steel cards, of make unlimited red seals on cards. They talk like rare and uncommon jokers and other amazing upgrades are coming up in every shop. 99.9% of jokers I get in the game are good enough to win but are useless to get one-hand scores of this size. I get a chance at a joker that will scale Xmult maybe once in every 5 or 6 games if I'm lucky. I play (and win) most games without ever seeing a single one.

I just don't get it. How are people scoring like that? 20% of Balatro players have this achievement. Clearly I'm an idiot. I don't feel like I'll ever be able to do this.

[Stormer]

So, part of it comes down to RNG, part of it comes down to game knowledge. My best tip is to work on your economy, ironically enough scoring less but getting a bunch of money is how most people set their runs up for major success, as with a bunch of money you're able to just... roll until you get the Jokers and Tarot cards you want.

If you wanna improve, there's several youtube channels that play a ton of Balatro and give great tips. Dr Spectred from Balatro University is a great start, his knowledge of the game and how to optimize the gameplay is insane and he's extremely willing to teach new players

Balatro is a deceptively deep game, so don't be discouraged if you haven't had a nuts run yet

[RazzberryMocha]

Getting a strong econ is the best way to get the necessary pieces of this achievement. Focus on strong econ jokers such as rocket/mail-in rebate/reserved parking and gold cards.
Easiest way to score that much is with Xmult that triggers upon scoring (glass cards, polychrome cards, bloodstone, photograph, ancient joker, etc) combined with card retrigger effects (hack, sock and buskin, hanging chad, red seals) and a decently leveled 5 card hand (4/5oak, flush five, flush house, flush). Just a mediocre combination of these elements will easily give you more than enough.
For deck choice I’d recommend ghost/zodiac. Ghost helps a ton with getting deckfixing and pieces like ectoplasm and red seals, whereas zodiac helps with deckfixing through the abundance of tarots.
While you can try to do the optimal setup of baron/mime with high card on plasma deck, I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re inexperienced with that kind of thing. Again, the prior setup is significantly easier and more flexible along with getting you significantly more points than you’d need for the achievement. If you know what you’re doing there is little to no rng involved, as good players will be able to force a super good baron/mime setup literally almost every single run on white stake.

[gamernamer05]

I understand completely. I thought this would be impossible so I just kept playing the game because I found it such a fun and entertaining pastime. Then one day it just happened, 156,400,000 on one hand. How did it happen. First of all I had 4 discards, 8 jokers, telescope and a deck of either 9 or 10 cards, not quite sure now as it was about a month ago. I think the key for me was having the Yorick joker along with Brainsrorm and Drivers License and other good jokers. Also I was playing with Abandoned Deck where you have no face cards. With no face cards and wonderful jokers and a larger deck it was pretty easy to get a full house. And with telescope every chance I could I upgraded full house in planet cards. I had cash to never turn down a chance to upgrade anything. Basically I would get a full house off the bat or after 1 or 2 discards that would beat the round’s point objective but then I would use all my discards to upgrade Yorick so by the time I got to the late game he had many multiples. I had Bootstrap as well with a high value. Anyway to cap I had great many multiplier cards and multiplier jokers and the rest is just math. Also when I did this I had over 300 hours in the game. Don’t sweat it. Just enjoy the game and it Will happen.

T

[w0rM.9™]

Originally posted by Stormer:

So, part of it comes down to RNG, part of it comes down to game knowledge. My best tip is to work on your economy, ironically enough scoring less but getting a bunch of money is how most people set their runs up for major success, as with a bunch of money you're able to just... roll until you get the Jokers and Tarot cards you want.

If you wanna improve, there's several youtube channels that play a ton of Balatro and give great tips. Dr Spectred from Balatro University is a great start, his knowledge of the game and how to optimize the gameplay is insane and he's extremely willing to teach new players

Balatro is a deceptively deep game, so don't be discouraged if you haven't had a nuts run yet

Yeah, I've done all this. I know the game fairly well. I'm at the orange stake right now. That said, winning and getting this achievement are completely different. If it was just a matter of beating a stake, I've got that down. It's the extreme scaling that some people do that just baffles me.

[w0rM.9™]

Originally posted by RazzberryMocha:

good players will be able to force a super good baron/mime setup literally almost every single run on white stake.

How are "good players" forcing jokers to show up? I guess I missed that lesson.

[w0rM.9™]

Originally posted by gamernamer05:

I understand completely. I thought this would be impossible so I just kept playing the game because I found it such a fun and entertaining pastime. Then one day it just happened, 156,400,000 on one hand. How did it happen. First of all I had 4 discards, 8 jokers, telescope and a deck of either 9 or 10 cards, not quite sure now as it was about a month ago. I think the key for me was having the Yorick joker along with Brainsrorm and Drivers License and other good jokers. Also I was playing with Abandoned Deck where you have no face cards. With no face cards and wonderful jokers and a larger deck it was pretty easy to get a full house. And with telescope every chance I could I upgraded full house in planet cards. I had cash to never turn down a chance to upgrade anything. Basically I would get a full house off the bat or after 1 or 2 discards that would beat the round’s point objective but then I would use all my discards to upgrade Yorick so by the time I got to the late game he had many multiples. I had Bootstrap as well with a high value. Anyway to cap I had great many multiplier cards and multiplier jokers and the rest is just math. Also when I did this I had over 300 hours in the game. Don’t sweat it. Just enjoy the game and it Will happen.

T

Thanks. I mostly enjoy the game. It's just frustrating when some of these things everyone acts like are so easy I can't do to save my life.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by w0rM.9™:

Originally posted by RazzberryMocha:

good players will be able to force a super good baron/mime setup literally almost every single run on white stake.

How are "good players" forcing jokers to show up? I guess I missed that lesson.

As you do more (re)rolls, the chances of not seeing certain cards trend towards zero. And by holding other rare cards, the odds of the one you actually want showing up increase a little too.
I don't agree you can force Baron to show up nearly every run, though. Jokers have a 5% chance of being rare, and then it's a 1 in (20 - number of rares you already have) chance it's Baron. With no other rares that's 0.25% chance per roll, so if you see 300 jokers in a run it'd still be nearly 50% chance of not seeing it. (99.75 ^ 300 = .472 AKA 47.2%).

[doingwork]

Originally posted by Goblin:

Originally posted by w0rM.9™:

How are "good players" forcing jokers to show up? I guess I missed that lesson.

As you do more (re)rolls, the chances of not seeing certain cards trend towards zero. And by holding other rare cards, the odds of the one you actually want showing up increase a little too.
I don't agree you can force Baron to show up nearly every run, though. Jokers have a 5% chance of being rare, and then it's a 1 in (20 - number of rares you already have) chance it's Baron. With no other rares that's 0.25% chance per roll, so if you see 300 jokers in a run it'd still be nearly 50% chance of not seeing it. (99.75 ^ 300 = .472 AKA 47.2%).

Personally I am convinced you get a subset of jokers available on each run. The randomness is too narrow. I feel like you see the same joker faaaar too often during a run (assuming you don't buy it).

I had a Ante 14 run where I saw photograph 0 times, I was hoping to find it since I had a build that would work well with it, but it never came. I saw Ride the Bus AT LEAST 15 times, I saw it 3 times in the same shop at one point (I had $1 rerolls so I was rerolling like crazy). It was like every other shop or buffoon pack there it was, yet after over 30 shops and buffoon packs, 0 Photographs.

I'm fairly convinced at this point that certain jokers will NEVER appear on a run and that you only get a subset to work with. Its happened far too often where I see the same joker numerous times throughout a run and never see others of the same rarity.

[ROORnNUGZ]

play plasma deck on white stake, get a chip joker early, this will get you thru the first few antes. start making gold kings and get high card leveled. Use tarot cards to make your deck only gold kings. This gets you a lot of money so you can be rolling shops and looking for baron and mime. This will get you the score you need.

[RazzberryMocha]

Originally posted by Goblin:

Originally posted by w0rM.9™:

How are "good players" forcing jokers to show up? I guess I missed that lesson.

As you do more (re)rolls, the chances of not seeing certain cards trend towards zero. And by holding other rare cards, the odds of the one you actually want showing up increase a little too.
I don't agree you can force Baron to show up nearly every run, though. Jokers have a 5% chance of being rare, and then it's a 1 in (20 - number of rares you already have) chance it's Baron. With no other rares that's 0.25% chance per roll, so if you see 300 jokers in a run it'd still be nearly 50% chance of not seeing it. (99.75 ^ 300 = .472 AKA 47.2%).

being able to force it nearly every run is not my words. In one of Roffle's high score run videos where he is attempting he achieve naneinf without perkeo (may even be the video where he achieves it) he says it is uncommon to not be able to force that kind of build every other run. It's definitely not likely to the point where you can have a good streak of baron runs in a row, but a good player definitely has favorable odds (around or above 50%).

[malogoss]

Originally posted by RazzberryMocha:

(...) It's definitely not likely to the point where you can have a good streak of baron runs in a row, but a good player definitely has favorable odds (around or above 50%).

When I compare the previous to
"good players will be able to force a super good baron/mime setup literally almost every single run on white stake"

which you wrote earlier, my first impression is mixed message, at minimum.

[Ronald Brain]

Originally posted by doingwork:

Personally I am convinced you get a subset of jokers available on each run. The randomness is too narrow. I feel like you see the same joker faaaar too often during a run (assuming you don't buy it).

I had a Ante 14 run where I saw photograph 0 times, I was hoping to find it since I had a build that would work well with it, but it never came. I saw Ride the Bus AT LEAST 15 times, I saw it 3 times in the same shop at one point (I had $1 rerolls so I was rerolling like crazy). It was like every other shop or buffoon pack there it was, yet after over 30 shops and buffoon packs, 0 Photographs.

I'm fairly convinced at this point that certain jokers will NEVER appear on a run and that you only get a subset to work with. Its happened far too often where I see the same joker numerous times throughout a run and never see others of the same rarity.

You are correct, each seed has a set of shop queue determined so you may or may not encounter certain Jokers no matter how deep you roll. Ultimately it comes down to "being able to see as many Jokers as you can" before Ante 12 (This is when the score requirement becomes too high that most normal build won't make it).

[Atlatlatlatlatlatlatlatlist]

plasma deck, lvl 9 flush with 2 glass face card, hanging chad, photograph, dusk or sock and buskin. if you have 5 glass card, dusk or socbus isn't necessary.

in other word, 20*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2 is 20,480. balanced to 10,240*10,240=104,857,600. it's bit off from regular strategy, but at least it's more feasible than youtube comment's favorite.

[JasonS]

Stacking XMult in any form can get you over 100 million without much trouble. That can be from stacking several scaling XMult jokers or from played card retriggers like Ancient Joker + Sock/Hack or from held in hand retriggers like Baron + Mime.

Getting these setups consistently requires a LOT of money, so you'll need ways to generate cash like Sock + Business Card, Mime + Gold Cards, Mail In Rebate, Lucky Cards, etc. its possible to generate $100 or more per round.

[RazzberryMocha]

Originally posted by malogoss:

Originally posted by RazzberryMocha:

(...) It's definitely not likely to the point where you can have a good streak of baron runs in a row, but a good player definitely has favorable odds (around or above 50%).

When I compare the previous to
"good players will be able to force a super good baron/mime setup literally almost every single run on white stake"

which you wrote earlier, my first impression is mixed message, at minimum.

I totally get that. That post was worded for the original poster, so I didn't bother going into nuance/specifics about something they didn't need to hear about. The reason I brought it up in the first place was to show what is possible in the game through skill and that rng is not much of a factor (I figured if you know your failures aren't purely rng, then that can help a ton with improvement). Looking back my original wording is definitely not constructed the best and rewording it to something like "good players can reliably force this most runs" would be much more accurate.