What's actually higher score here? Teach me Balatro!

[Dionysus]

https://i.imgur.com/phDZZcS.png

Context: this is a flush five deck with all polychrome 6's with the all cards are considered face cards negative joker. Four of the 6's are glass, 6 are non-glass to preserve the glass for later antes. I have 6 red seal 6's and 4 gold seal 6's, with the glass ones being all red seal.

Currently, I'm met with a bit of a headscratcher. Blueprint came up in the shop. What's the highest score between Bootstraps, Bull, Idol and Baseball Card (to copy with Blueprint)? What to sell? The math becomes arcane for me. My flush five hand is currently level 24, with 1310x85.

The full joker list is negative golden joker, business card, bootstraps, bull, trading card, sock and buskin, to the moon, pareidolia, throwback, the idol and baseball card. Only Bull, The Idol, Baseball Card and Bootstraps are sell-able.

I feel like I've got a decent grip on Balatro mechanics, but at this level I still feel lost. What's your process for thinking through this buy? My gut feeling is to drop Idol since Baseball Card still has 7 1.5x triggers, but I'm really, really not sure.

[ICStars77]

I'm still newish so don't have a definitive answer, however the higher you go the more valuable xmults become, and the greater value stacking them becomes.

Quick example of added mult vs melted mults:
85 (your base mult) + 35 = 120
85 x 1.5 = 127.5
The mult difference between these is 7.5, but when we go a bit further
120 x 1.5 = 180
127.5 x 1.5 = 191.25
The mult difference now is 11.25.
Looking at just the mult difference at the end (180 and 191.25), the one with the additional xmult is roughly 6% larger, and as you can see that simply grows with each xmult
Hope that helped somewhat, and sorry I couldn't give a simple answer. Good luck!

[phantom]

As the person above said xmut becomes important later. but if your goal is a high endless score then only xmut per card triggers truly matter.
Also flat mutt is useless at that point. reason being it triggers after card triggers.
you have totem. flush five red card that will be 2^10. then 1.5^10 with polychrome then bootstraps will trigger after that. you don't need much math to see how laughable the difference bootstraps would make after a 59,049x base mutt.

*Edit*
oh right. and for which is the best to blueprint it is totem. anyone who says otherwise is just wrong. That and card retriggers are strongest thing in endless.

[Dionysus]

Originally posted by ICStars77:

I'm still newish so don't have a definitive answer, however the higher you go the more valuable xmults become, and the greater value stacking them becomes.

Quick example of added mult vs melted mults:
85 (your base mult) + 35 = 120
85 x 1.5 = 127.5
The mult difference between these is 7.5, but when we go a bit further
120 x 1.5 = 180
127.5 x 1.5 = 191.25
The mult difference now is 11.25.
Looking at just the mult difference at the end (180 and 191.25), the one with the additional xmult is roughly 6% larger, and as you can see that simply grows with each xmult
Hope that helped somewhat, and sorry I couldn't give a simple answer. Good luck!

Turns out that it had a pretty obvious answer, if I understand it correctly - bootstraps adds its +mult after the polychrome, glass and totem triggers, so it's a lot less valuable than another copy of Totem is.

Here's me dying to the ante 17 boss blind. My largest hand would've been even bigger, but I had to break all my glass cards against the ante 16 boss blind since it was unfortunately the disables 1 random joker a hand blind, and it hit Bull and I didn't have enough cards to risk rerolling it to blueprint, baseball card or totem.

https://i.imgur.com/nswU5oy.png

[phantom]

dang commented at about the same time. and with me doing a last minute edit!

[Goblin]

To calculate contribution of each card, let's simplify a little into how much each joker multiplies whatever it affects. doubling your chips (10x5 to 20x5) is the same as doubling your mult (10x5 to 10x10), always. Therefore:

-Bull provides you with 1200 chips, compared to your 1300 base chips. That's less than an x2. It does grow, but not at a very fast rate.

-Bootstraps provides you with +62 mult, compared to your 85 base. Again less than x2. Your polychrome cards won't multiply this.

-Idol provides up to x32768 mult. That's 2^15, because three triggers of each card with red seal. Ideally you'd be getting more red seals on non-glass too. Without that, it still provides x1024 mult from 2^10. Important to note that this will never apply to the mult you gain from bootstraps, since that joker triggers afterwards.

-Baseball Card gives you 17 mult. 1.5^7. This one would still apply to bootstraps since it happens as each uncommon joker hits the trigger order, and bootstraps is the first one.

So my assumption without mathing it all the way out would be sell bootstraps, retrigger The Idol.

Edit: took way too long to type all that out, you already figured it out yourself lol

[Dionysus]

Originally posted by phantom:

dang commented at about the same time. and with me doing a last minute edit!

Hahaha -- sorry! I'll still put you into the helpful people hall of fame.

[phantom]

Bull is pretty much irrelevant at that point honestly even if it gives a big number. 3e is a 1,000x difference. Bull isn't getting close.

[Dionysus]

Addendum -- I can't help but to think that I would've been better off yet selling bull and spending the 600$ I had saved up rolling into a few steel cards, mime and more copies of Eris for base chips. But, man, that's a lot of rolling.

[phantom]

Originally posted by Dionysus:

Addendum -- I can't help but to think that I would've been better off yet selling bull and spending the 600$ I had saved up rolling into a few steel cards, mime and more copies of Eris for base chips. But, man, that's a lot of rolling.

Steel cards and mime wouldn't have helped you. Lets say you have 5 steel cards in hand and mime. that would make an impressive almost 58x mutt.
58x is not over a 1000x.
You needed sock n buskin, seltzer, or dusk.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by Dionysus:

Addendum -- I can't help but to think that I would've been better off yet selling bull and spending the 600$ I had saved up rolling into a few steel cards, mime and more copies of Eris for base chips. But, man, that's a lot of rolling.

That would have been an interesting plan, and you could then also have bought Steel Joker as well in that first store. Though you'd probably come across something better during all the rerolling, maybe blackboard depending on your suit, Acrobat or if you stop losing cards to glass and could thus play some high cards. Constellation was non-retroactive I think, so not that one? Mime maybe. Or Brainstorm since you can place The Idol and Blueprint all the way to the left, since they trigger on card counting instead of joker order anyway.

Originally posted by phantom:

You needed sock n buskin, seltzer, or dusk.

Uh, did you miss the part where OP had Sock and Buskin already? And some of the cards had red seals?

[Dionysus]

Originally posted by phantom:

Originally posted by Dionysus:

Addendum -- I can't help but to think that I would've been better off yet selling bull and spending the 600$ I had saved up rolling into a few steel cards, mime and more copies of Eris for base chips. But, man, that's a lot of rolling.

Steel cards and mime wouldn't have helped you. Lets say you have 5 steel cards in hand and mime. that would make an impressive almost 58x mutt.
58x is not over a 1000x.
You needed sock n buskin, seltzer, or dusk.

Man, the order of operations is still confusing to me. Doesn't the xmult from steel cards also multiply the base mult of flush five? Which then gets multiplied by the joker xmult in turn? I.E. 85x base * 58=4930? I must be misunderstanding something. Game needs a handbook.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by Dionysus:

Originally posted by phantom:

Steel cards and mime wouldn't have helped you. Lets say you have 5 steel cards in hand and mime. that would make an impressive almost 58x mutt.
58x is not over a 1000x.
You needed sock n buskin, seltzer, or dusk.

Man, the order of operations is still confusing to me. Doesn't the xmult from steel cards also multiply the base mult of flush five? Which then gets multiplied by the joker xmult in turn? I.E. 85x base * 58=4930?

Yes, and that beats the x2 you were getting from Bull. It would have worked better, but it also would have been a gamble on if you even saw ANY Chariot tarots. Spreading the rerolls over a few stores would help your odds, but that $600 goes surprisingly quick regardless.

Also, that 58 is predicated on having 5 steel cards left in hand after playing a flush 5, so you'd need handsize 10. 3 Steel cards for 6 triggers would still be x11.4 though, still beats Bull's contribution.

[phantom]

Originally posted by Goblin:

Originally posted by phantom:

You needed sock n buskin, seltzer, or dusk.

Uh, did you miss the part where OP had Sock and Buskin already? And some of the cards had red seals?

Yes because it was negative. the red seals however change nothing about that seltzer and dusk would have been better. Did you miss where I showed how much steel cards would have given and that it would not be enough?

[phantom]

Originally posted by Goblin:

Also, that 58 is predicated on having 5 steel cards left in hand after playing a flush 5, so you'd need handsize 10. 3 Steel cards for 6 triggers would still be x11.4 though, still beats Bull's contribution.

It also assumed the steels did not have red seal as it would be a lot of work to create 5 more cards as steal. if you did though it would be an impressive 439x mutt.
.. which is still not more than 1000x.
better than bull? Of course. but not enough is not enough. Though you would have to already have an idea of bind sizes to know it wouldn't be.

Still though for how much work it would take to get all those steel cards in mime. I would place my hopes on getting seltzer, dusk, or misprint.
*Edit*
oh yeah and to anyone skeptical of what I am placing bets on. a dusk would give
2^5 * 2^5 * 2^1.5. apparently exactly 7776x mutt.
*quick double edit*
oh wait I forgot blueprint on totem. make that 248,832x mutt.

[Dionysus]

Originally posted by phantom:

Originally posted by Goblin:

Also, that 58 is predicated on having 5 steel cards left in hand after playing a flush 5, so you'd need handsize 10. 3 Steel cards for 6 triggers would still be x11.4 though, still beats Bull's contribution.

It also assumed the steels did not have red seal as it would be a lot of work to create 5 more cards as steal. if you did though it would be an impressive 439x mutt.
.. which is still not more than 1000x.
better than bull? Of course. but not enough is not enough. Though you would have to already have an idea of bind sizes to know it wouldn't be.

Still though for how much work it would take to get all those steel cards in mime. I would place my hopes on getting seltzer, dusk, or misprint.
*Edit*
oh yeah and to anyone skeptical of what I am placing bets on. a dusk would give
2^5 * 2^5 * 2^1.5. apparently exactly 7776x mutt.
*quick double edit*
oh wait I forgot blueprint on totem. make that 248,832x mutt.

Wombo-combo.