Let's talk about The Golden Needle (Challenge)

[Ronald Brain]

Everyone's whining about Gold Stake and restart simulator... so I'd like to talk about this particular challenge that's also VERY brutal and requires lots of restart to win even once.

Rules:
-1 hand only (no increase via vouchers). This means you'll lose 1st Blind instantly if you don't have a good Full House or high Straight.
-Start with $10 + Credit Card. Might look like you'd have some capital to build early Jokers, but...
-Discard costs $1. You have 6 Discards to form your 1-shot hand, meaning with bad luck, you'll be in negative every single blind.

Why this challenge is so brutal?
-First Blind is high Full House / Straight forced. Not get it = instant restart.
-If you skip for a good tag, you're forced to play 4 of a kind of Straight Flush on Big Blind and Boss Blind. Not get it = instant restart.
-Forget about scaling Joker, 1 hand each blind won't be enough to tackle Ante 8 (If you ever reach it).
-The Water (Start with 0 Discards) will end your run immediately unless you can reroll it or have Luchador ready to sell.
-Eco hell: Each blind you only earn the blind reward, so only $12 every Ante. If you don't limit your Discard to 4 per game, you're guaranteed to be in negative. The Credit Card can only get you so far until you fall below $-20, then you're stuck with what you have.

How to beat?
-This is where you'll have to gamble A LOT, so the only viable strategy is restart until you get a good start, and pray for the best.
-Early Banana or Popcorn is required if you want to limit your discards.
-Half Joker + Banner = high card / pair build very early. Try to get to $25 to have interest to offset the discard expense.
-Four / Five of a Kind are strong, but requires lots of luck with Tarot and Spectral.
-Throwback + Skipping a lot works, but only if you have good +Mult Joker setup.
-Get Director's Cut if you can, The Water isn't fun.

[Nediacheese]

My winning run was with bootstraps bull delayed gratification and acrobat. The final boss blind was violet vessel and I only got 60000 over. God that challenge was awful.

[Frenzy85]

I actually don't fully remember this one, which leads me to believe the slower scaling makes it easier than Gold Stake even with the one-hand limit.

White Stake Ante 8 boss base: 50k
Gold Stake Ante 8 boss base: 180k

So you need pretty much similarly strong builds, but have to be able to do it 4x consistently in Gold Stake with a smaller hand size (the smaller hand size limits even 2pair's consistency).

and the -$1 per discard seems easier to deal with than +$1 cost per ante.

They similarly need some strong flatMult early, but it's a lot easier to build Golden Needle, I think; or I just got really lucky perhaps.

Of course, this is barring playing Gold Stake on some of the stronger decks like Plasma.

P.S. by not remembering, I mean I don't recall being frustrated at it as much as the final two challenges

[Ronald Brain]

Originally posted by Frenzy85:

I actually don't fully remember this one, which leads me to believe the slower scaling makes it easier than Gold Stake even with the one-hand limit.

White Stake Ante 8 boss base: 50k
Gold Stake Ante 8 boss base: 180k

So you need pretty much similarly strong builds, but have to be able to do it 4x consistently in Gold Stake with a smaller hand size (the smaller hand size limits even 2pair's consistency).

and the -$1 per discard seems easier to deal with than +$1 cost per ante.

They similarly need some strong flatMult early, but it's a lot easier to build Golden Needle, I think; or I just got really lucky perhaps.

Of course, this is barring playing Gold Stake on some of the stronger decks like Plasma.

P.S. by not remembering, I mean I don't recall being frustrated at it as much as the final two challenges

The difference with Gold Stake is that you have a lot more leeway to get out of Ante 1 alive. Sometimes you get super slow start, but by taking skip tags and finish Ante 1 Boss Blind with 2-3 hands, you have a head start and can actually grab stuff that the next shop has to offer.

Golden Needle on the other hands, force you to actually dig your hand to survive, and there's next to no room for error. No Joker shop 1? Forced 4 of a kind Big Blind. Still no Joker? You better hope the next 6 Discards give you another 4 of a kind just to get out. Usually that means by Ante 2 you're well below -$20 and can't buy anything in the shop.

+$1 booster pack per Ante is actually not that bad, because you can still encounter tarot / planet in the shop for cheap. With the -$1 per discard, you need either insane luck or a strict 3-4 discard per round used or you'll never get out of debt. Sure you can luck into some economy tag, but usually that led to the next blind score too high you can't clear anyway.

[Jack Paice]

I think it’s fundamentally messed up that you can get “the water” as a boss blind on this challenge. I just lost 2 really viable runs in a row thanks to this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ boss 🫠

[geochrome]

The water really needs to be patched out like verdant leaf was for jokerless. Golden needle is already difficult enough but having only one hand and no discards makes it unfun.

[Fearmonger]

You forgot to mention the absolutely worst about this compared to gold stake: When you want to restart the challenge you always have to click NEW RUN > CHALLENGES > START NEW CHALLENGE > GOTO PAGE 2 > GOLDEN NEEDLE > PLAY

This game was so great until I planned on 100%ing it.

[SundownKid]

If you can't get past Golden Needle, you are definitely not gonna get past Jokerless, so it's a moot point overall, lol.

Personally I think Mail-In Rebate Joker is the key to doing well in it, as it essentially negates the penalty for discarding entirely, and most importantly, does so during the round itself so you don't lose interest. If you get that Joker, you're home free.

[Fearmonger]

Golden Needle was a bazillion times harder than Jokerless. Whatever, just got the all challenge achievement.

BTW: Just hold 'R' to restart. If only I had known this earlier.

[Kryzz]

Originally posted by SundownKid:

If you can't get past Golden Needle, you are definitely not gonna get past Jokerless, so it's a moot point overall, lol.

Personally I think Mail-In Rebate Joker is the key to doing well in it, as it essentially negates the penalty for discarding entirely, and most importantly, does so during the round itself so you don't lose interest. If you get that Joker, you're home free.

the thing with jokerless is you dont get jokers in the shop so theres more planet and tarot cards. so long as you can get the telescope voucher you can build up high level on your best hands pretty quickly and you can also get plenty of fancy cards so long as you stay above the interest threshold. the hardest part is just getting basic hands but that may be alleviated a bit with more opportunity for hanged man cards. in the end i had full house and straight both around level 15 which gave me more options, combined with 10-15 steel cards and a few glass cards in my deck.
golden needle is a struggle tho. good job completing it. it's my last challenge left. seems like mail-in rebate is a good option. i like that card even in regular play ($5 per card is kinda OP). luchador would be reassuring if it didn't take up a joker slot.

Originally posted by Fearmonger:

BTW: Just hold 'R' to restart. If only I had known this earlier.

i wish i knew that about 19 challenges ago. thanks for the advice