Balatro

Dirk Diggler said:
What kind of tactics are you all employing? I'm generally trying to get an accumulation for chips and multi, and a X3 to suit. I'm discovering some of the jokers that I'd written off as useless previously are actually really powerful, e.g. The Wee Joker when used with Hanging Chad seriously gets the chip count up quickly.
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I'm no expert (have only completed gold on one deck and only have a high score of 93 billion, which is way, way short of the exponential numbers I see people getting), but there a few points that have helped me getting my decks levelled up and improved my win rate.

I like to aim for one decent chips joker (scaling preferrably, but not essential), one decent scaling + multi joker and a couple of x multi ones (preferrably at least one scaling again).

But, what I neglected at first (and for a long time) was how important economy is, especially early on. You want to get that interest rolling in and stay above the max interest threshold. And don't neglect planet cards and deck manipulation through tarots. Egg, golden, delayed graficiation if I can swing it, gift card, satellite - I will always pick one of those up now if I see them earlyish in a run.

Also, I started to try to be more flexible - being prepared to change up my build depending on what I pick up and pivoting to better synergies. I like to get a hand in mind to play for the run as soon as I can (usually flushes, pair, two pair or just high card) and lean into that with planet cards and jokers that synergise and start to tweak my deck to support it.

And gold cards, steel cards, glass cards and red and purple seals especially can really help keep your momentum going.
 
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This was my best score when the game first came out.

Lots of glass card flushes / good joker setup if I recall properly.
 
Dirk Diggler said:
What kind of tactics are you all employing? I'm generally trying to get an accumulation for chips and multi, and a X3 to suit. I'm discovering some of the jokers that I'd written off as useless previously are actually really powerful, e.g. The Wee Joker when used with Hanging Chad seriously gets the chip count up quickly.
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I basically try and make sure I'm improving all three stats = chips, multi and multiplier with jokers but all depends on the cards dealt. The challenges are great for forcing you to play different.
 
Dirk Diggler said:
Well well well, what to do here?

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Hmm....

How reliably can you trigger obelisk at this stage? And do you have enough decent cards to retrigger with chad (I wouldn't think you're going to get much more for just using it to scale wee at this point)?

But, it also depends on other questions... what's the upcoming boss blind? A Chicot can be a godsend for some bosses. Probably a bit late for Perkeo, Yorrick or Canio to do you much good. But a Trib might be nice. Chicot has saved runs for me quite a few times.
 
I bought it on Steam in November last year, by the time my year in review rolled around it was 11% of my total playtime for the year haha!

So then I bought it on my phone and got addicted all over again.

I’d heard enough about it on Reddit’s Steam Deck sub and played the mini game in Dave The Diver (also another great casual game that’s great on the deck).
 
Dirk Diggler said:
Wish me luck, Troops. I've got high hopes for this run...
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May the cards be ever in your favour... :)

For me, I hit an absolute wall with Red Deck Gold Stake for some reason. Had no real problems with several other decks and cruised through Red Deck up to Orange, then hit my head against the wall for almost three hours in total before I got Gold. Kind of dented my Balatro confidence.

But then I started working up Magic Deck and had this happen on Red Stake. Which was nice.
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I played Balatro like a crack addict from April 2024 to July 2025 and managed to 100% it. It's the only game in my life that I've managed to 100% and it was the most addicted I've been to a game since World of Warcraft and Age of Empires II. Balatro's visuals were trippy enough to the point that I was getting dreams about it :D

Highest ante without cheating (unseeded) was 13.
Highest ante with cheating (seeded) was 16, the seed being ALEEB.

For those who played Balatro, what did you play next? I've been enjoying Blue Prince for the past 2 months, completing the main story and now playing out the end game content. But I am now after some ideas for a strategy game which is more akin to Balatro which is cards and/or gambling related.
 
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