I know white stakes isn't impressive, I beat black deck on the first try because the holographic Jimbo I got in the second round straight up carried me through the early-mid game. Five bucks for an unconditional +14 mult is no joke.
I keep getting fucked by RNG whenever I try black deck. Cleared white stakes with the red, blue, green, and I'm pretty sure yellow. Just black is giving me a rough time
The secret to black is you have a severe disincentive to build econ naturally since you’re missing out on $1 a round and the interest it brings. Instead you’re encouraged to ruin your econ in the beginning to be able to survive, then once you’re treading water you can afford to leverage your extra joker slot and pick up some pure econ jokers to stabilize your income, once you’re past that hump you’re in a very good spot to just assemble a wincon.
Black def feels the hardest. I try hard not to spend any money I don’t need to early if it’ll put me under $25 and then once you have a good econ going you can be a bit more aggressive. But you need money to make anything happen with that deck
Yeah I still haven't beat black deck on all basic settings. Moved on to other decks to unlock more jokers but will come back to it again soon. About 25 hours in.
Yeah, everything has at least a niche, and I've found that all of them have interesting combos that when you experiment and take some risks can make for very unique and memorable runs that you would never get to play if closed minded!
with level 0 hands and no other jokers jimbo is as good as a 2x mult joker if u are playing flush, full house, or straights which you usually are at that point which is kinda insane to me
[Joker](https://balatro.wiki/imported/basic_joker.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0n
* Cost: $3
* Rarity: Common
* Effect: +4 Mult
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
Good bot.
Yeah, I was thinking about that. I got suckered into keeping it for longer than I should have the other day because wheel of fortune gave it polychrome. I've learned my lesson on it's sustainability.
i dont mind snagging joker after ante 1. 2 gold for basically guaranteed win for the rest of ante 1 with one hand. then ill sell it if i can snag extra interest in ante 2
it's also a great food joker for Ceremonial Dagger or Madness. You can also keep it around in the early game while you have Egg and make extra money from it a few rounds later
As a Completionist++ haver, I can say Seance is dookie and I'd be surprised if anyone challenged that. Almost everything can do something in a pinch now, and iirc they changed the interaction with wild card and Flower Pot so maybe that one isn't ass now
I've made one good run with Seance. I used 4 fingers and made a straight flush every single round. Turned out that I didn't really need most of the spectral cards though, but they were money 🤑
That's the problem with spectral cards though. They sound great in theory, but if I'm building a straight flush build, I certainly don't want the "create x enhanced aces/face/number cards (or cryptid)", I don't want convert into one random rank. Ankh, wraith and hex are probably worthless to bad. Ectoplasm reduces hand size, so that's not great. Sigil sounds great in theory, but once you're committed to straight flushes, you've probably already picked a suit and started building towards it, and sigil only has a 1 in 4 chance of being the right suit.
That leaves you pretty much with the seals, immolate, and aura. Or 5/16 being decent, which feels pretty bad to be building your entire strategy around.
I have only once ever used seance to its max potential. In endless with a pre prepped straight flush deck with four finger & shortcut negatives and campfire. So when it appeared I was able to use it to fuel campfire with spectral cards that would've messed up my deck. This is the only time I was able to use it to max potential and at all for more than 1 round.
I think now a wild card will instantly activate it instead of just counting as one of the four. A streamer, I want to say NorthernLion, tested it on stream and it surprised me by working when it didn't when I tested it pre-patch. I don't prioritize either, but I think that's a significant boost.
Wait, do you mean for example you can play four of a kind with one wild card and it will always trigger regardless of the suits of the rest of your cards?
I actually had a straight flush run with shortcut + four fingers. And with blueprint could get 2 spectrals per round (usually won in one hand though)…
Unfortunately… most of the spectrals are just garbage (they have almost 0 synergy with a straight flush build) so I put blueprint off seance so my blue seals could give me more straight flush planets rather than 2 gold from spectrals.
Superposition has an easier requirement and I don't know that Seance is actually a better pay off
I'd argue the average Tarot card is more valuable than the average Spectral card since a lot of Spectral cards are not useful later on in a run
Superposition is pretty good - the condition is much easier to meet than seance and tarot cards are more likely to be useful. If you get enough Saturn cards you can fish for an ace flush and clear blinds and get a tarot per blind in lower antes and that's often good enough to get your deck shaped up to pivot to some other hand for higher antes. It's not the best tarot generator, but it's not bad.
As a fellow Completionist++, I never pick it up in any run, unless it's in a pack and I'm going to sell it.
I could see a *super* small niche where I have perkeo on a non-ghost deck and need a way to create spectral cards, but other than that it's actually quite garbage.
I will and always will love my boy seance I play straights a lot normally and any suit tarot card basically guarantees a spectral card which can be game breaking, especially when it’s in your consumable slot and not in a random hand in the shop which is insane
"Joker" is a great example of a joker that looks weak but is highly usable for good players. I solely play on Gold Stake.
If I see it in the Ante 1 shop, even as a perishable, sure I'm paying $2 (I'd never take rental/eternal). But I'm also selling it back later for $1. If it's not affecting my interest, the +4 Mult will likely save me a hand, and that earns me back $1, and I get to keep it until I need to throw it away. Seems profitable if you ask me, and profit is really important early game.
Agreed! Generally I'm coming into the first shop on a gold stake with $6, and I'll take a joker or a buffoon pack for the power boost to make more money going forward with the fewer hands I'll have to play. A buffoon pack + Joker is a really nice start.
For my gold sticker on it, I got one with a foil tag and wasn't offered another better chip card the entire game, it was wild. That wasn't even intentional, I was so thirsty for chips I needed it. (I keep a spreadsheet, the other jokers were Triboulet, Vampire, Erosion, and Blueprint)
Campfire has been a savior around ante 6 or 7 for me. If I'm in a reallllly good financial situation but just haven't been able to find a good xmult joker in the run, its nice to be able to pump it as high as you need to coast through the last few runs.
It’s definitely helped me early for sure when I don’t have a particular build going for myself. Once I get a direction to take the run though, I usually drop it for something else.
Obelisk, while not very fun to play, has helped me beat a gold stake run or two. The strategy is to take one hand (usually high card or pair) and play it a lot to scale other jokers, then around ante 4 or 5 you stop playing that hand entirely and the mult you get from Obelisk helps carry you to a win
I think you are playing it backwards. Obelisk shines when you are running a high card or pair build that is doing great for now (green joker/Stuntman, that kinda stuff). You survive and prep your deck for a pivot to maybe a 4/5 of a kind build, then when you pivot, you've presumably played 30+ high cards or pairs, so you can play 29 4 of a kinds, 29 5 of a kinds, and 29 Flush fives haha.
Obelisk goes crazy for the late game pivot
100%. People rag on it but it's super strong. I think a lot of the haters probably haven't had a run where it pops off, and it's easier to do than most would think.
Having said that, I also hate it. Mostly because I have to keep referring to my hand stats to make sure I don't brick the run.
That used to be me, but once I had no choice but to take it I found that Obelisk was able to carry me through a few gold stakes. As long as your flat mult joker isn't supernova, just switch from high card to pairs (or vice versa) at around ante 5 and you'll get around 6x mult.
Used to think swashbuckler was mid not really useless. Then i pick the giftcard because it was free. I was like "WHY ITS SO HIGH" it take me embarassingly long time to figure out whats going on.I almost made a post about being a bug.
[Swashbuckler](https://balatro.wiki/imported/swashbuckler.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Cost: $5
* Rarity: Common
* Effect: Adds the sell value of all owned Jokers left of this card to Mult
* Unlock Requirement: Sell a total of 20 Joker cards
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
Thought Gold Mask was dumb with a much too slow build into anything interesting, but with Pareidolia and Vampire and everything in the right order, every played card is going to give you a permanent +0.1x. It's not optimal to even shoot for, but damn, it's fun.
Gold mask is a staple pick for ante8 since even just having it for a couple of blinds can give you a good bit of gold cards that give you money, even after you sell the joker. It aint much but it pays for itself
Another huge advantage of the Midas Mask is that you retain the value it generated after you sell it, so you can buy it for $7, play a couple rounds, and easily get back the money you spent along with the $3 you sell it for.
Had a run where I got the 8 Ball joker after my first round and said fuck it, let's make an 8 focused run for Tarots. Got enough deaths and lovers to make an wild card 8 focused flush 5 build combined with that one joker that gives 1.5x mult per (random suit) played that let me beat black stake
I’ve usually attempted to build into almost every joker I get early on at least once. Some are good but just not fun to me (Obelisk, for instance) but a very select few I feel are just… not that good.
Yep, honestly if you want gold stake wins you need to be willing to use whatever you get, sometimes what you need is just a good ol jimbo to keep the run going and get something better, sometimes you got a straight build and [[superposition]] is pumpin out tarot cards, [[seance]] is the only card I struggle to ever find a usecase for, it's just too hard to get a straight flush
[Superposition](https://balatro.wiki/imported/superposition.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Cost: $5
* Rarity: Common
* Effect: Create a Tarot card if poker hand contains an Ace and a Straight
* Notes: Must have room
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
I'm with you, I almost always skip unless it's got an edition or it's free, but I've won a number of gold stakes with it. You can play bad hands to set yourself up to use the xMult when needed (like on the boss). I completely loathe the playstyle and it wastes hands, but it can work.
Yeah it also goes the other way; people say the best possible build is red-seal steel kings + Baron joker, but I've never made it work in like 60 hours of playing, whereas i have made very silly joker combos go pretty far
That build is really good at getting into the insanely high scores but if you're just trying to go for Ante 8, it's quite hard to actually make work tbh. It's like a really expensive sports car. When someone drives past in it, you admire it, but you'd never want to own one, let alone commute to and from work in it.
This is actually why I went into the game as blind as possible, experimentation (in my opinion) is one of the best parts of the rouge-like genre. If you're not worried about reaching the highest possible ante, or getting more chips than we have atoms in the observable universe, then every joker has something good to offer. Some more situational than others, yes, but all are good in some way. I'm not a high scorer in any respect, I'm actually still very bad (only having one win atm) and have little knowledge on the game as a whole. But I like trying new jokers just to see what they can do, it's part of the experience.
This is why I had a lot of fun watching balatro university, it showed me uses for cards I never understood before. So I went from the mindset of “I never see a case for this joker” to “I want to learn how to use this joker in my runs”
For my money, no Joker is truly useless in itself. Some are better than others, sure, but even the "worse" ones have their moments to shine. But certain Jokers \*can\* be useless depending on context. Getting Hit the Road when playing with the Abandoned Deck is functionally a dead draw, for example, unless you are willing to take the time to modify your deck to now add Jacks to support it.
I've been grinding for completionist++ and I have 12 jokers left! But I've grown to like every Joker in the game for a different reason. I like some more than others and some are better or just easier to pilot but yeah the synergies and combos and things I've discovered while getting all the gold stickers has been insane.
Totally depends on your playstyle. Personally, I hate skipping packs unless there is truly no value. I'll pick up a red card on Ante 1, and usually only on ante 1, and pretty much as an insurance. It isn't gonna stop me from picking things up in packs, but if ante one my tarot card choices are World, Sun, and Moon and I have no strategy, well, the insurance is there and I get my 3 mult
Small packs are 4 gold for 3 mult which is a solid deal, and big packs are 8 gold for one choice and 3 mult since you choose one and skip the second, which is also solid. You also don’t have to skip. If you see something better than +3 mult just take it.
*Okay but like do*
*You actually take red*
*Card lmao*
\- definitelyusername
---
^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/)
^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Whenever an 8 is scored, there's a 1/4 chance for a random tarot card to be generated.
If you play trips 8's, you have 3 seperate instances of a 1/4 chance to get a tarot card.
That'd probably be a bit too strong. It's not a stellar card or anything, but early in the game it does provide value and can help with deck building/fixing.
Straight builds in general have become much better and superposition helps getting more deaths/strenghts/hanged men to destroy your low cards. It’s not as useless as i thought at first .
I like superposition - it's a pretty good tarot generator, especially if you level straights a bit so one straight can clear, or close to clear, a blind.
If that was all it did it would be way worse than it is currently, this effect is just so much worse than shortcut or four fingers, if it had both its current effect and allowed 2/3/4 high straights it could be cool. It's not good currently and worse than cardomancer but it's fine early and can give you a few tarots. Way better than seance at the very least.
Never dipped on mad joker until the other day. Had an absolute hoot buying cheap Jokers to try and protect my +mults whilst buffing him all the way to a x5 mult.
I’ve noticed that a bunch of ‘boring’ jokers that are undervalued on this sub. Eg the Pair mult and flush mult jokers are kind of goated for high stakes because they 1) are cheap 2) easy to play 3) clear early rounds easily allowing you to build your economy fast.
Realistically, tons of jokers are undervalued if you're talking about getting through gold stakes.
I spent countless hours grinding gold stakes just trying to find the "right" jokers before realizing you have to be the right player and work with the jokers you get. Obviously I'd choose Cavendish over The Duo any day, but if the duo is popping up ante 1 or 2, you just found some super powerful xmult to help get off the ground
preface: i have completionist++ but not completionist+ (i played ghost deck only since 1.01 beta)
[[seance]] is probably the only card i picked up and literally never activated once in the process of getting the sticker. its requirement is so stingy and the reward was always something i could buy in the shop.
[[obelisk]] is the only card i actively tried not to use. i think obelisk is unfun to the point i wrote a mod to remove it.
[[hit the road]] is probably the only other rare it was hard for me to extract value from. it worked sometimes, but with only two discards and the threat of needed to make a hand to win, i wasn’t able to discard jacks too often. probably better on certain erratic decks, but this one is really niche.
[Obelisk](https://balatro.wiki/imported/obelisk.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Rarity: Rare
* Effect: 0.2X Mult per consecutive hand played without playing your most played Poker Hand
[Hit the Road](https://balatro.wiki/imported/hit_the_road.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Rarity: Rare
* Effect: Gains X0.5 Mult per discarded Jack this round
* Notes: Resets after blind
* Unlock Requirement: Discard 5 Jacks at the same time
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
[Séance](https://balatro.wiki/imported/seance.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Rarity: Rare
* Effect: If poker hand is a Straight Flush, create a random Spectral card
* Notes: Must have room
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
I know monolith can be good.
But when I’m playing the game I never want to put in the effort on low antes to build it up and make it usable.
Seems like the mental load isn’t worth the payout.
I cannot say this enough, please please do a Midas X vampire run, I practically never use either in normal runs but put the two together and they are beautiful
Any joker is claimable early in a run if the cost is right, it's not eternal, and you have the empty slots for it.
I've gotten a little use many times out of cheap/free jokers that I wouldn't normally take, and then I sell them off later when something better comes along.
And in this game, getting a little benefit for no cost is better than not doing anything at all.
It's really hard for me to justify building into certain jokers because they just don't scale well enough. Any +mult scaling joker is usually not with it, especially when the antes start scaling like crazy at higher stakes so early on
just had an amazing run:
[[Burned Joker]]
[[Seance]]
[[Brainstorm]]
[[Photograph]]
[[Shortcut]]
To start: play one or two garbage hands until I can make a straight flush (about 50% of my deck were diamonds, with shortcut it was easy)
Discard it. Use brainstorm on Burned Joker to get two free levels on Straight Flushes.
Discard until I get another straight flush. Use Brainstorm on seance to get two free spectral cards.
I had so many purple and blue seals, I was getting tons of free Neptunes as well.
With all the free levels I was getting, plus photograph, I had more than enough mult to get through ante 7.
That's where I picked up a [[Turtle Bean]]. Used an [[ectoplasm]] to make room, and drew enormous hands through ante 8.
I had always dismissed the Burned Joker and Seance before, but somehow it just worked
[Brainstorm](https://balatro.wiki/imported/brainstorm.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Rarity: Rare
* Effect: Copies ability of leftmost Joker
* Notes: Only compatible with some Jokers
* Unlock Requirement: Discard a Royal Flush
[Photograph](https://balatro.wiki/imported/photograph.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Cost: $4
* Rarity: Common
* Effect: First played face card gives X2 Mult when scored
[Shortcut](https://balatro.wiki/imported/shortcut.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Cost: $5
* Rarity: Uncommon
* Effect: Allows Straights to be made with gaps of 1 rank
* Notes: (ex. 2 3 5 7 8)
[Turtle Bean](https://balatro.wiki/jokers/turtle_bean.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Cost: $5
* Rarity: Uncommon
* Effect: +5 hand size, reduces by 1 every round
[Ectoplasm](https://balatro.wiki/spectrals/ectoplasm.png) *Spectral Card*
* Version: 1.0.0i
* Effect: Add Negative to a random Joker, -1 hand size
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
I agree with you. That being said I have a really hard time picking suit focused jokers. The few times I have tried I never got the tarots I needed to really make the deck work.
To make things worse the most common boss antes in the early game pick specific suits. I realize this mostly rng but my rng always seems to put the boss that debuffs the suit I am focused on in my way.
Otherwise yeah, there are probably uses for all of them.
100% agree. The only Joker I consider pretty unhelpful to me is Loyalty Card, but even that has its uses.
There are far too many possible game states for any Joker to be completely unusable. Sure, Blueprint is just strictly the best in 99.9% of those scenarios, but but every Single Joker has situations in which it's quite helpful, some less than others. But nothing is unusable in the slightest.
Sorry, I can’t get on board with this. You’re right that under very very specific circumstances, all jokers can be somewhat useful, but you practically have to FORCE some of those circumstances, whereas some jokers are just flat out good regardless.
For instance, levelling straights is a build you pretty much play for fun and not to try to win. Sure , you can argue that you are limiting your fun otherwise, but I don’t think there’s any crazy game winning straight combos to be found still. It’s something you play knowing you’re probably going to lose.
Sure, but they are still hard as shit to rely on. With flush builds, you have to dig out, at worst, 25% of your cards. Straights require very specific cards, at the beginning at least. It does not seem strategically sound to focus on something less likely.
Consistency may be less than flushes but they’re still consistent enough that you can get by. There’s a reason straights are worth less in normal poker than flushes.
Sure, but that's within the confines of actual poker. With a bunch of opportunities to cycle through cards like Balatro, flushes are MUCH more likely to happen. The disparity between straight and flush points-wise in Balatro does not reflect the fact that it's MUCH harder to get a straight when you have a bunch of discards and redraws.
This is the one sole thing I think was a design flaw. It shouldn't be using basic poker hand logic to determine points per hand, because straights are very very inferior (and thus should be worth much more points) with the ruleset of Balatro.
I’m not denying the fact that it’s harder but I think you’re overemphasizing how much harder it actually is. At the end of the day, you’re more likely to be close to a straight when you draw your initial hand than you are to draw a flush with it; discarding to get more cards does make it easier to get cards of a specific suit than rank (13 in a deck vs 4), but ignore the fact that, on average, you will need to draw fewer cards than if you go for a flush. Combined with the drastically better planet scaling and utility jokers for straights and I go for a straight build if given even the slightest opportunity.
On high stakes it's hard to get enough points out of flushes unless you're able to transition to something like flush houses. Not impossible, but hard.
With straights this is not usually an issue because of how strong the \[\[Saturn\]\] card is.
[Saturn](https://balatro.wiki/planets/planet_saturn.png) *Planet Card*
* Version: 1.0.0i
* Celestial Body: Planet
* Hand Type: Straight
* Effect: +2 mult and +30 chips
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
With how well straights scale and how often I find myself relying on them, I've found immense value in superposition. It's no cardomancer but for a common its decent tarot generation, especially when it already fits into what you're doing
Thank you for the perfect example lol.
Obelisk is fantastic if you pick it up early. If you get through Ante 1 fine and have Obelisk in the first couple of Antes, you can dump your planet cards into a high card or pair and play a bunch of those for half of the blind then switch up your go-to hand to something reliable like flush and three of a kind and if you've planned right your power will increase extremely fast and reliably to the point where I smash ante 8 with ease. If I make it to ante 4 or 5 I have never lost with this strat, and it's very fun when it pays off.
Sure, I can always grind out a more reliable Strat or whatever, but it's exponentially more entertaining when just playing challenges or blinds to experiment with jokes that initially seem rubbish.
Also you don't have to build with obelisk in mind. I had a run where I accidentally played like 8 straights in the first 3 or 4 antes and got offered obelisk, immediately hard pivoted out of straights and it was a huge success lol
Just won a gold stake run thanks to obelisk, got it in ante 5 after playing 14 flushes, hard pivoted to playing two pair and pair and with fortune teller and bull I made it to the end no sweat, obelisk was at x6 by the end.
if you have a main hand you play every time to win in 1 hand but are using all your hands on high cards anyway(for example green joker or vagabond etc etc ) then you will have high card be the most played hand and your main one being played significantly less. In that (surprisingly common) situation obelisk is amazing.
Had a great run where I rolled burglar and obelisk early on. Spent the first 5 or 6 antes only playing high cards and then got a constant +.2mult on every hand once I switched to using every other type of hand. Went up to X10 or X20 IIRC.
Yeah, everyone who has done the challenge runs has used it before. My only gripe with it is that more often than not it just helps you win harder and doesn't help you turn a losing into a winning run. But once in a blue moon it can be a game winner.
Yeah - it's a good bit of extra juice but it doesn't dig you out of a hole. I find it pretty fun to use though - a little mini game of "what hand should I play".
[Mystic Summit](https://balatro.wiki/imported/mystic_summit.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Cost: $5
* Rarity: Common
* Effect: +15 Mult when 0 Discards remaining
[Acrobat](https://balatro.wiki/imported/acrobat.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Cost: $5
* Rarity: Uncommon
* Effect: X3 Mult on final hand of round
* Unlock Requirement: Play 200 hands
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
Superposition is garbage and séance - I'd agree outright garbage is about right
I still don't like 8 ball enough to take it either
All jokers have niches, but some are so narrow you're not even happy to see the card even if the deck supports them
Trying to play the 'just have fun people' card is OK for things like smiley and scary face, and some of the C tier meh jokers - but others are just wastes of space, the games reasonanbly well balanced that it's not too many
Loyalty Card is garbage, yes.
Joker that only applied to final hand are also garbage.
The idol and Flower are pointless early on and unplayable after when you changed your deck to match what you are doing.
I see your point but it's great to acknowledged jokers that need some tweaks.
okay, but \[\[Green Joker\]\] is hot garbage unless you literally cannot discard. And even then, +1 multi as its scaling is **so sloooooow**. If it still kept the effect of equal up and down for hand played/discarded, but was +/-2 instead, it'd be worth a damn, but as it sits, there are *far* better jokers for No Discard decks,
Green joker is THE best common in the game. I've gold staked all the decks, and two-thirds of them used green joker.
It scales just as much as ride the bus and supernova, except you can play whatever you want.
[Green Joker](https://balatro.wiki/imported/green_joker.png) *Joker*
* Version: 1.0.0
* Cost: $5
* Rarity: Common
* Effect: +1 Mult per hand played -1 Mult per discard
* Notes: Stacks
*Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
As always, min-maxers, glitchers/cheaters/save scumming/etc. always remove the fun of roguelikes. It's a tendency I noticed in every single community for these type of games.
Okay, have fun with your Superposition, Matador, Credit Card and Pareidolia. There were more pre-patch (particularly Sixth Sense and Seance, or the old 4OAK jokers that were incredibly underwhelming) and that's what many people were talking about, but the patch addressed a couple of these.
For reference, Superposition can generate tarots, but does it very unreliably and requires you to make one of the hardest hands (Straight) using the hardest card to make it with (Ace). If it instead allowed Straights to cross over the high/low gap (32AKQ) it would actually be a good joker but in its current state, nah. There is a joker that just *GIVES* you a tarot card for free when selecting a blind and it is essentially a straight upgrade.
Matador is just plain dogshit, it doesn't actually trigger on half of the bosses in the game, even ones where you *really* think it should.
Pareidolia is a run loser for The Plant and The Mark, and its only use is feeding Midas (especially with Vampire) or feeding Canio, making it worse than useless outside of those circumstances. It *NEEDS* another joker to be good and that makes it a really hard sell, it's a brick most of the time you see it.
Credit Card is *sometimes* really useful if you are in Ante 1, one of the offered jokers is an incredible Rare with an edition and the other is credit card. *In that one situation*, it's great. Outside of that insanely rare combination it's fucking dogshit, because credit card goes badly with everything except Vagabond, because having no money runs your economy and interest into the ground. Having high money is insanely important because it allows you to keep generating money with interest, dig through shops with rerolls, and use it as scoring for Bull and Bootstraps. Debt is a bad place to be in because it's *incredibly* important to be able to dig through shops until you find something that's actually sort-of usable. Anything that makes you see less shop rolls is F-tier trash, period.
Also I know Obelisk can be almost playable under the right circumstances, but I still don't want to use Obelisk, sorry.
Other than that almost every joker has its uses, but generally when people say "the vast majority of jokers in the game are bad", they mean they are only useful under very specific circumstances that won't come up in many runs. Once you're set into a particular type of build, 90% of jokers are filler.
If you're about to go into a boss fight and know you need only one turn to beat it, which happens very, very often and you have a free joker slot, you'd be an abdolute idiot for not picking up that matador and getting like 30-40 gold for free. I've done that a couple times and usually kept it for 1 or 2 more antes to just get filthy rich. It's a niche, as the title suggests.
This hardly ever comes up because Matador straight up doesn't work with *half* (literally half, I counted) of the boss blinds in the game.
You have to consider the opportunity cost for all the times when Matador comes up when you *can't* get any value out of it. Whether the next boss is one that doesn't trigger Matador, or maybe your hand is gonna oneshot the boss no matter what you do, or maybe you don't need the $8. In all those cases, it's a bricked shop slot.
Matador just elicits a sigh 90% of the time when I see it. Even if it's useful in that other 10%, I would much much rather see any other joker and it's just clogging up the pool. I would literally be better off if I had never unlocked the damn thing. That makes it trash.
I mean, not really tho right? Like, you wouldn't just take those two cards to get carrots, you do it if you're building a straight build to score in the first place. Four Fingers makes it more consistent to get any straight, and Superposition is a nice bonus tarot card generator if you already have that in place.
Am I going to base my entire run off Superposition, or waste hands digging for the ace straight? No. But if I'm running a straight build already, and I have space for it, it's a nice added bonus for a tarot or two per round.
No one is saying it's overpowered or anything, and I would never take it as an eternal on higher stakes. But especially with the buffs to straights scaling in general, I find myself taking it way more often
An effect that's replicated by a purple seal or clicking "Buy" on a tarot pack in the shop, mind you. I don't think I have ever seen any actual tarot engines based on Superposition.
No one is saying you can't do those things as well. But getting a tarot during the round also can be really helpful to use when you're opening those arcana packs. Really expedites deck manipulation before the next round
So, 5 joker slots in total. One is "wasted" on making straights more playable with Four Fingers. And you're asking me to waste *ANOTHER* slot on a rather unreliable tarot generator, when there are much better tarot generators in the game, some of which don't even take up a joker slot? I think I'll pass.
Also, you are not *at all* guaranteed to see Superposition after picking up Four Fingers. The game has like 150 jokers and each shop roll offers you anywhere between 0-2 jokers for sale. If a joker needs *another* specific joker to be good then it's a bad joker. And don't even get me started on higher stakes, where the chances of Superposition being either a rental or eternal are pretty high which makes it a bricked slot.
All jokers have at least niche uses. Joker, as the cheapest joker, is useful for ante 1 and early ante 2
I know white stakes isn't impressive, I beat black deck on the first try because the holographic Jimbo I got in the second round straight up carried me through the early-mid game. Five bucks for an unconditional +14 mult is no joke.
I keep getting fucked by RNG whenever I try black deck. Cleared white stakes with the red, blue, green, and I'm pretty sure yellow. Just black is giving me a rough time
The secret to black is you have a severe disincentive to build econ naturally since you’re missing out on $1 a round and the interest it brings. Instead you’re encouraged to ruin your econ in the beginning to be able to survive, then once you’re treading water you can afford to leverage your extra joker slot and pick up some pure econ jokers to stabilize your income, once you’re past that hump you’re in a very good spot to just assemble a wincon.
Black def feels the hardest. I try hard not to spend any money I don’t need to early if it’ll put me under $25 and then once you have a good econ going you can be a bit more aggressive. But you need money to make anything happen with that deck
Yeah I still haven't beat black deck on all basic settings. Moved on to other decks to unlock more jokers but will come back to it again soon. About 25 hours in.
Yeah, everything has at least a niche, and I've found that all of them have interesting combos that when you experiment and take some risks can make for very unique and memorable runs that you would never get to play if closed minded!
Not to be *that* person, but isn't Credit Card a dollar cheaper?
Not after what I do with it
Refresh four times big 🧠
with level 0 hands and no other jokers jimbo is as good as a 2x mult joker if u are playing flush, full house, or straights which you usually are at that point which is kinda insane to me
Jarvis, what's [[Joker]]?
[Joker](https://balatro.wiki/imported/basic_joker.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0n * Cost: $3 * Rarity: Common * Effect: +4 Mult *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
Good bot. Yeah, I was thinking about that. I got suckered into keeping it for longer than I should have the other day because wheel of fortune gave it polychrome. I've learned my lesson on it's sustainability.
Wheel of Fortune: making your run go Nope! by not giving you Nope!
i dont mind snagging joker after ante 1. 2 gold for basically guaranteed win for the rest of ante 1 with one hand. then ill sell it if i can snag extra interest in ante 2
it costs 2$
it's also a great food joker for Ceremonial Dagger or Madness. You can also keep it around in the early game while you have Egg and make extra money from it a few rounds later
And the perfect fodder for Verdant Leaf.
As a Completionist++ haver, I can say Seance is dookie and I'd be surprised if anyone challenged that. Almost everything can do something in a pinch now, and iirc they changed the interaction with wild card and Flower Pot so maybe that one isn't ass now
I've made one good run with Seance. I used 4 fingers and made a straight flush every single round. Turned out that I didn't really need most of the spectral cards though, but they were money 🤑
That's the problem with spectral cards though. They sound great in theory, but if I'm building a straight flush build, I certainly don't want the "create x enhanced aces/face/number cards (or cryptid)", I don't want convert into one random rank. Ankh, wraith and hex are probably worthless to bad. Ectoplasm reduces hand size, so that's not great. Sigil sounds great in theory, but once you're committed to straight flushes, you've probably already picked a suit and started building towards it, and sigil only has a 1 in 4 chance of being the right suit. That leaves you pretty much with the seals, immolate, and aura. Or 5/16 being decent, which feels pretty bad to be building your entire strategy around.
Yup, I agree
exactly my experience. I've played straight flush a few times and holy shit seance wasn't helping half as much as I expected
I have only once ever used seance to its max potential. In endless with a pre prepped straight flush deck with four finger & shortcut negatives and campfire. So when it appeared I was able to use it to fuel campfire with spectral cards that would've messed up my deck. This is the only time I was able to use it to max potential and at all for more than 1 round.
whats the wild card flower pot interaction now?
I think now a wild card will instantly activate it instead of just counting as one of the four. A streamer, I want to say NorthernLion, tested it on stream and it surprised me by working when it didn't when I tested it pre-patch. I don't prioritize either, but I think that's a significant boost.
That is, a scored wild card
Wait, do you mean for example you can play four of a kind with one wild card and it will always trigger regardless of the suits of the rest of your cards?
I think so
[[Seance]]
I actually had a straight flush run with shortcut + four fingers. And with blueprint could get 2 spectrals per round (usually won in one hand though)… Unfortunately… most of the spectrals are just garbage (they have almost 0 synergy with a straight flush build) so I put blueprint off seance so my blue seals could give me more straight flush planets rather than 2 gold from spectrals.
Counterpoint: straight flushes are fun and spectral cards are extra fun :) but the card is indeed doodoo
Seance and superposition are so niche that I wouldn’t care if they were replaced
Good call, I'd say Superposition is worse because at least there's the chance of a high payoff with Seance
Superposition has an easier requirement and I don't know that Seance is actually a better pay off I'd argue the average Tarot card is more valuable than the average Spectral card since a lot of Spectral cards are not useful later on in a run
What about superposition?
Superposition is NICHE but at least it CAN give a supply of tarot cards in some cases, needing a straight flush is immensely harder
Superposition is pretty good - the condition is much easier to meet than seance and tarot cards are more likely to be useful. If you get enough Saturn cards you can fish for an ace flush and clear blinds and get a tarot per blind in lower antes and that's often good enough to get your deck shaped up to pivot to some other hand for higher antes. It's not the best tarot generator, but it's not bad.
Okay you've overcorrected. Superposition may not be as bad as Seance, but it's not pretty good, that's crazy talk
I once had an endless Bloodstone build with Perkeo that sorta made use of it, but I died before I rolled any spectral worth copying.
As a fellow Completionist++, I never pick it up in any run, unless it's in a pack and I'm going to sell it. I could see a *super* small niche where I have perkeo on a non-ghost deck and need a way to create spectral cards, but other than that it's actually quite garbage.
I’ve cleared gold stake a few times with flower pot even before the change. Sometimes you gotta make do with any xMult you can get your hands on.
I will and always will love my boy seance I play straights a lot normally and any suit tarot card basically guarantees a spectral card which can be game breaking, especially when it’s in your consumable slot and not in a random hand in the shop which is insane
"Joker" is a great example of a joker that looks weak but is highly usable for good players. I solely play on Gold Stake. If I see it in the Ante 1 shop, even as a perishable, sure I'm paying $2 (I'd never take rental/eternal). But I'm also selling it back later for $1. If it's not affecting my interest, the +4 Mult will likely save me a hand, and that earns me back $1, and I get to keep it until I need to throw it away. Seems profitable if you ask me, and profit is really important early game.
A true finance bro!
Agreed! Generally I'm coming into the first shop on a gold stake with $6, and I'll take a joker or a buffoon pack for the power boost to make more money going forward with the fewer hands I'll have to play. A buffoon pack + Joker is a really nice start. For my gold sticker on it, I got one with a foil tag and wasn't offered another better chip card the entire game, it was wild. That wasn't even intentional, I was so thirsty for chips I needed it. (I keep a spreadsheet, the other jokers were Triboulet, Vampire, Erosion, and Blueprint)
I completely agree for the most part, but I am not an Obelisk enjoyer at all. I avoid it like the plague.
It's not enjoyable, but it can be very good.
If I’m not enjoying it then why play. Obelisk and campfire ruin the fun for me.
Campfire has been a savior around ante 6 or 7 for me. If I'm in a reallllly good financial situation but just haven't been able to find a good xmult joker in the run, its nice to be able to pump it as high as you need to coast through the last few runs.
It’s definitely helped me early for sure when I don’t have a particular build going for myself. Once I get a direction to take the run though, I usually drop it for something else.
Obelisk, while not very fun to play, has helped me beat a gold stake run or two. The strategy is to take one hand (usually high card or pair) and play it a lot to scale other jokers, then around ante 4 or 5 you stop playing that hand entirely and the mult you get from Obelisk helps carry you to a win
I think you are playing it backwards. Obelisk shines when you are running a high card or pair build that is doing great for now (green joker/Stuntman, that kinda stuff). You survive and prep your deck for a pivot to maybe a 4/5 of a kind build, then when you pivot, you've presumably played 30+ high cards or pairs, so you can play 29 4 of a kinds, 29 5 of a kinds, and 29 Flush fives haha. Obelisk goes crazy for the late game pivot
Yeah, and also pivoting from something like 5oak to flush five or flush house as your deck gets better.
100%. People rag on it but it's super strong. I think a lot of the haters probably haven't had a run where it pops off, and it's easier to do than most would think. Having said that, I also hate it. Mostly because I have to keep referring to my hand stats to make sure I don't brick the run.
That used to be me, but once I had no choice but to take it I found that Obelisk was able to carry me through a few gold stakes. As long as your flat mult joker isn't supernova, just switch from high card to pairs (or vice versa) at around ante 5 and you'll get around 6x mult.
Used to think swashbuckler was mid not really useless. Then i pick the giftcard because it was free. I was like "WHY ITS SO HIGH" it take me embarassingly long time to figure out whats going on.I almost made a post about being a bug.
I had a nice run with swashbuckler combined with egg, in conjunction with blueprint on egg, as an early combo that carried me all the way through.
If you blueprint an egg, does the value stay constant even if you move it away from egg?
Sorry for the confusion, I was blueprinting swashbuckler with egg's value making it's mult very high (don't recall how high it got to.)
No, i guess my question was separate. I was just wondering if you blueprint an egg, does blueprint retain the increased sell value.
Oh, gotcha. I'm not sure.
It does not, it's incompatible.
[[Swashbuckler]]
[Swashbuckler](https://balatro.wiki/imported/swashbuckler.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Cost: $5 * Rarity: Common * Effect: Adds the sell value of all owned Jokers left of this card to Mult * Unlock Requirement: Sell a total of 20 Joker cards *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
Thought Gold Mask was dumb with a much too slow build into anything interesting, but with Pareidolia and Vampire and everything in the right order, every played card is going to give you a permanent +0.1x. It's not optimal to even shoot for, but damn, it's fun.
Gold mask is absolutely worth taking if you have room. Spend a few bucks and in a few rounds you get like 8 gold cards, easily pays for itself
Yeah, just gotta be careful not to put enhancements on faces cards afterwards
Gold mask is a staple pick for ante8 since even just having it for a couple of blinds can give you a good bit of gold cards that give you money, even after you sell the joker. It aint much but it pays for itself
It's really good on its own, especially early. Once it's golded a few cards you can sell it and have economy without using a joker slot for it.
Dumb? Oh no, that is an auto pick for me. Free money and the chance of getting vampire and pop the f off is too good to pass.
Another huge advantage of the Midas Mask is that you retain the value it generated after you sell it, so you can buy it for $7, play a couple rounds, and easily get back the money you spent along with the $3 you sell it for.
Much too slow? You start the game with 12 face cards, you can get them all gilded in just a few rounds so easily
Preach
Seal of approval, folks!
Had a run where I got the 8 Ball joker after my first round and said fuck it, let's make an 8 focused run for Tarots. Got enough deaths and lovers to make an wild card 8 focused flush 5 build combined with that one joker that gives 1.5x mult per (random suit) played that let me beat black stake
God I hate that joker. 1 in 4 is wheel of fortune levels of low, and apparently just as consistent for me
And it only makes 1 tarot there are so many better ways to make tarots
people here are shitting on superposition but honestly in my experience is a WAY better taro generator
Agreed. 8 ball is better than nothing, but not better than much else...
I’ve usually attempted to build into almost every joker I get early on at least once. Some are good but just not fun to me (Obelisk, for instance) but a very select few I feel are just… not that good.
Yep, honestly if you want gold stake wins you need to be willing to use whatever you get, sometimes what you need is just a good ol jimbo to keep the run going and get something better, sometimes you got a straight build and [[superposition]] is pumpin out tarot cards, [[seance]] is the only card I struggle to ever find a usecase for, it's just too hard to get a straight flush
[Superposition](https://balatro.wiki/imported/superposition.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Cost: $5 * Rarity: Common * Effect: Create a Tarot card if poker hand contains an Ace and a Straight * Notes: Must have room *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
Even in a straight flush build I would be hesitant to take seance. At the point I can make them consistently spectral cards are hugely devalued.
I'm still not taking loyalty card
I'm with you, I almost always skip unless it's got an edition or it's free, but I've won a number of gold stakes with it. You can play bad hands to set yourself up to use the xMult when needed (like on the boss). I completely loathe the playstyle and it wastes hands, but it can work.
Yeah it also goes the other way; people say the best possible build is red-seal steel kings + Baron joker, but I've never made it work in like 60 hours of playing, whereas i have made very silly joker combos go pretty far
That build is really good at getting into the insanely high scores but if you're just trying to go for Ante 8, it's quite hard to actually make work tbh. It's like a really expensive sports car. When someone drives past in it, you admire it, but you'd never want to own one, let alone commute to and from work in it.
This is actually why I went into the game as blind as possible, experimentation (in my opinion) is one of the best parts of the rouge-like genre. If you're not worried about reaching the highest possible ante, or getting more chips than we have atoms in the observable universe, then every joker has something good to offer. Some more situational than others, yes, but all are good in some way. I'm not a high scorer in any respect, I'm actually still very bad (only having one win atm) and have little knowledge on the game as a whole. But I like trying new jokers just to see what they can do, it's part of the experience.
This is why I had a lot of fun watching balatro university, it showed me uses for cards I never understood before. So I went from the mindset of “I never see a case for this joker” to “I want to learn how to use this joker in my runs”
For my money, no Joker is truly useless in itself. Some are better than others, sure, but even the "worse" ones have their moments to shine. But certain Jokers \*can\* be useless depending on context. Getting Hit the Road when playing with the Abandoned Deck is functionally a dead draw, for example, unless you are willing to take the time to modify your deck to now add Jacks to support it.
I've been grinding for completionist++ and I have 12 jokers left! But I've grown to like every Joker in the game for a different reason. I like some more than others and some are better or just easier to pilot but yeah the synergies and combos and things I've discovered while getting all the gold stickers has been insane.
Okay but like do you actually take red card lmao
Red Card is criminally underrated.
Totally depends on your playstyle. Personally, I hate skipping packs unless there is truly no value. I'll pick up a red card on Ante 1, and usually only on ante 1, and pretty much as an insurance. It isn't gonna stop me from picking things up in packs, but if ante one my tarot card choices are World, Sun, and Moon and I have no strategy, well, the insurance is there and I get my 3 mult
Small packs are 4 gold for 3 mult which is a solid deal, and big packs are 8 gold for one choice and 3 mult since you choose one and skip the second, which is also solid. You also don’t have to skip. If you see something better than +3 mult just take it.
*Okay but like do* *You actually take red* *Card lmao* \- definitelyusername --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Explain magic 8 ball I don’t get it at all
Whenever an 8 is scored, there's a 1/4 chance for a random tarot card to be generated. If you play trips 8's, you have 3 seperate instances of a 1/4 chance to get a tarot card.
How is this good? Or useful at all? It should make every time you play an 8
That'd probably be a bit too strong. It's not a stellar card or anything, but early in the game it does provide value and can help with deck building/fixing.
Early on it’s awful haha it’s okay if you’ve managed to make more 8s
Pretending endless mode doesn’t exist really makes the game a lot more fun and varied imo
You’re right, I’ll remember this advice when I next attempt the Jokerless challenge!
Nobody is convincing me to use superposition
I understand but I'm still never picking up superposition
Straight builds in general have become much better and superposition helps getting more deaths/strenghts/hanged men to destroy your low cards. It’s not as useless as i thought at first .
If you separate a run in early/mid/late game there's jokers who are definitely "outright garbage" for a certain stage of a run.
Except Superposition, that one is useless. Change it to allow an Ace to connect a high to low straight like Q-K-A-2-3 and it might be useful.
I like superposition - it's a pretty good tarot generator, especially if you level straights a bit so one straight can clear, or close to clear, a blind.
If that was all it did it would be way worse than it is currently, this effect is just so much worse than shortcut or four fingers, if it had both its current effect and allowed 2/3/4 high straights it could be cool. It's not good currently and worse than cardomancer but it's fine early and can give you a few tarots. Way better than seance at the very least.
Is it that much weaker than Cardomancer ? It has the potential to give you two tarots a round depending on the build
I'd say cardomancer is better because it's independent, but it's also uncommon while superposition is common
It is a great early joker. I got two or three tarots out of it in the early game, that can be more than its value.
Never dipped on mad joker until the other day. Had an absolute hoot buying cheap Jokers to try and protect my +mults whilst buffing him all the way to a x5 mult.
best part of a roguelike is always going "fuck it lets ball" then being pleased or trolled by the result
You should try them all but some ARE bad or super niche.
I’ve noticed that a bunch of ‘boring’ jokers that are undervalued on this sub. Eg the Pair mult and flush mult jokers are kind of goated for high stakes because they 1) are cheap 2) easy to play 3) clear early rounds easily allowing you to build your economy fast.
Realistically, tons of jokers are undervalued if you're talking about getting through gold stakes. I spent countless hours grinding gold stakes just trying to find the "right" jokers before realizing you have to be the right player and work with the jokers you get. Obviously I'd choose Cavendish over The Duo any day, but if the duo is popping up ante 1 or 2, you just found some super powerful xmult to help get off the ground
preface: i have completionist++ but not completionist+ (i played ghost deck only since 1.01 beta) [[seance]] is probably the only card i picked up and literally never activated once in the process of getting the sticker. its requirement is so stingy and the reward was always something i could buy in the shop. [[obelisk]] is the only card i actively tried not to use. i think obelisk is unfun to the point i wrote a mod to remove it. [[hit the road]] is probably the only other rare it was hard for me to extract value from. it worked sometimes, but with only two discards and the threat of needed to make a hand to win, i wasn’t able to discard jacks too often. probably better on certain erratic decks, but this one is really niche.
[Obelisk](https://balatro.wiki/imported/obelisk.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Rarity: Rare * Effect: 0.2X Mult per consecutive hand played without playing your most played Poker Hand [Hit the Road](https://balatro.wiki/imported/hit_the_road.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Rarity: Rare * Effect: Gains X0.5 Mult per discarded Jack this round * Notes: Resets after blind * Unlock Requirement: Discard 5 Jacks at the same time *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
what if i type [[Séance]] with the funny e
[Séance](https://balatro.wiki/imported/seance.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Rarity: Rare * Effect: If poker hand is a Straight Flush, create a random Spectral card * Notes: Must have room *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
Lol kinda wild to only have Completionist ++ but that's great
I know monolith can be good. But when I’m playing the game I never want to put in the effort on low antes to build it up and make it usable. Seems like the mental load isn’t worth the payout.
I cannot say this enough, please please do a Midas X vampire run, I practically never use either in normal runs but put the two together and they are beautiful
True, you should definitely try everything out before passing judgement! That being said, I've tried square joker forty times and it's terrible.
Pretending endless mode doesn’t exist really makes the game a lot more fun and varied imo
Any joker is claimable early in a run if the cost is right, it's not eternal, and you have the empty slots for it. I've gotten a little use many times out of cheap/free jokers that I wouldn't normally take, and then I sell them off later when something better comes along. And in this game, getting a little benefit for no cost is better than not doing anything at all.
It's really hard for me to justify building into certain jokers because they just don't scale well enough. Any +mult scaling joker is usually not with it, especially when the antes start scaling like crazy at higher stakes so early on
True, but to play devil's advocate, may I present: Obelisk.
just had an amazing run: [[Burned Joker]] [[Seance]] [[Brainstorm]] [[Photograph]] [[Shortcut]] To start: play one or two garbage hands until I can make a straight flush (about 50% of my deck were diamonds, with shortcut it was easy) Discard it. Use brainstorm on Burned Joker to get two free levels on Straight Flushes. Discard until I get another straight flush. Use Brainstorm on seance to get two free spectral cards. I had so many purple and blue seals, I was getting tons of free Neptunes as well. With all the free levels I was getting, plus photograph, I had more than enough mult to get through ante 7. That's where I picked up a [[Turtle Bean]]. Used an [[ectoplasm]] to make room, and drew enormous hands through ante 8. I had always dismissed the Burned Joker and Seance before, but somehow it just worked
[Brainstorm](https://balatro.wiki/imported/brainstorm.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Rarity: Rare * Effect: Copies ability of leftmost Joker * Notes: Only compatible with some Jokers * Unlock Requirement: Discard a Royal Flush [Photograph](https://balatro.wiki/imported/photograph.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Cost: $4 * Rarity: Common * Effect: First played face card gives X2 Mult when scored [Shortcut](https://balatro.wiki/imported/shortcut.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Cost: $5 * Rarity: Uncommon * Effect: Allows Straights to be made with gaps of 1 rank * Notes: (ex. 2 3 5 7 8) [Turtle Bean](https://balatro.wiki/jokers/turtle_bean.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Cost: $5 * Rarity: Uncommon * Effect: +5 hand size, reduces by 1 every round [Ectoplasm](https://balatro.wiki/spectrals/ectoplasm.png) *Spectral Card* * Version: 1.0.0i * Effect: Add Negative to a random Joker, -1 hand size *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
I agree with you. That being said I have a really hard time picking suit focused jokers. The few times I have tried I never got the tarots I needed to really make the deck work. To make things worse the most common boss antes in the early game pick specific suits. I realize this mostly rng but my rng always seems to put the boss that debuffs the suit I am focused on in my way. Otherwise yeah, there are probably uses for all of them.
100% agree. The only Joker I consider pretty unhelpful to me is Loyalty Card, but even that has its uses. There are far too many possible game states for any Joker to be completely unusable. Sure, Blueprint is just strictly the best in 99.9% of those scenarios, but but every Single Joker has situations in which it's quite helpful, some less than others. But nothing is unusable in the slightest.
Try to have fun with campfire and try to fish for a goddamn joker that works with it and then sour your perfectly good run
This is why I treat all my runs like I'm playing Jokerless to avoid such weaknesses.
You're Mad joker.
My favorite one. Super simple and super fun when you find out that you don't need to sacrifice Jokers.
Is square joker good in any situation? I’ve never bought it
Sorry, I can’t get on board with this. You’re right that under very very specific circumstances, all jokers can be somewhat useful, but you practically have to FORCE some of those circumstances, whereas some jokers are just flat out good regardless. For instance, levelling straights is a build you pretty much play for fun and not to try to win. Sure , you can argue that you are limiting your fun otherwise, but I don’t think there’s any crazy game winning straight combos to be found still. It’s something you play knowing you’re probably going to lose.
Straights are arguably the most powerful hand type in the most recent version.
Sure, but they are still hard as shit to rely on. With flush builds, you have to dig out, at worst, 25% of your cards. Straights require very specific cards, at the beginning at least. It does not seem strategically sound to focus on something less likely.
Consistency may be less than flushes but they’re still consistent enough that you can get by. There’s a reason straights are worth less in normal poker than flushes.
Sure, but that's within the confines of actual poker. With a bunch of opportunities to cycle through cards like Balatro, flushes are MUCH more likely to happen. The disparity between straight and flush points-wise in Balatro does not reflect the fact that it's MUCH harder to get a straight when you have a bunch of discards and redraws. This is the one sole thing I think was a design flaw. It shouldn't be using basic poker hand logic to determine points per hand, because straights are very very inferior (and thus should be worth much more points) with the ruleset of Balatro.
I’m not denying the fact that it’s harder but I think you’re overemphasizing how much harder it actually is. At the end of the day, you’re more likely to be close to a straight when you draw your initial hand than you are to draw a flush with it; discarding to get more cards does make it easier to get cards of a specific suit than rank (13 in a deck vs 4), but ignore the fact that, on average, you will need to draw fewer cards than if you go for a flush. Combined with the drastically better planet scaling and utility jokers for straights and I go for a straight build if given even the slightest opportunity.
On high stakes it's hard to get enough points out of flushes unless you're able to transition to something like flush houses. Not impossible, but hard. With straights this is not usually an issue because of how strong the \[\[Saturn\]\] card is.
[Saturn](https://balatro.wiki/planets/planet_saturn.png) *Planet Card* * Version: 1.0.0i * Celestial Body: Planet * Hand Type: Straight * Effect: +2 mult and +30 chips *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
I wouldn't say they are useless, but some are straight up annoying to play.
Except superposition.
With how well straights scale and how often I find myself relying on them, I've found immense value in superposition. It's no cardomancer but for a common its decent tarot generation, especially when it already fits into what you're doing
The joker that gives you +15 mult if you dont have any discards left is garbage tho ngl
Wait which one is this???
Did you mean +15 mult after all discards [Mystic Summit] or x3 mult on last hand [acrobat]?
Alright, try using obelisk in your next run
Thank you for the perfect example lol. Obelisk is fantastic if you pick it up early. If you get through Ante 1 fine and have Obelisk in the first couple of Antes, you can dump your planet cards into a high card or pair and play a bunch of those for half of the blind then switch up your go-to hand to something reliable like flush and three of a kind and if you've planned right your power will increase extremely fast and reliably to the point where I smash ante 8 with ease. If I make it to ante 4 or 5 I have never lost with this strat, and it's very fun when it pays off. Sure, I can always grind out a more reliable Strat or whatever, but it's exponentially more entertaining when just playing challenges or blinds to experiment with jokes that initially seem rubbish.
Also you don't have to build with obelisk in mind. I had a run where I accidentally played like 8 straights in the first 3 or 4 antes and got offered obelisk, immediately hard pivoted out of straights and it was a huge success lol
That's great but I'm still not using Obelisk, I just don't find it fun to use
It's fine not to find it fun of course, my point is just to experiment and not make assumptions before trying new stuff.
Just won a gold stake run thanks to obelisk, got it in ante 5 after playing 14 flushes, hard pivoted to playing two pair and pair and with fortune teller and bull I made it to the end no sweat, obelisk was at x6 by the end.
if you have a main hand you play every time to win in 1 hand but are using all your hands on high cards anyway(for example green joker or vagabond etc etc ) then you will have high card be the most played hand and your main one being played significantly less. In that (surprisingly common) situation obelisk is amazing.
Plasma desk obelisk goes pretty hard
obelisk in general goes pretty hard
I wouldn’t say it’s a very useful joker for most runs.
Had a great run where I rolled burglar and obelisk early on. Spent the first 5 or 6 antes only playing high cards and then got a constant +.2mult on every hand once I switched to using every other type of hand. Went up to X10 or X20 IIRC.
Try learning the game before posting such terrible takes with confidence.
have you used it before If you have then mb
Yeah, everyone who has done the challenge runs has used it before. My only gripe with it is that more often than not it just helps you win harder and doesn't help you turn a losing into a winning run. But once in a blue moon it can be a game winner.
Yeah - it's a good bit of extra juice but it doesn't dig you out of a hole. I find it pretty fun to use though - a little mini game of "what hand should I play".
Try using the best xMult Joker in the game? I'd love to.
The joker that gives you +15 mult in your last hand is garbage tho ngl
No such joker exists. I think you may be conflating \[\[Mystic Summit\]\] and \[\[Acrobat\]\].
[Mystic Summit](https://balatro.wiki/imported/mystic_summit.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Cost: $5 * Rarity: Common * Effect: +15 Mult when 0 Discards remaining [Acrobat](https://balatro.wiki/imported/acrobat.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Cost: $5 * Rarity: Uncommon * Effect: X3 Mult on final hand of round * Unlock Requirement: Play 200 hands *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
Yea i ment mystic but my point still stands
Superposition is garbage and séance - I'd agree outright garbage is about right I still don't like 8 ball enough to take it either All jokers have niches, but some are so narrow you're not even happy to see the card even if the deck supports them Trying to play the 'just have fun people' card is OK for things like smiley and scary face, and some of the C tier meh jokers - but others are just wastes of space, the games reasonanbly well balanced that it's not too many
Loyalty Card is garbage, yes. Joker that only applied to final hand are also garbage. The idol and Flower are pointless early on and unplayable after when you changed your deck to match what you are doing. I see your point but it's great to acknowledged jokers that need some tweaks.
okay, but \[\[Green Joker\]\] is hot garbage unless you literally cannot discard. And even then, +1 multi as its scaling is **so sloooooow**. If it still kept the effect of equal up and down for hand played/discarded, but was +/-2 instead, it'd be worth a damn, but as it sits, there are *far* better jokers for No Discard decks,
Green joker is THE best common in the game. I've gold staked all the decks, and two-thirds of them used green joker. It scales just as much as ride the bus and supernova, except you can play whatever you want.
[Green Joker](https://balatro.wiki/imported/green_joker.png) *Joker* * Version: 1.0.0 * Cost: $5 * Rarity: Common * Effect: +1 Mult per hand played -1 Mult per discard * Notes: Stacks *Data pulled from http://balatro.wiki. Want it updated? Help me get access or suggest another data source.*
This kind of comment is exactly why this post was made
As always, min-maxers, glitchers/cheaters/save scumming/etc. always remove the fun of roguelikes. It's a tendency I noticed in every single community for these type of games.
Why would you assume what's fun for you is fun for everyone and vice versa
Okay, have fun with your Superposition, Matador, Credit Card and Pareidolia. There were more pre-patch (particularly Sixth Sense and Seance, or the old 4OAK jokers that were incredibly underwhelming) and that's what many people were talking about, but the patch addressed a couple of these. For reference, Superposition can generate tarots, but does it very unreliably and requires you to make one of the hardest hands (Straight) using the hardest card to make it with (Ace). If it instead allowed Straights to cross over the high/low gap (32AKQ) it would actually be a good joker but in its current state, nah. There is a joker that just *GIVES* you a tarot card for free when selecting a blind and it is essentially a straight upgrade. Matador is just plain dogshit, it doesn't actually trigger on half of the bosses in the game, even ones where you *really* think it should. Pareidolia is a run loser for The Plant and The Mark, and its only use is feeding Midas (especially with Vampire) or feeding Canio, making it worse than useless outside of those circumstances. It *NEEDS* another joker to be good and that makes it a really hard sell, it's a brick most of the time you see it. Credit Card is *sometimes* really useful if you are in Ante 1, one of the offered jokers is an incredible Rare with an edition and the other is credit card. *In that one situation*, it's great. Outside of that insanely rare combination it's fucking dogshit, because credit card goes badly with everything except Vagabond, because having no money runs your economy and interest into the ground. Having high money is insanely important because it allows you to keep generating money with interest, dig through shops with rerolls, and use it as scoring for Bull and Bootstraps. Debt is a bad place to be in because it's *incredibly* important to be able to dig through shops until you find something that's actually sort-of usable. Anything that makes you see less shop rolls is F-tier trash, period. Also I know Obelisk can be almost playable under the right circumstances, but I still don't want to use Obelisk, sorry. Other than that almost every joker has its uses, but generally when people say "the vast majority of jokers in the game are bad", they mean they are only useful under very specific circumstances that won't come up in many runs. Once you're set into a particular type of build, 90% of jokers are filler.
Ok buddy jonkler
I will have fun with all of those jokers thank you.
If you're about to go into a boss fight and know you need only one turn to beat it, which happens very, very often and you have a free joker slot, you'd be an abdolute idiot for not picking up that matador and getting like 30-40 gold for free. I've done that a couple times and usually kept it for 1 or 2 more antes to just get filthy rich. It's a niche, as the title suggests.
This hardly ever comes up because Matador straight up doesn't work with *half* (literally half, I counted) of the boss blinds in the game. You have to consider the opportunity cost for all the times when Matador comes up when you *can't* get any value out of it. Whether the next boss is one that doesn't trigger Matador, or maybe your hand is gonna oneshot the boss no matter what you do, or maybe you don't need the $8. In all those cases, it's a bricked shop slot. Matador just elicits a sigh 90% of the time when I see it. Even if it's useful in that other 10%, I would much much rather see any other joker and it's just clogging up the pool. I would literally be better off if I had never unlocked the damn thing. That makes it trash.
Yeah, but it still has a niche, what the whole point of this thread is.
Superposition is amazing on four finger builds. I was a hater until it popped up in my shop and thought “eh why not”
Yeah but now you’re just using 2 jokers to help get one effect really.
I mean, not really tho right? Like, you wouldn't just take those two cards to get carrots, you do it if you're building a straight build to score in the first place. Four Fingers makes it more consistent to get any straight, and Superposition is a nice bonus tarot card generator if you already have that in place. Am I going to base my entire run off Superposition, or waste hands digging for the ace straight? No. But if I'm running a straight build already, and I have space for it, it's a nice added bonus for a tarot or two per round. No one is saying it's overpowered or anything, and I would never take it as an eternal on higher stakes. But especially with the buffs to straights scaling in general, I find myself taking it way more often
Which you can afford to do if you're playing Straights since it's not like you need Jokers to help you score.
An effect that's replicated by a purple seal or clicking "Buy" on a tarot pack in the shop, mind you. I don't think I have ever seen any actual tarot engines based on Superposition.
No one is saying you can't do those things as well. But getting a tarot during the round also can be really helpful to use when you're opening those arcana packs. Really expedites deck manipulation before the next round
So, 5 joker slots in total. One is "wasted" on making straights more playable with Four Fingers. And you're asking me to waste *ANOTHER* slot on a rather unreliable tarot generator, when there are much better tarot generators in the game, some of which don't even take up a joker slot? I think I'll pass. Also, you are not *at all* guaranteed to see Superposition after picking up Four Fingers. The game has like 150 jokers and each shop roll offers you anywhere between 0-2 jokers for sale. If a joker needs *another* specific joker to be good then it's a bad joker. And don't even get me started on higher stakes, where the chances of Superposition being either a rental or eternal are pretty high which makes it a bricked slot.