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https://imgur.com/gqyxNJO I finally beat the black deck after several attempts with (basically) nothing but high cards. I got the burned joker after the very first ante and decided to go for it. It went pretty smoothly after that. I thought I would need Splash to stand a chance but it didn't end up mattering. I also kind of forgot I could have 6 jokers so whoops!! Now I can finally see what the checkered deck is all about.
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Apr 2, 2024 00:41
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Deceptive Thinker posted:Really appreciate these tips - was able to clear jokerless within 5 or 6 attempts after trying to follow these guidelines Congrats! But also, gently caress you, 6 attempts!?
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Apr 2, 2024 01:04
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I'm free! (Okay, the checkered deck is maybe cheating, but with everything Gold Stakes throws at you, I'm taking it.) I got Madness early on and tried to pick up Eternal jokers, giving me a somewhat silly build: 
With Flush at level 6, I could get ~200k point hands consistently, even without the Blackboard bonus. I also got lucky with the boss - after one hand I had the shuffling figured out, put the jokers back in the original order, and handily beat it. Unfortunately I didn't make it past ante 10, though  I think this might be the only deck I bother going past Black Stakes on, the Orange Stakes booster prices alone makes some strategies (and jokers) just not viable at all
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Apr 2, 2024 01:10
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hot tip on the boss that shuffles jokers - you can click to start the round and quickly grab one of your jokers and hold it in place until I saw someone do it, I never would have thought to try
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Apr 2, 2024 01:22
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Aggro posted:Congrats! But also, gently caress you, 6 attempts!? After following the advice I had probably done at least 30 tries beforehand edit: early telescope was clutch to keep the flush level up, along with a few lucky lucky cards and a spectral pack with an immolate in ante 3 really got my economy going and then a holographic glass king to copy Even though I did try to level up 4 of a kind as well; flush was just wildly outpacing it so there were quite a few hands where I was playing a suboptimal flush so it wouldn't turn into a 4, 5, or flush house Deceptive Thinker fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 01:22
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overeager overeater posted:With Flush at level 6, I could get ~200k point hands consistently, even without the Blackboard bonus. I also got lucky with the boss - after one hand I had the shuffling figured out, put the jokers back in the original order, and handily beat it. Unfortunately I didn't make it past ante 10, though Ironically I cleared black white chip on my first try right after unlocking it but I think particularly once the ante ramps it's gonna be really tough to get off the ground. Eratic seemed like the easiest climb of all the ones I've done, it basically has all the strengths of abandoned but doesn't struggle so hard at high stakes because the starting hands you can make on ante 1/2 are relatively weak and that costs you a lot of money.
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Apr 2, 2024 01:29
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i got an e19, made it to ante 17, and unlocked 3 jokers at the same time, i feel like loving god
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Apr 2, 2024 01:32
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Operant posted:i got an e19, made it to ante 17, and unlocked 3 jokers at the same time, i feel like loving god 17 is the highest I've made, seems like there's an extra jump in the blinds there that asks "ok, so you've broken the game, but have you really broken the game"
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Apr 2, 2024 03:15
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My wife and I are hosting a board game casino night (where everyone bets nickels on games like Jenga, it's dumb fun) and I wonder how betting on Balatro would work... Maybe we pass the controller around, you put down money on your turn, and whoever fails first, the previous player gets the jackpot. What would you guys do?
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Apr 2, 2024 03:57
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smoobles posted:My wife and I are hosting a board game casino night (where everyone bets nickels on games like Jenga, it's dumb fun) and I wonder how betting on Balatro would work... Maybe we pass the controller around, you put down money on your turn, and whoever fails first, the previous player gets the jackpot. It's not a bad idea. I think I'd add a rule saying a turn begins with the shop and ends when the round is clear to prevent people from screwing the next player after their hand is won.
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Apr 2, 2024 04:07
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everyone gets a steam deck, one seed, last man standing. expensive option, but really the way to go
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Apr 2, 2024 04:10
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What does a high card deck look like? It feels like the only things I can really go for are flushes and four-of-a-kinds. I had a decent straight deck that got past rank 8, but it feels a lot harder to get a straight than a flush, and it feels really restrictive in that I don't want to turn every card into an ace or get extra cards that throw off the proportion of ranks. How does high card work, when even the scaling on it seems to be pretty crap.
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Apr 2, 2024 04:26
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Phenotype posted:What does a high card deck look like? It feels like the only things I can really go for are flushes and four-of-a-kinds. I had a decent straight deck that got past rank 8, but it feels a lot harder to get a straight than a flush, and it feels really restrictive in that I don't want to turn every card into an ace or get extra cards that throw off the proportion of ranks. How does high card work, when even the scaling on it seems to be pretty crap. Most of the time "high card" just means "I have so many bonuses from jokers that it barely makes a difference what hand I play" or maybe "my deck is a million duped steel cards and maybe some jokers that trigger on cards held in hand, so playing fewer cards means racking up more bonuses from unplayed cards." If you get something like blueprint + burnt joker and can rack up multiple high card levelups per round then the base values on high card can actually get pretty appreciable. Technically you can do this with any hand, but high card is appealing because you are guaranteed to always be able to trigger burnt joker on it. But because levelups are normally fairly rare and the scaling on high card is so low, a "high card" deck usually doesn't actually rely on the hand value of high card.
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Apr 2, 2024 04:34
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Arzaac posted:I mean, typically starter options are well rounded and/or give newbies some leeway to make mistakes. As such, red deck is a great idea for a starter deck, because +1 discard is a great way to allow someone new to Balatro make suboptimal moves while fishing for a hand they need. Starting off with Green or Abandoned is kind of insane, because as good as they are they gently caress with the status quo of the game in dramatic ways. I find green easier to start with because the early game economy means you can buy things before you lose. Red means you have to survive long enough for interest to start kicking in.
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Apr 2, 2024 09:12
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Finally passed orange stake with checkered deck, took a foiled pants and vagabond to get through the early antes and then from the tarots got a free baseball card and blackboard to breeze through. I got to ante 7 for gold stake next running vagabond and bonfire but the small blinds got too big to build up bonfire enough to win there. orange stake was such a wall, don't know how long it'll take me to finally beat gold.
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Apr 2, 2024 11:14
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fuckin finnnaally got stuntman Played a uh 3 of spades to get over a billion. Used a combination of burnt joker to get high card up to level 22, then DNA, which I then replaced with steel joker. I did not know Sock and Buskin does not work on King's left in hand and not played. Ooops. At the moment it's not doing anything until I can copy more kings :edit: Seed is QPVDEB6W - I think this one could go all the way to one of those silly 20+ antes, but I died on the boss of Ante 12 to the Mark lol. Couldn't order my King's properly and didn't know what were Jacks or Queens Aipsh fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 12:32
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Phenotype posted:What does a high card deck look like? It feels like the only things I can really go for are flushes and four-of-a-kinds. I had a decent straight deck that got past rank 8, but it feels a lot harder to get a straight than a flush, and it feels really restrictive in that I don't want to turn every card into an ace or get extra cards that throw off the proportion of ranks. How does high card work, when even the scaling on it seems to be pretty crap. It's just the wisdom of score with your jokers, not with your hand. My first gold stakes win was with pairs but the jokers here basically explain what you'd be doing with high card. Bull and Square are scaling in chips every round and don't care what I play. Bus and Nebula scale mult with number of hands played. In this case I was using The Duo so I was playing pair + junk every round but this would have worked just as well with say card sharp and just tossing down high card + garbage. You can see in this screenshot pair was level 1 and it was still scoring 80k chips with when the cards themselves couldn't even score. I will note however that this can be a pretty boring way to play. It's pretty consistent on the highest stakes and the advice you'll generally get for "how do I beat this deck on that stake" but the strategy is really just picking up early scaling jokers and throwing lazy hands down for 20 rounds.
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Apr 2, 2024 13:45
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Currently banging my head against Orange Stake. I have Yellow (extra money), Checkered (Hearts/Spades only), and Blue (extra hand) leveled up to Orange and Plasma (chip/mult balances) is on its way. I think I have maybe... 100 failed attempts at Orange? My closest was a nailbiter on Ante 8 where I got hosed by a boss blind. What is your strategy for Orange/Gold stake runs? Obviously it's "Get your build running fast!" but I'm curious what your personal routine is. Like for me, I'm riding Checkered pretty hard and I reload until I get a $0 Shop Tag or Double Arcana Deck tags since that gets me jokers and cash fast and I can always reliably beat the Boss Blind on Ante 1 in two hands if not one. After that though, I run a pretty sloppy shop. +10 Mult for a Flush? I have a flush deck, how can I lose! A chance for 2x for scoring with an ever-changing suit? Sure, it'll be Hearts and Spades eventually! I am not fishing for a particular build because I have such inconsistent luck even with a strong build. I mainly try to grow Flush hand values and I focus my Tarots on doubling money, getting jokers, and Death or Strength to manipulate card values. But I know I ignore a lot of possibilities. I keep seeing you folks with decks full of Steel 8s or all Kings, no clue how you're managing that but it looks wild.
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Apr 2, 2024 14:22
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That Dang Dad posted:Currently banging my head against Orange Stake. I have Yellow (extra money), Checkered (Hearts/Spades only), and Blue (extra hand) leveled up to Orange and Plasma (chip/mult balances) is on its way. Other meme options is picking up an early madness and then slamming any eternals you get. I got a gold stake on erratic this weekend with shop 1 madness and it was a free ride. The having 20 steal cards and mime with blueprint and brainstorm builds usually don't really come together on gold cause your economy is often in shambles due to a mixture of scaling pack prices, inability to consistently play big hands due to -hand size to reap leftover bonuses etc. It's not impossible but it is substantially harder to be consistently cracking tarot packs to shape your deck into something like that. If your goal is to go for e point hands in endless mode it's better to play on lower stakes so you have more time and resources to shape your deck. PoundSand fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 14:39
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I was able to clear orange stake on the first try with checkered. It really comes down to being lucky. I got good economy going almost immediately and got "The Tribe" (2x mult on flushes) early along with "Wrathful Joker" (+4 mult on spades) and "Fibonnaci" (+4 mult on fib sequence cards). Not long after that I got a hold of "Bloodstone" (1 in 3 chance of 2x mult for each scored heart) and "Oops! All 6s" so now I had 2 in 3 chance for 2x mult on hearts. So I focused on converting cards to hearts where I could, and in like ante 4 or 5 I got a hold of "Canio" (+1X mult for each face card destroyed). Got Yorik up to around 12-13X before ante 8 and breezed through to ante 11, where I got beat by the boss blind, but barely. Entire time I just played flushes, which is one of the easiest hands with checkered, obviously. I also had a couple of steel cards that helped out a little bit. So on a 'perfect' hand I would've had something like 2^5 * 2 * 1.5^2 * 13 = 1872 times whatever my base multiplier plus fib sequence mults was. I also leveled up flushes whenever I could, but I don't think it ended up being that high of a level. Stacking the hell out of X mults really makes it easy.
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Apr 2, 2024 14:46
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For purple and up I hold R until I get foil or holo tag just to guarantee something generically usable in a shop. I'll consider the $15 after boss blind tag but only if I'm getting sick of tag shopping. I don't buy the advice to always play out the first small blind because unless you're playing a deck that can guarantee one-shotting it you don't get enough cash for it to be worth it. Way too often that first shop is either full of duds or has one usable but too expensive joker. No thank you.
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Apr 2, 2024 14:49
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That Dang Dad posted:+10 Mult for a Flush? Those jokers are generally bad. Other jokers offer more mult/chips with less finicky conditions. They're OK as an early crutch to make it through the first few antes while you search for something good but it's not what you want in the latter half of the run. As far as general orange stake advice, I find it's important to not give up on economy. Running an early (non-eternal!) econ joker so you can afford more packs in the midgame seems more successful for me than trying to lock in 5 scoring jokers ASAP that I can ride to the win without ever having to touch the expensive packs. Trying to time the pivot is tough; you do generally want to err on the side of ditching econ jokers early rather than late, but if you can squeeze in Golden Joker or w/e for a few antes the cash infusion will make a big difference.
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Apr 2, 2024 14:51
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Relyssa posted:For purple and up I hold R until I get foil or holo tag just to guarantee something generically usable in a shop. I'll consider the $15 after boss blind tag but only if I'm getting sick of tag shopping. I don't buy the advice to always play out the first small blind because unless you're playing a deck that can guarantee one-shotting it you don't get enough cash for it to be worth it. Way too often that first shop is either full of duds or has one usable but too expensive joker. No thank you. P much all the jokers that can clinch a run early are common or uncommon so you should be able to afford them even if you have to play 2 hands on the small blind. Getting good jokers early is invaluable at higher tiers so the "free" reroll of just seeing a shop is huge to give up. It's also entirely possible to eat dirt on the boss or even the big blind with -1 hand size and -1 discard, I think people who are already restarting a lot underestimate how often a single/double skip just results in them not clearing ante 1 because they're hitting restart anyways. This guy is incredibly good at the game and he can summarize it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4YAHDuRUcQ, don't need to watch the whole vid he starts it with a short discussion of using skips in general.
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Apr 2, 2024 15:25
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Any good tips for doing each of the challenges? I have a white chip on each deck I've unlocked, at it seems like I should be working on the challenges now.
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Apr 2, 2024 16:56
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Guess I'm seeing if I can make a high card build work here. First time working with a 4 card hand   What a weird run. Never got an econ going, got a drivers license I never got the enhanced cards to turn on, ended up with 2 empty joker slots at the end cause I couldn't afford/couldn't find anything to add, but it scaled right up to ante 8 black chip.  Roseo fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 17:28
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Roseo posted:Guess I'm seeing if I can make a high card build work here. First time working with a 4 card hand You're going to want to fish for a hand size boost before you run into the boss blind that requires you to play 5 cards (unless you already faced it on an earlier ante, in which case full speed ahead!)
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Apr 2, 2024 17:33
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the holy poopacy posted:You're going to want to fish for a hand size boost before you run into the boss blind that requires you to play 5 cards (unless you already faced it on an earlier ante, in which case full speed ahead!) Oof, I didn't even consider that one. I lucked out, then.
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Apr 2, 2024 17:56
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Yeah, I think Jokerless is my breaking point. It's not that it's impossible, it's that getting a good run going is so much loving harder than a normal run.
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Apr 2, 2024 18:20
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Onmi posted:Yeah, I think Jokerless is my breaking point. It's not that it's impossible, it's that getting a good run going is so much loving harder than a normal run. Maybe if you are actually good at the game, it's different, but I'm really just hoping to luck into something like double Hermit early or a gift-wrapped in-suit glass + Red Sea or a Mega Spectral Pack with both Sigil and Ouija (all of which I, predictably, then proceeded to gently caress up somehow). It's more punishing than Golden Needle and Blast Off which is really saying something. Honestly though it's more hilarious that it's possible at all.
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Apr 2, 2024 19:00
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Pokeytax posted:Maybe if you are actually good at the game, it's different, but I'm really just hoping to luck into something like double Hermit early or a gift-wrapped in-suit glass + Red Sea or a Mega Spectral Pack with both Sigil and Ouija (all of which I, predictably, then proceeded to gently caress up somehow). It's more punishing than Golden Needle and Blast Off which is really saying something. Honestly though it's more hilarious that it's possible at all. I've gotten to Ante 6 and then inevitably the same thing kills me every time. Either unfortunate glass breaks, OR, I simply do not draw the cards that make up the majority of my deck that provides a winning hand. The fact that you can get utter dud packs is also tremendously painful. Why are Hex and Ankh allowed in this challenge? Why is Temperance and Wheel of Fortune? You have to be aggressive, but you need economy, when the game will just... give you utter dud shops with nothing to take, draining resources which means the next blind and the next shop are tighter.
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Apr 2, 2024 19:13
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I've been going through the decks on Red Stake difficulty one at a time to get the feel for them but I'm currently having trouble with the Plasma Deck. How are people building for a Plasma Deck run?
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Apr 2, 2024 20:04
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TheNabster posted:I've been going through the decks on Red Stake difficulty one at a time to get the feel for them but I'm currently having trouble with the Plasma Deck. With how it equalizes your chips and mult, you typically want +chip jokers early instead of +mult jokers. From there get some xMult jokers and you should be fine.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:07
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TheNabster posted:I've been going through the decks on Red Stake difficulty one at a time to get the feel for them but I'm currently having trouble with the Plasma Deck. You grab +Chips early, but that doesn't carry the late game as well as xMult, so at some point you have to make that transition. You're best off focusing hard in one direction at a time as opposed to mixing them.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:07
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Alternatively just go all in on chips. If you get 1-2 that scale and can feed them or get Stuntman + a couple of foil jokers, you can clear ante 8 even on gold stake.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:10
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Struggling on red stake but don't know why because I'm not struggling for money, just keep losing for seemingly no reason even when I have good jokers and am getting good scores. Extra large blind killed me.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:11
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Of course the Soulslike magic is real and complaining online allowed me to beat Orange Stake three tries later with Checkered. In this case, I got lucky with a early +50 Chips on Spades and +4 mult on Spades which let me coast the first half. I got the joker that randomly upgrades your poker hands so I had Flush up to 9 by the end. Finish it off with 2x on first face card and xMult on planet cards and +1 hand voucher and I was able to limp to a Ante 8 win. Shout out to getting the boss that only shuffles your jokers. If I had had to sell even one, the build would've crumbled. I can't decide if I hate how luck based the highest difficulties are. At some point, there's only so much "difficulty" you can put into a solo poker-type game and some high stakes feel basically as random as Vegas. Still, I wish you had a litttttle more control over your starts, maybe a free joker or booster or something just to speed it along. But then again, that's what makes it fun to shoot for, getting that God Run
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Apr 2, 2024 20:41
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The Lord of Hats posted:You grab +Chips early, but that doesn't carry the late game as well as xMult, so at some point you have to make that transition. You're best off focusing hard in one direction at a time as opposed to mixing them. Kuros posted:With how it equalizes your chips and mult, you typically want +chip jokers early instead of +mult jokers. From there get some xMult jokers and you should be fine.  Cheers for the advice I finally cracked it.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:52
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Finally beat orange stake, of course it took checkered deck + smeared joker + ancient joker so it kinda autopiloted itself to ante 8, but I'm taking the win.
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Apr 2, 2024 21:02
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TaurusTorus posted:Finally beat orange stake, of course it took checkered deck + smeared joker + ancient joker so it kinda autopiloted itself to ante 8, but I'm taking the win. Unfortunately, I bought a glitched version of the game that NEVER GIVES ME SMEARED ON A CHECKERED DECK WHEN I WANT IT raaaaaaahhh!!
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Apr 2, 2024 23:07
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sirtommygunn posted:Alternatively just go all in on chips. If you get 1-2 that scale and can feed them or get Stuntman + a couple of foil jokers, you can clear ante 8 even on gold stake. I had a real hilarious one today with 2x Stuntman, Blueprint, Wee Joker, and Hack. By the end I had enough chip bonuses to oneshot the endboss blind.
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Apr 2, 2024 23:39
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