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Oh boy it was probably a mistake to start climbing stakes with ghost deck.  I'm at whichever one adds eternal jokers and man, whether this deck gives any benefits at all is entirely based on luck. Spectral cards are really good, especially an early hex! Who knows if you'll get to utilize those benefits in any meaningful capacity! That being said, when it pops off it sure pops off hard.
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Mar 2, 2024 03:16
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 11:01 |
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Yeah my strategy for Ante 1 tends to just be go for Full House or Flush, they're relatively easy to get and clear the blinds quickly. Straights tend to be okay too, but I really only go for them if I'm most of the way there already.
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Mar 4, 2024 21:27
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Just beat gold stake on Ghost Deck. Man, I love/hate this deck, its just so incredibly swingy. So many games where I don't get a good early joker to throw hex on, I don't get any cool spectral cards in the shop, I'm basically just playing a vanilla deck and I fumble and die. Or, in this case, I get hex on Fibonacci, I duplicate Fibonacci, I get Pareidolia + Sock and Buskin (plus a The Duo for good measure) and I just clown on the whole game with all my fibonacci cards triggering twice and the 4.5 multiplier I got basically for free. I think my next gold stake is gonna be something simple. Yellow deck seems good, I've got a feeling it'll be easier.
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Mar 6, 2024 08:44
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boy i sure do love pulling canio from the soul card and then proceeding to literally never ever see a hanged man, ever
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Mar 6, 2024 21:18
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Genuinely it's why Slay the Spire's Neow bonus is such a good mechanic. It's random each time, gives you a nice little bonus for the run, and disincentivizes restarts because you get a weaker bonus if you don't at least reach the act 1 boss. Here though, yeah, sometimes I just hit the R button even if I'm not losing, just because my ante 1/2 was a little weak and I could try for something better.
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Mar 6, 2024 21:40
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Any thoughts on reliably getting to ante 12? Mostly just looking to do endless mode achievements. I figure you probably wanna try to abuse Steel Cards w/ Red Seal as much as possible, so I was kinda thinking starting Anaglyph and stacking double tags until I find a spectral, then try to slim my deck as much as possible/create a completely ridiculous number of copies of a good card. Maybe getting a lot of negatives would help too?
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Mar 8, 2024 01:03
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Honestly as much as that sucks, Mask on Ante 1 is still an amazing econ pick. You're gonna be just flooded with cash.
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Mar 8, 2024 20:04
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thalweg posted:does brainstorm work if it copies a blueprint? I've had blueprint copy a brainstorm so I assume it works the other way around as well.
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Mar 9, 2024 18:35
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Humans are really bad at judging what a 25% chance actually is, as it turns out
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Mar 12, 2024 01:30
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You need like, a small amount of +multi but turns out you can get that from planet cards just fine Or mult cards, or holographics, really
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Mar 13, 2024 20:46
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God I finally unlocked all the jokers + vouchers. The hardest for me were 100 million and ante 12, which I finally got on an abandoned deck run. Turns out the reduced deck size makes it way easier to consistently hit your Steel + Red Seal cards with Death/DNA/Spectral. Now I've gotta actually, you know, buy every joker, but I don't have to do anything for that and can take my time.
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Mar 14, 2024 08:40
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Finally did a run where I got Obelisk (x0.2 mult per consecutive hand played without playing your most played poker hand) to be worth something. It's just such an awkward card to use, but I think its at its best as a pivot joker when you're already running a flexible build. This run I was leaning pretty heavily on full houses, but the second obelisk came up I was able to easily pivot to 4 of a kind and take extreme advantage of that xMult. Only had 10 Full Houses played, but between Two Pair/X of a Kinds I was able to play a whole bunch of hands without any of them becoming my most played hand. Oh, and then I was able to Brainstorm it to top it all off. x4.4 mult squared is pretty good, actually!
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Mar 14, 2024 18:49
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Yeah it resets whenever you play your most played hand. Before you score it, to rub salt in the wound. To really use it you either need to get it early enough that you can spam like high card for 12 hands, or be at a good point to pivot away from your most plated hand. (Also gotta be careful if high card is your most played hand because a whiffed draw could easily wipe that mult.)
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Mar 14, 2024 19:25
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Elman posted:He really underestimates Burnt Joker. He says it's a waste of half your discards, but you can just discard 5 random cards with no pairs and it'll count as a high card discard, so it barely affects your gameplay. Burnt joker is often a free win if you get it early cause you can just discard high card every round for one level (more if you have a way to duplicate it!) and end up with a lvl25+ high card by the time you reach the final boss. With steel cards and other bonuses stacked on top that's just incredibly strong. And if you do run into something that's way better later on you can dump it and still keep all your levels. It's one of the reasons high card is so strong in gold stake. Honestly I thought the same about Astronomer. His reasoning is that "value jokers aren't that great at high stakes" and "planet cards don't scale that well" but like, that's a ridiculous amount of free planet cards you're getting. Planet cards tend to be a great source of chips and since they're your first source of +mult they tend to work great with early xmult joker like, say, Baron. Also like, its an economy card, you can use it for a bit then sell it. IDK maybe it's not an S Tier card but like, I'd at least put it in B. I'm slam picking it whenever I have less than 5 jokers and even if I'm capped out I'm probably considering it.
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Mar 14, 2024 19:54
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PostNouveau posted:I have only attempted gold stake a handful of times, but it seems like you need to swing for the loving fences to beat it, and I dunno if planet cards can get you there. Seems like you're best of holding R until you get the start of a great build rather than limping to an inevitable loss in Ante 5-6. I mean, blindly buying planet cards to try and win, sure. But an 8 dollar card that gives you free planets and planet packs is kinda crazy value. Hell, there are gonna be some shops where you can buy it, get your planets for free, and then sell it for effectively a profit. IDK, it just seems like such a low commitment "here's a bunch of planets for basically nothing", and even if leaning hard into planets isn't a winning strategy it can enhance basically any run.
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Mar 14, 2024 20:17
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I swear every single time I get a coupon tag in ante 1 both of the jokers in the shop are lovely eternal commons 
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Mar 14, 2024 21:57
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Funnily enough I got the 100mil achievement with Abandoned Deck. Because you start with 40 cards its way easier to target a specific card, and once I got a card with Steel + Red Seal going it was pretty easy to just repeatedly hit it with Death/DNA/Cryptid. Pretty much no matter what you do though, its gonna be a little luck based. Getting to Ante 12 is hard!
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Mar 16, 2024 07:07
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I think my favorite suit for flushes might be Spades, actually. Arrowhead is a very strong source of chips which are otherwise kinda rare, and black suit decks can more effectively make use of Blackboard, which can practically be just a free 3x mult. Bloodstone, while really cool (especially with Oops! All 6s) has absolutely whiffed big time and cost me a run, so I'm a little shy about relying on it.
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Mar 19, 2024 19:24
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TBH I don't like Plasma for basically that reason; it skews the game in such a way that makes a lot of stuff way more one dimensional. Look for chip jokers early, try to stack xmult late, lose if you can't. To clarify I do think its absolutely a great deck, possibly one of the best, but I just find playing it so much more boring.
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Mar 19, 2024 22:48
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Teriyaki Koinku posted:How are you supposed to make use of the Obelisk Joker? By the time you’ve built up your main hand to account for other hands made under that limit, your ante count is likely too high or too invested in planet cards to justify switching to a different hand. Your options are legitimately "build up a weak hand at low antes and then just never play that hand again" or "have a build where you can easily pivot off your current hand". I've done a couple obelisk runs with the second, if you're building for like, two pair or 3 of a kind its usually pretty easy to transition to pair, full house, 4 of a kind, etc.
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Mar 22, 2024 04:12
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Would definitely love some kind of method to get more scoring jokers in early Antes, whatever form that takes. Too many gold stakes runs are just completely dead in the water with no input from you. Small bonus at the start of a run? Choice of a handful of skip tags for ante 1? Just a tweaked probability of finding scoring jokers (or buffoon packs) in your first shop or two? I'd take anything.
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Mar 25, 2024 18:12
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Yeah it sucks. TBH I wish those "add cards to shop" vouchers would just have a chance to add them to a third, voucher only shop slot. Most runs I really don't wanna reduce my chances of getting a joker, you know?
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Mar 28, 2024 15:29
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I don't think green deck is bad at all tbh. It's great at getting you ahead of the curve early, and considering that's one of the biggest stumbling blocks for gold stake runs, that's a great bonus. Sure, if your shops are poor you'll start making less and less money, but frankly if your shops are poor on any deck you're liable to crash and burn. I don't think it's among the best decks but it's a solid above average.
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Mar 28, 2024 20:53
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TBH even before then I've never hated the Arm, I don't think its ever made an impact on my run A little annoying maybe, but I've never lost a run from my best hand going from 5 to 4
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Mar 30, 2024 17:22
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The evening out chips/mult is literally always an upside, but keep in mind that at some point stacking xmult is gonna be more beneficial than stacking +chips and you'll have to figure out how to make that switch. But overall its a pretty busted deck, go nuts.
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Mar 31, 2024 02:32
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Are you reading it correctly? It's a permanently scaling +chips joker that starts at a flat +10 chips and upgrades by 8 for every scored 2. It's legitimately not difficult to get it over +100 chips per hand, its pretty good.
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Mar 31, 2024 07:32
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pisshead posted:I wonder why red deck is the starting deck when green and abandoned are easier to win with. 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. It is pretty funny how Red is almost strictly worse than Blue deck though. It's still a pretty good deck, but maybe Blue deck could use a small nerf, or Red deck a buff.
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Apr 1, 2024 21:49
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After grinding at it for way too long, I finally beat Gold Stake with Anaglyph. It was uh, a goofy run. Supernova, Stuntman, (negative) Campfire, Joker Stencil, and Perkeo. Honestly it felt like it wasn't gonna be a winning run for a while, but man Stuntman can keep you afloat for a really long time. Perkeo I mostly only used it with a Mercury because I was levelling pair, but it did probably get me another 8 levels. Right at the end I picked up a Familiar, which I duplicated twice and it did make my deck more consistent. If I were playing optimally I would've sold Perkeo right at the end, but I wanted that gold stake sticker. Also I gotta say, I think I was severely underestimating campfire, that joker's insanely good. Having joker stencil with me really highlighted it because I always had a free joker slot; I could basically walk into a shop, buy two garbage jokers and sell them, and I suddenly have a 2x mult card for like 4 dollars. On the other hand, man I kinda hate Anaglyph now. It can certainly high roll and get you a lot of money, or in the case of this run get me 12 extra levels on pair in ante 8, but a lot of the time you just sit there and die with a stack of double tags. Sometimes you just blow them on minor rewards. A lot of the times they just feel kinda inconsequential.
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Apr 3, 2024 19:31
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Yeah honestly there are a bunch of things its decent at. It can generate a ton of negative (or foil, holo, polychrome) jokers, it makes for a pretty good economy deck, it can pull a ton of spectral packs, if you get an early Mega Buffoon you can really coast for a while. The only problem is, you don't really get to pick which (if any) of those things happen.
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Apr 3, 2024 21:02
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Abandoned Deck is fun. Don't normally go for straight builds, but I got Runner and the Order fairly early on, plus abandoned deck makes it really easy. I don't think I ever had trouble actually forming a straight? Maybe a little at the start, but I got a number of hanged man cards and started ditching Aces, 2s, and 10s, and then it got really consistent. Most notably though, this is like the only time I've ever found Flower Pot to actually be good! Given the small deck size and the nature of straights, I don't think I ever failed to actually trigger it. And even if I did fail to trigger it, it was still useful thanks to baseball card. I uh, still can't say I'd take it in most conditions, but it was absolutely good here. The negatives didn't actually do anything. I basically just kept egg around because I felt like it and I was never desperate enough to crack it. It meant all my temperances were worth $50!
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Apr 4, 2024 08:38
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Parasol Prophet posted:I actually made it to the final boss on Ante 8 once, and I would've had it! ... If it wasn't Violet Vessel. Tbh as time goes on I value director's cut more and more for basically this reason exactly There are so many runs where I know I'm vulnerable to a specific boss blind and the ability to reroll it is so handy
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Apr 5, 2024 19:29
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oh holy poo poo I wasn't expecting the buffs to tags but they're super welcome. skipping is frequently a bad idea so I don't mind the buff to it
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Apr 8, 2024 02:15
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Yeah I like Bloodstone well enough but never underestimate the ability of Bloodstone to simply, not trigger and lose you the run
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Apr 8, 2024 03:07
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Nah I still think Campfire's good. It fills a specific niche of "easy but expensive xmult that slots into literally any build" and even at half price its practically a slam pick in later antes. Definitely agree with you on Burnt Joker and Vagabond though. I love both of those jokers but changing them to rare really just means I'll probably never use them, because I have to luck out and roll them super early.
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Apr 8, 2024 05:04
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Honestly anaglyph is pretty good of you're looking for specific uncommon or rares, because you can save up double tags and blow them all to force a specific rarity to show up. Also fwiw, keep in mind that jokers that key off of specific cards (steel joker, lucky cat, etc.) won't actually show up unless you have one of those in your deck.
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Apr 8, 2024 10:05
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Yeah honestly I really like the changes. The new joker stickers are definitely annoying but 5 rounds is a pretty long time to hold you over until you find a permanent solution, and rental jokers can be very useful if you can afford em, or at the end of a run. Also like, it's really nice to be able to buy boosters and not feel like I'm throwing anymore.
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Apr 8, 2024 17:07
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Throwback is great but I do feel like you gotta be careful with it. It feels best as like a capstone joker, because if your build isn't quite there yet you really don't wanna be skipping a ton of shops. Hologram just slaps though. Especially with the booster pack changes, it's just so cheap to get that xmult now.
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Apr 8, 2024 19:09
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Relyssa posted:gold stake sucked and as someone who did it 'legit' or whatever i'm glad fewer people have to deal with it now  I honestly still think it feels difficult, I just spend so much less time on runs that die in Antes 1-3
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Apr 8, 2024 22:01
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Tbh it also works extremely well if you have a spare joker slot because then you can sell jokers to buff it too. Combos well with joker stencil for exactly that reason.
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Apr 9, 2024 03:40
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 11:01 |
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god the new infuriating thing about high stakes is getting a scaling joker with perishable on it
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Apr 9, 2024 06:42
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