I can’t quit Balatro (LocalThunk). Every time I think I’m out, something pulls me back in. In fact, I am thinking about buying Monster Hunter Wilds (Capcom) just to tear me away from Balatro. And because everyone is loving it so I have some FOMO.
But I kept going back to Balatro. I was working on doing the stakes on the different decks. A person in the Discord forum had gotten his last gold stakke win and decided to look at the challenges. I had asked him about it because I had done 17 out of 20 of them, but could not do the last three. He said he was not going to even look at them before he got all the gold stakes.
I said that the first seventeen weren’t too bad, but he did mention two I had forgotten. They weren’t terrible, but they weren’t easy, either. He got to eighteen, and he acknowledged it was harder than the rest. Hearing him talk about it spurred me to try it myself, and it wasn’t as hard as I remembered it. It wasn’t fun or easy, either, but it wasn’t too bad. It is having to beat each round with one hand–which is one of the big bosses in the vanilla game. There’s also an economic aspect to it that made it a hassle, but not that big a deal.
The next was Cruelty, which had very strict restrictions such as only 3 jokers (though there are ways to game that) and no reward money from either the small blind or the big blind. That one fucked with me the first time around that I tried them, but it wasn’t as bad this time around. In fact, I think I found it easier than the one before (called Golden Needle).
It was the same with this one. The guy in the Discord announced he had finished this one, and I buckled down to do it myself. Not as a competition type of thing, but as a spur/encouragement. I got a few tips from him for the Golden Needle, but I beat Cruelty before he had time to respond.
Then, there’s the last one. It’s called Jokerless, and you can’t have any jokers in the game. Well, there is one way supposedly that you can get one. It’s very fiddly, though, and not worth counting on. If you’re saying that sounds really hard, you would be right. To make it even harder (and I did not realize this until my second day of intense trynig to beat this challenge) that you can only get one of two bosses for this challenge. One is the one that gives you 3 times the total you need to meet (300,000 v. 100,000), the one I call Violent Vessel. It’s actual name is, ah, *quick Google*, Violet Vessel. I actually came up with that on my own, but wanted to double check it.
The other boss is my most hated final boss, I think. It’s called Cerulean Bell (it is). It forces you to do something with the card it picks–either use it or discard it. When you’re running a straight build as I was for this challenge, that can be a heartbreaker. As I found out the first time I reached the final boss.
The guy in the Discord was having a bit of trouble with Jokerless. More than he had been having with any of the other challenges. Once he beat it, of course I had to try it again myself. In earnest. And my god was this challenge the absolutely worst. The other two turned out to be not as bad as I feared. This one was worse–much worse.
First of all, I don’t do straights. The guy in the Discord was a straights guy, but that was not my style. I was either a two pair person on more lately, a high card/pair person. Why? Because I like to freestyle it. I don’t like being tied to something as limiting as a straight (heh). But, for this challenge, a HC/pair build was not going to cut it.
I read up on it. People used straights, straight flushes, or 4/5 of a kind. The guy in the Discord posted a video of a guy beating the challenge, and it was so much work. I’ll include it above. Balatro University is his name, and he went from straights to straight flushes by the end of the run. Also, this was before it was patched so the big boss he had was no longer in rotation. And straights were juiced so they were viable until the end of the game.
What else did Balatro U do? Pruned his deck, turned low cards into high cards, and he got a strategic ‘change all these cards to one suit’ spectral card. Watching his video made my head spin. I just–that’s not what I do when I play Balatro. It’s not good vibes to me to have to think that hard about it. The other thing both he and the guy in the Discord (L) mentioned was to use a calculator. I was going to, but then I didn’t. Why? Again, bad vibes.
Look. I am not playing the game to do maths and stats and whatnot. I just am not. I don’t do deck pruning, and I don’t do as much card changing as I should. Once again, I’m stubborn in that I am going to play the game my own goddamn way–come hell or high water. And I’m going to fuck myself because of it instead of adapting to the game. Same with FromSoft games and why I did not like Sekiro (one of the reasons). I’m not going to parry or deflect. In that case, it’s a matter of can’t not won’t, but it’s the same result. I am going to play the games my way, and even Sekiro, the From game that demands you play it a certain way, I eventually bent it to my will.
Well, no, I didn’t. But I did beat it. And had zero fun doing it. If there was summoning, I might go for the plat, but since there isn’t, there is no way in hell I’m putting myself through more of that torture. More to the point, I don’tt think I could do it any longer.
Back to Balatro. I play the game my way. I skip blinds generously. I play HC/pair without doing any of the math. I have yet to bust out a calculator, but just eyeball the answer. If I lose by 2 points, I lose by 2 points. Because to play the other way would take all the fun out of the game for me. How do I know?
I buckled down to beat Jokerless. I learned for straights, you want to leave it open-ended on both ends rather than cap it on one end as you’re drawing cards. So even if you have a 10, J, Q, A, and are looking for the K, you want to get rid of the A in order to make it so you could get the K and a 9 or a K and another A. Balatro University mentioned that though it sounds counterintuitive, they’ve done the math. This will get you better results. I tried it out, and it was true. I got much better results in general that way.
I made it to the final boss (Cerulean Bell) for the first time before I had everything in place. I panicked because I hate this boss and basically threw. When I realized that it was either this boss or Violet Vessel (all the rest involves jokers and were patched out of this challenge), I contemplated giving up. Oh, and I did not get even close to the final boss again yesterday (the first day I seriously tried to beat this challenge). I made it to the boss of the 7th ante (there are 8 in total) and could not get one fucking card I needed for five hands. It was a strong run (Had my straights leveled up to 18 or 20), but just folded like a cheap lawn chair.
Here’s the thing. My brain just does not do well with swerving when things are going wrong. It’s great to remember to keep my straights open (double hah!), but I get locked into one way of thinking and can’t pivot on the spot.
Today, I wasn’t even close to beating this challenge. I was refining and tweaking my straight build to the best of my ability. I cut as many 2-5s from the deck as I could. When I drew cards to add to my deck, I made a rule I could only take them if they were 6 and above (unless it had a blue seal, which duplicates the last hand played upon winning the hand). I stayed away from Strength cards for the most part (upping a card by one rank, so a 5 to a 6, for example), except in very specific situations (like I needed a certain number and had the one lower). Or to get a 5 to a 6.
I enhanced every card I could, either by glassing it, stteeling it, multi-ing it, bonus carding it, lucking it, etc. I got as many red seals as I could, and I focused as hard as I could.
I wasn’t feeling it at all. I wasn’t getting close, and I contemplated giving up–if only for the day. I decided to do one more run, and it felt good from the beginning. I got one or two $25 for skipping a blind in the first few rounds, so I did that (yes, I’m still skipping blinds regularly). Or rather, you get $25 for skipping that blind and beating the boss blind of that ante. Many guides stress economy, and it was good to have so much money early on. That way I could buy whatever I wanted in the shop without worrying about running out of meny. I was comfortably carrying $30 (a largesse!) for most of the run. I was saving it for the last shop before the final boss. Which, by the way, I did skip a blind in the last round because I did not want to risk losing before I even got to the final boss. Especially as it was my second time that far in the challenge.
There were so many trash runs. RNG really fucked me so many times. Some of those times, it was me being set in my ways, but some of the times, it was just the game being an utter asshole. I have to say that for a scrub player like me, the RNG is frustrating in this game. And for a challenge like this, there was just way too much trash in it.
For example. Why were the Tarot/Spectral cards that had to do with jokers still in play? They should have been taken out. And, honestly, how easily a run could just go to trash. Again, for a scrub player like me. Someone elite like Balatro University? Yeah, no problems. He got the card he wanted more often than not whereas I remember drawing five times in a row for one fucking card (drawing four cards each time) and getting nary a one.
I have had my diatribe against true RNG so I will not get into it again, but once again, a game like this shows me that it is not meant for me. I’m playing it despite myself and my limitations. I am a sloppy player who makes so many mistakes. And me at my best just barely eked out this win. Did I have to change the way I played to win? Yes. But not unrecognizably so. I will say that I can take what I learn into the vanilla game if I decide to play it again. I feel much more comfortable with straights (heh) than I ever have in this game. I guess that’s something. But at the end of the day, I’m glad to be able to put the challenges behind me with a sigh of reliefd that I survived the final one.