Balatro Tips and Strategies (Add Your Own)

[Zed Clampet]

If a game has a randomized start that heavily influences your chances for success, I think it should provide an option to guarantee a good start.

Though I suppose Balatro does in the sense that it allows you to use a specific seed, so once you find a good start you can just keep using that, or you can use one of the many seeds shared by other players.

I just tested it out and those seeds aren't as useful on the higher levels because all the great jokers have some sort of condition on them, like they only last for 5 turns. I guess those are mostly for making runs from the starting level. Not that they are useless later, they still give great jokers. You just don't want to use most of them.

That's the biggest problem in the last couple of levels. Just getting anything so you can play the game for longer than a few hands.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Finally made it through ante 12. I think I needed 70 million, and I got 650 million on my first hand, but nothing could have prepared me for ante 13. Now I needed 90 billion haha.

This was just some random seed that worked out very well (for a random seed)

 

[Zed Clampet]

It could take a long time for me to completely finish this. I'm finding the last two levels to be very hard, and some of the decks are only going to make them harder.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I am aggrieved, nettled and vexed. I was playing a low level game, got to ante 7, and my most important joker just disappeared. Never had that happen before.

 

[Zed Clampet]

After completing everything, these are my final tips/strategies:

By the time you get to the second ante, you should be able to make every pot in one hand. If not, then you need to concentrate on improving your jokers.

Try to win each blind in the first hand. Focus on decently strong hands like Flush, Straight and Full House.

If you come across a joker called Hanging Chad, buy it. This retriggers the first scoring card twice. This makes things like your glass cards much more powerful.

Look for jokers that copy what another joker does. If you have one of these and Hanging Chad, you are going to have to play very badly to lose.

Check the vouchers every turn. A lot of them are good to get. If you are having problems getting jokers, make sure to buy the reduction in reroll.

Celestial cards are good, but it's not essential to keep ramping up your hand levels unless you are struggling to find good jokers.

A notable exception to not overly worrying about raising hand levels is if you get the Burnt Joker. In this case, you want to raise High Card every single turn. It is almost impossible to lose the game if you get Burnt Joker early.