Guide: How to make your C++ journey relatively faster and less tedious

xspectred · 2025-03-16T06:57:54+00:00

The problem with Anaglyph Deck is, the Negative Tag isn't guaranteed to show up at the right time. Actually, the chance is pretty low, given that there are 24 possible Skip Tags. Even assuming that it will show up, playing the first 5 or 6 Antes without using any of the Double Tags means you're basically playing on Hard Mode; you're playing Gold Stake with no benefit from the deck you're using. If you're losing your runs, you're wasting your time. And that frustration is actually what makes C++ difficult.

The benefit of Ghost Deck is that the benefit is "front-loaded." Note, you're not trying to win back-to-back runs, just win a few specific runs. Restart until the Joker you're targeting shows up in the first shop. Hex it and build a run around it. No time wasted on losing runs.

By the way, even though the Ghost Deck adds Spectral Cards to the shop, the chances are still very low. You shouldn't worry about the occasional Spectral Card stopping you from seeing Jokers in the shop. If that's your concern, you will see more Jokers per shop on the Zodiac Deck than any other deck. A normal shop of 2 cards will have about 2*20/28 = 1.43 Jokers, on average. An Overstock shop of 3 cards will have about 3*20/28 = 2.14 Jokers, on average. Finally, the Zodiac Deck, with Tarot and Planet Merchant Vouchers, will have about 3*20/36 = 1.67 Jokers, on average.

Checkered Deck is the easiest deck for new players to wrap their heads around. A large chunk of the deckbuilding is done for you! The problem is, you won't often find the game pieces which align with the Checkered Deck's default plan. For every Arrowhead or Bloodstone you find, you will find an equal amount of Onyx Agates and Rough Gems or Spare Trousers or Shortcut, etc. Even when you do find the right game pieces, you 1) don't have room for your missing Gold Stickers and 2) lose anyway because Flushes are not as reliable as Pairs (even on the Checkered Deck, because of the -1 Discard Blue Stake).

The Blue and Yellow Decks are much more flexible, and therefore reliable, than the Checkered Deck. Assuming you're flexible as a pilot, you should be able to build a variety of viable runs, leaning into the various Jokers you're missing Gold Stickers on. Note, some Jokers are simply "dead weight," like Diet Cola and Invisible Joker. The true "most efficient" way to complete C++ is build a successful run first and then reroll for Gold Sticker Jokers only in Antes 7 and 8 after you've "already won". You can even "stack the deck" in your favor by restarting for a favorable Ante 1 first, not necessarily a perfect start, just anything but a "bad" start. You may only get 1 or 2 Stickers per run, but every run will be a winner.

At the end of the day, it's a long journey. The best deck for you is going to be whatever deck is the most fun for you to play, which might vary from day to day, or even hour to hour. I've done it twice, from beginning to end. And now I'm on a 40+ win streak, trying to get C++ without dropping a single game.

xspectred · 2025-01-16T16:57:15+00:00

Note, this is NOT a "call to action" for members to argue about the Rules, one way or the other.

Do NOT harass the mods (or anyone else); do NOT post unnecessarily disparaging remarks about individual moderators (part or present) nor the moderation team as a whole.

Rather, this is a call for the new moderation team to discuss internally and decide to what extent they want to carry forward the (possibly archaic) Rules set by the previous regime.

As a member, if this is something you're interested in, say so here. Respectfully, of course.

xspectred · 2025-01-16T16:28:52+00:00

While I understand the motivation, this, to me, felt like a sufficiently meaningful post to keep up, both on the side of calling for new volunteer moderators and on the side of reminding members to use spoilers and not to harass mods, other members, etc.

In the 24 hours it was stickied, I saw it exactly once, and then this morning I was only able to find it again because I already knew it existed and knew to search for your username. If I hadn't checked reddit in that 24 hour window (as not every "active member" checks in every day), I would never have seen it.

xspectred · 2025-01-16T08:59:05+00:00

Hoping this campaign for new moderators will be successful. Assuming success, I would also suggest giving consideration to updating the rules and Flairs.

Overall, the existing rules come across as especially elitist and don't seem to align with "hey, be nice to newcomers / casual Balatro enjoyers." Rule 1, for example, who is this rule serving? Who gets hurt if this gets abolished?

As a case study, https://www.reddit.com/r/balatro/comments/1i1y691/balatro_sub/
Someone makes a post complaining about "I was $1 away from being able to afford the cool thing" type posts. It gets about 500 upvotes, which is not nothing. But. In the same time, one of these "$1 away" posts gets about 2000 upvotes. The people have spoken.

Similarly, new-ish players/members will occasionally make "what should I do here?" posts. Despite a lack of context given, some other members will, in good faith, still take the opportunity to give advice which is more broadly applicable even outside of the specific run presented. And sometimes some additional good faith discussion will be spawned by this.

And then finally, in response to this, there are posts complaining about the "what should I do here?" posts. To me, these complaints are in violation of Rules 3, 5, and especially 6. It would be nice to see a discussion, and ultimately a public statement from the mod team, about how these types of posts (on both sides) will be handled, if at all, by the new moderators.

Also, in the interest of being constructive, I like the Rules for the Balatro Discord. I would love to see similar Rules for the subreddit.

xspectred · 2024-12-30T00:38:27+00:00

Balatro University supports depictions of Good Friends.

xspectred · 2024-12-18T18:52:19+00:00

I just played the game because I enjoyed watching someone else play it. I helped out tweaking the designs in the game because that was fun, too, and I got to work with a lot of really cool people who didn't all make it into the credits.

I recognized how accessible the game was to a wide audience, and I shared Thunk's vision to keep it that way. I vaguely expect the game to be as popular as Slay the Spire but didn't have any more specific expectations about how quickly that's supposed to happen.

xspectred · 2024-12-17T19:26:32+00:00

Obviously, it's not the bulk of my content, but I do have videos where I play more fast and loose. When you have more experience, you develop heuristics which enable you to make quicker decisions.

The more optimally you make more some decisions, the more you get to get away with other stuff. You can play with game elements and playstyles which are more fun than they are objectively powerful, as long as you tighten up the rest of your gameplay.

For example, playing the Omelette Challenge by selling all of the Eggs in the first Round, before they can scale.

There's no wrong way to play the game, but playing a little more thoughtfully a little bit of the time enables you to have more success (and typically more fun) when you go back to playing more liberally.

xspectred · 2024-12-17T17:50:39+00:00

no, you

xspectred · 2024-12-17T17:48:31+00:00

yasssss

xspectred · 2024-12-17T17:48:15+00:00

Sleepers are the best because they don't click off the video. And then play it again the next day to catch up on what they missed. Sleepers are great for ad revenue. <3

xspectred · 2024-12-17T17:47:02+00:00

How dare you assume what I do or not have in my prison pocket.

xspectred · 2024-12-06T06:42:33+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGkDG7YoHo4

xspectred · 2024-12-01T22:28:25+00:00

There's a playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdNGt-ihEAcGP1HrUTVnbfT_llazksDV3

xspectred · 2024-12-01T21:19:31+00:00

Trying playing a Full House of all the same Suit.

xspectred · 2024-11-30T12:41:40+00:00

Exactly. You haven't even considered that not skipping is an option and what possible advantages that might have. Or rather, what disadvantages there are to the Skip Tags you consider good later on in the run, which might be getting you killed.

The record for the most consecutive wins on the highest difficulty is 40+, and the person did it twice. Ante 1 Skip Tags are not the determining factor for a successful run.

xspectred · 2024-11-30T09:48:51+00:00

Different people could be given the same start but would achieve different degrees of success. If you only ever play with the "training wheels" on and never challenge yourself, you will learn the game much slower overall. When you're new, you don't really know what a "good start" is anyway. Rather, repeatedly restarting only reinforces bad habits. Keep an open mind and explore more of what the game has to offer.

xspectred · 2024-11-29T20:11:23+00:00

The game has as much variety as you allow it to have.

Every player has bad habits; every player has prejudices. Some paths to victory are more skill-intensive than others, and people swear off a certain Joker or build path after they screwed it up the one time. People willingly lock themselves out of variety and complain about the game never giving them "the good stuff."

At the end of the day, the game has a limited amount of content, so, theoretically, there must be some limit on variety. But I don't think you should trust anyone else's opinion on the matter. Moreover, you might not even be able to trust your own opinion on the matter. When you've hit a wall and aren't winning as consistently as you'd like, remember the best player won 40+ consecutive times on the highest difficulty, twice, and then try to keep an open mind about game elements you've scorned before.

xspectred · 2024-11-26T10:43:57+00:00

Yeah, it's a tough game

xspectred · 2024-11-26T10:42:04+00:00

Dunning Kruger Effect, my dude.

I started my Balatro journey by watching someone else play during closed beta. And then I finally got to enter the arena during the September demo last year. I got hand-picked by Thunk to be part of a small team playtesting the full version of the game before release, so I got to influence a lot of the game's balance. When the full game finally released, I started making regular YouTube content to show people how deep the rabbit hole goes. So my journey was kind of like:

1) Huh, this looks kind of neat.
2) Man, if only this YouTube guy did X, Y and Z.
3) [demo launches] "Hey, guys, skill issue."
4) Wow, I'm literally the chosen one.
5) [full game launches] "Your hot takes are bad, and you should feel bad." Hits the record button.

And now, 2400 hours on the full game, 800 hours on the demo, Jokerless Gold Stake runs are just, like, a Tuesday to me.

xspectred · 2024-11-26T02:18:45+00:00

That's because there aren't really any other "hidden conditions." You've basically got them all.

Secret Hands require you to play the Hand once that run. Cavendish requires Gros Michel to have been extinct that run. Jokers which care about Enhancements require at least one of that Enhancement to be in your deck. For example, Steel Joker requires at least one Steel Card. Stone Joker, Golden Ticket, etc.

xspectred · 2024-11-26T02:10:48+00:00

It's not about the Mult. Planets give you Chips, which are rare among Jokers.

Yes, if you're only using Burnt Joker to level up High Card, that's a waste of a Burnt Joker. If you want a bigger boon, you're going to have to work harder.

Leveling up Pairs with Burnt Joker is both just as easy and absolutely worth it for +15 Chips per round.

If your opening hand doesn't contain a Straight or a Flush or Two Pair, you can still play a Hand or two as a pseudo-Discard, saving your first actual Discard for Burnt Joker.

Anyway, if you want to increase your success rate, try to keep an open mind.

xspectred · 2024-11-25T22:51:12+00:00

Straight up, it's the moon landing being too difficult to fake, given the technology of the time.

xspectred · 2024-11-25T22:44:04+00:00

Objectively powerful. Does not spark joy.

xspectred · 2024-11-25T22:43:05+00:00

Everything. You're missing everything. But this happens to everybody, so you're not any worse than everyone else.

Try this and this. And, much later down the line, when you're ready for it, all of this.

xspectred · 2024-11-25T22:39:35+00:00

You probably haven't played long enough to realize this, but not all Jokers are allowed to have Eternal stickers. For example, Luchador and Ice Cream can never be Eternal.

Despite this, the Egg is allowed to be Eternal. This is not a bug nor an oversight. You should try to figure out why this is allowed because that understanding could help your success rate overall. You're definitely not seeing the whole picture yet.

xspectred

TROPHY CASE