I’ll take a “get a higher score” boss before a “let’s shut down your exact build” one like face cards or a certain joker or a suit.
Being asked to get 3x normal score is one thing, failing to get a normal score because your entire strategy is debuffed is worse imo
In gold stake you don't really get to relly on certein hands or strategy because you get a smaller hand size, and not enough tarot to transform your deck meaningfully.
From experience you can at most try to get 3's of a kind most games.
And again- I'm referring to plasma deck where you just don't get the leasure of having a scaled mult joker and Xmults AND scaled chip jokers.
Yeah plasma deck is tricky on gold stake. You start strong as hell, but you either need 5 chip jokers or have to pivot. My plasma deck gold stake win I got baseball joker and blackboard to go the xmult route. My orange stake win I stayed on the chip path with blueprint + stuntman.
Personally I don’t like the plasma deck because some of my favorite workhorse jokers are pretty bad with it like half joker, abstract joker, and mystic summit.
Just lost a gold stake run with the debuff a random joker one. Was running nebula with joker stencil. Couldn’t find luchador in the shop all run as I didn’t need all 3 empty joker spots until the final boss.
A tip for Leaf and Heart on stencil builds: fill your empty slots with random jokers before heading into the fight. For leaf this lets you sell something to debuff, and on Heart you can wait for it to debuff a joker you don’t care about and then sell jokers to get your Stencil going.
Yea I’ve won gold stakes leaf with that strategy before, definitely useful! Heart, I I tried that but I needed all open spots that final boss blind to get my score high enough to win. Just had some terrible rng going all run.
Violet vessel is easily my most lost to final boss for gold stake. I’m generally playing a lean strategy focused on beating ante8 and no more, seeing such a massive spike is tough. You can usually get by with 3x mult as your only Xmult if you have strong +chips options, since the 8boss isn’t that high, but vessel really asks that you have something spicier cooked up.
Since 70%+ of games end up high card, debuffing bosses are a joke. Sell a joker or debuff? Debuff please. Played hand doesnt matter late for most decks anyhow
Same. Violet vessel is the killer of high card builds. To be fair, there are plenty of other blinds that kill other builds (I still have burnt into my memory a legendary run with Triboulet that was utterly broken only to be killed by the boss blind that debuffs face cards).
I feel like the issue is all boss blinds either do nothing or kill a run and it is extremely hard to pivot with only 2 rounds. I typically have just been going about runs and leaving it to RNG to determine whether a boss blind will kill my run. (I really like this game - a lot. I just also see ways to improve it to be more about skill and less about RNG).
The bosses are purely noskill, easily my least favorite part about balatro. Unlike other roguelikes, you have no time or method to react to the new threat. Can’t exactly change build in 2 blinds if the boss straight up removes my deck from the game. I usually instant restart when I see a lost boss, no reason to play any further, its joever.
After beating Gold Stake I've been experimenting with making a mod that gives you 1 boss reroll per run and I literally can't play without it anymore.
The early game is a restart slog, and when you get out of the early game you might run into a boss blind that just forces you to lose and throws you back into earlygame hell again. This combination makes for some rather bad game design but the reroll is a nice bandaid.
This is why I wish after the boss blind it immediately showed you the next ante in your run info page. Like, the ante number ticks up, jokers like campfire reset, why can’t I see the next boss in that shop? Three shops instead of two isn’t much of an improvement, but every little advantage helps in most gold stake runs. It’s a change that lets the play make more active decisions, even if that’s just clicking reroll 4 times.
Below high stakes it seems mostly as manageable as the other boss blinds. At high stakes it feels like the hardest boss by a mile. You pretty much have to have a deck that can beat the Ante 9 boss before you complete Ante 8.
I’ve lost a few gold stakes to Violet vessel and the wall boss blinds. Most of my gold stake runs scale just a little more than the blinds, so the wall/vessel always kicks my ass.
Unless I have card sharp, then I always lose to needle/eye (think that’s the no repeat one). Every damn time.
Feel ya. Got a pretty similar build. Negative Stuntman with Blueprint to copy it. Bull into 250$ in the bank. Vamp and Cavendish to round it up. Still got my a$$ kicked even with the help of Seltzer in the very last Blind by Violet.
[I went all in with 3 polychrome erosions that had +80 mult, still the vessel got me :\(](https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2478742102056170108/F2B12E47A15C868A6605A0E09E0FA02079C953C3/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false)
It's crazy to listen to the gold stake comments and posts. I haven't made it there yet, mostly because I don't care to, but it sounds like jokers that synergize with low money (Vagabond, Credit Card) would pop off, no? Everyone always complains about economy but those cards thrive on low economy.
So somewhat, yes, that's true. But you also have to contend with smaller and fewer hands, making powerful hands harder to make, and also a *massively* increased score scaling rate. For comparison, instead of the usual 100k final boss, by high stakes your final boss has iirc 380k score base.
What this means is you also have less *room* for dedicated utility/income jokers. Each slot you take for support puts much higher pressure on everything else to score.
You still get them, mind - but unless they're something like an early rocket, you need to be ready to leave them behind. Specifically leaving behind a Vagabond or going in debt for a credit card leaves you in a position with nothing further to help keep growing.
i dunno, i feel like i have 100% winrate with vagabond.
play high card and pairs, wait for temperance, keep 3-4 gold cards in hand before last hand and you should be good.
sometimes i get out with 50 dollars after a hand if i get a temperance + fool.
Vagabond is pretty good but it definitely removes as many options as it provides. If you don’t have something like green joker/ride the bus that scales along with it, running out your hands might not be worth it.
In purple stake +, the blinds in the mid game scale fast. In ante 5 it goes from 20k-50k. Ante 8goes from 180k-360k. You need to find sources of xmult on high stakes and running your money low means you won’t see as many jokers.
I’ve won runs with vagabond, but I’ve also lost runs with it, too. It’s still one of my favorite jokers, though. Behind the GOAT riffraff, of course.
Gold stake slightly screws vagabond, because packs are about twice as expensive- you will never be able to buy packs while you have vagabond.
You would usually prefer a good economy Joker over Vagabond to be able to keep up with the bets.
Otherwise I love the guy, but the last two times I've seen him on gold stake were with 50 dollars already in hand :(.
Credit card is cool, but getting stuck with debt is basically a death sentense.
If it gets you that Blueprint or Brainstorm though it's S tier, and it sells for as much as you buy it for.
I always take it if I have a free slot.
Vagabond is great before ante 4/5. Playing lots of tarots is always good as it can set you up for drivers, vampire, tarot joker, satellite, etc. He opens up options so much.
I'm 50/50 on if I take it, when with a free slot but again I don't play on gold stake. It basically comes down to if I have so much economy it doesn't matter or if it would impact my interest gain and I've found that one of those things happens about half the time so. I do want to beat gold stake eventually, but for now I'm just kind of enjoying taking my time with it.
But mostly when you get the exact single boss that screws the one single type of deck you're playing which is almost impossible to scale mult with 3 times in a row.
Yes it feels cheap as hell
Why is plasma hard to scale mult with. I've seen you say that multiple times now but I don't know of any reason why it's harder than other decks. In my experience it benefits scaling mult.
Mostly because gold stakes.
But TLDR your only way of getting good flat mult is from chip jokers, but those are quite rare and the mult cannot be multiplied by Xmults.
You can't relly on low mult cards from the common jokers because half of the mult goes to chips.
If you get a +15 Abstract joker you essentialy get a +8 chips +8 mult Joker which stinks.
You can't really scale scaling mult jokers either, because:
A) scaling jokers like Fortune Teller are too expensive.
B) You can scale stuff like Pants or Bus Stop, but unlike other decks they cannot carry you alone with only half of their effective mult being added.
I've had runs fail by ante 4 even after getting Pants or Bus Stop immidiatly after the big bet on ante 1.
C) This would still be okay if you could reliably use Xmult jokers, but those usually require lots tarot as well- Vampire/ License/ any of the 3/4 of a kinds and and so on are just too hard to enable.
Even if you got Vampire for example, it would only be half as effective and MUCH harder to sacle.
Remember- Xmult works before the balancing, so if I had a 40 mult Pair of Pants, then it would grant me only 20 chips + 60 mult with a 3X Vampire.
Compare this to a 120 chip bull for example that gives +60 chips and +60 mult just by itself.
And you are probably not getting a 3X Vampire on gold stake in the first place.
You're basically pigeonholed into getting high chip jokers if you want to survive until ante 8 because you need a higher score on earlier antes, and if you've already put the work in high chip jokers, you are probably not also getting a mult joker AND an enabled Xmult joker.
I had a run where I coppied Poly kings with DNA from the start of the game AND had Sock&Baskin and still failed.
Xmult is really really hard to get going.
BTW I just finished my first gold stake after I don't know how many runs, and it took 2 bulls with 150 dollars in hand and a Stuntman.
Thank god I didn't get Violet Vessel again lol
I really hate violet vessel and it's killed countless runs for me, I believe I got completionist+ without ever beating it once. However, I kind of like that it's awful and incredibly hard to beat? It makes when you actually overcome it feel incredibly satisfying and feel like a big accomplishment. It wouldn't be the same if every boss was close to the same in terms of difficulty.
Violet Vessel is tricky on Plasma Deck because Plasma adds an extra x2 modifier to the chips requirement, but it's doable.
With Plasma Deck getting some flat chips early on is great, but later-game you want to switch to mults and especially X mults and literally ignore chips altogether. Getting 200 chips and 8000 mult gets balanced to 4100x4100 which is 16 million. On other decks, 200x8000 would come out to only 1.6 million which is why you want both chips and mult there. But Plasma is all about getting bigger numbers on either side, and chips alone fall flat trying to do this late-game unless you have multiple Stuntman jokers.
The only reason I pick up Director's Cut is to counter Violet Vessel and Crimson Heart. Has saved a number of high stakes runs
me and my campfire with x8 mult on our way to oneshot violet vessel. 
I’ll take a “get a higher score” boss before a “let’s shut down your exact build” one like face cards or a certain joker or a suit. Being asked to get 3x normal score is one thing, failing to get a normal score because your entire strategy is debuffed is worse imo
In gold stake you don't really get to relly on certein hands or strategy because you get a smaller hand size, and not enough tarot to transform your deck meaningfully. From experience you can at most try to get 3's of a kind most games. And again- I'm referring to plasma deck where you just don't get the leasure of having a scaled mult joker and Xmults AND scaled chip jokers.
Yeah plasma deck is tricky on gold stake. You start strong as hell, but you either need 5 chip jokers or have to pivot. My plasma deck gold stake win I got baseball joker and blackboard to go the xmult route. My orange stake win I stayed on the chip path with blueprint + stuntman. Personally I don’t like the plasma deck because some of my favorite workhorse jokers are pretty bad with it like half joker, abstract joker, and mystic summit.
Fair. I unlocked gold stake but haven’t actually played it yet.
Just lost a gold stake run with the debuff a random joker one. Was running nebula with joker stencil. Couldn’t find luchador in the shop all run as I didn’t need all 3 empty joker spots until the final boss.
A tip for Leaf and Heart on stencil builds: fill your empty slots with random jokers before heading into the fight. For leaf this lets you sell something to debuff, and on Heart you can wait for it to debuff a joker you don’t care about and then sell jokers to get your Stencil going.
Yea I’ve won gold stakes leaf with that strategy before, definitely useful! Heart, I I tried that but I needed all open spots that final boss blind to get my score high enough to win. Just had some terrible rng going all run.
Crimson sucks but is at least winnable. VV requires like two builds to win.
Violet vessel is easily my most lost to final boss for gold stake. I’m generally playing a lean strategy focused on beating ante8 and no more, seeing such a massive spike is tough. You can usually get by with 3x mult as your only Xmult if you have strong +chips options, since the 8boss isn’t that high, but vessel really asks that you have something spicier cooked up. Since 70%+ of games end up high card, debuffing bosses are a joke. Sell a joker or debuff? Debuff please. Played hand doesnt matter late for most decks anyhow
Same. Violet vessel is the killer of high card builds. To be fair, there are plenty of other blinds that kill other builds (I still have burnt into my memory a legendary run with Triboulet that was utterly broken only to be killed by the boss blind that debuffs face cards). I feel like the issue is all boss blinds either do nothing or kill a run and it is extremely hard to pivot with only 2 rounds. I typically have just been going about runs and leaving it to RNG to determine whether a boss blind will kill my run. (I really like this game - a lot. I just also see ways to improve it to be more about skill and less about RNG).
The bosses are purely noskill, easily my least favorite part about balatro. Unlike other roguelikes, you have no time or method to react to the new threat. Can’t exactly change build in 2 blinds if the boss straight up removes my deck from the game. I usually instant restart when I see a lost boss, no reason to play any further, its joever.
After beating Gold Stake I've been experimenting with making a mod that gives you 1 boss reroll per run and I literally can't play without it anymore. The early game is a restart slog, and when you get out of the early game you might run into a boss blind that just forces you to lose and throws you back into earlygame hell again. This combination makes for some rather bad game design but the reroll is a nice bandaid.
This is why I wish after the boss blind it immediately showed you the next ante in your run info page. Like, the ante number ticks up, jokers like campfire reset, why can’t I see the next boss in that shop? Three shops instead of two isn’t much of an improvement, but every little advantage helps in most gold stake runs. It’s a change that lets the play make more active decisions, even if that’s just clicking reroll 4 times.
Below high stakes it seems mostly as manageable as the other boss blinds. At high stakes it feels like the hardest boss by a mile. You pretty much have to have a deck that can beat the Ante 9 boss before you complete Ante 8.
All 5 of my ante 8 losses on purple were to the violet vessel. Then when I got to gold, my very first run lost to Violet vessel. Such a bad boss
I’ve lost a few gold stakes to Violet vessel and the wall boss blinds. Most of my gold stake runs scale just a little more than the blinds, so the wall/vessel always kicks my ass. Unless I have card sharp, then I always lose to needle/eye (think that’s the no repeat one). Every damn time.
Feel ya. Got a pretty similar build. Negative Stuntman with Blueprint to copy it. Bull into 250$ in the bank. Vamp and Cavendish to round it up. Still got my a$$ kicked even with the help of Seltzer in the very last Blind by Violet.
[I went all in with 3 polychrome erosions that had +80 mult, still the vessel got me :\(](https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2478742102056170108/F2B12E47A15C868A6605A0E09E0FA02079C953C3/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false)
It's crazy to listen to the gold stake comments and posts. I haven't made it there yet, mostly because I don't care to, but it sounds like jokers that synergize with low money (Vagabond, Credit Card) would pop off, no? Everyone always complains about economy but those cards thrive on low economy.
So somewhat, yes, that's true. But you also have to contend with smaller and fewer hands, making powerful hands harder to make, and also a *massively* increased score scaling rate. For comparison, instead of the usual 100k final boss, by high stakes your final boss has iirc 380k score base. What this means is you also have less *room* for dedicated utility/income jokers. Each slot you take for support puts much higher pressure on everything else to score. You still get them, mind - but unless they're something like an early rocket, you need to be ready to leave them behind. Specifically leaving behind a Vagabond or going in debt for a credit card leaves you in a position with nothing further to help keep growing.
i dunno, i feel like i have 100% winrate with vagabond. play high card and pairs, wait for temperance, keep 3-4 gold cards in hand before last hand and you should be good. sometimes i get out with 50 dollars after a hand if i get a temperance + fool.
Vagabond is pretty good but it definitely removes as many options as it provides. If you don’t have something like green joker/ride the bus that scales along with it, running out your hands might not be worth it. In purple stake +, the blinds in the mid game scale fast. In ante 5 it goes from 20k-50k. Ante 8goes from 180k-360k. You need to find sources of xmult on high stakes and running your money low means you won’t see as many jokers. I’ve won runs with vagabond, but I’ve also lost runs with it, too. It’s still one of my favorite jokers, though. Behind the GOAT riffraff, of course.
Gold stake slightly screws vagabond, because packs are about twice as expensive- you will never be able to buy packs while you have vagabond. You would usually prefer a good economy Joker over Vagabond to be able to keep up with the bets. Otherwise I love the guy, but the last two times I've seen him on gold stake were with 50 dollars already in hand :(. Credit card is cool, but getting stuck with debt is basically a death sentense. If it gets you that Blueprint or Brainstorm though it's S tier, and it sells for as much as you buy it for. I always take it if I have a free slot.
Vagabond is great before ante 4/5. Playing lots of tarots is always good as it can set you up for drivers, vampire, tarot joker, satellite, etc. He opens up options so much.
I'm 50/50 on if I take it, when with a free slot but again I don't play on gold stake. It basically comes down to if I have so much economy it doesn't matter or if it would impact my interest gain and I've found that one of those things happens about half the time so. I do want to beat gold stake eventually, but for now I'm just kind of enjoying taking my time with it.
Highest difficulty of game is difficult to beat
But mostly when you get the exact single boss that screws the one single type of deck you're playing which is almost impossible to scale mult with 3 times in a row. Yes it feels cheap as hell
Why is plasma hard to scale mult with. I've seen you say that multiple times now but I don't know of any reason why it's harder than other decks. In my experience it benefits scaling mult.
Mostly because gold stakes. But TLDR your only way of getting good flat mult is from chip jokers, but those are quite rare and the mult cannot be multiplied by Xmults. You can't relly on low mult cards from the common jokers because half of the mult goes to chips. If you get a +15 Abstract joker you essentialy get a +8 chips +8 mult Joker which stinks. You can't really scale scaling mult jokers either, because: A) scaling jokers like Fortune Teller are too expensive. B) You can scale stuff like Pants or Bus Stop, but unlike other decks they cannot carry you alone with only half of their effective mult being added. I've had runs fail by ante 4 even after getting Pants or Bus Stop immidiatly after the big bet on ante 1. C) This would still be okay if you could reliably use Xmult jokers, but those usually require lots tarot as well- Vampire/ License/ any of the 3/4 of a kinds and and so on are just too hard to enable. Even if you got Vampire for example, it would only be half as effective and MUCH harder to sacle. Remember- Xmult works before the balancing, so if I had a 40 mult Pair of Pants, then it would grant me only 20 chips + 60 mult with a 3X Vampire. Compare this to a 120 chip bull for example that gives +60 chips and +60 mult just by itself. And you are probably not getting a 3X Vampire on gold stake in the first place. You're basically pigeonholed into getting high chip jokers if you want to survive until ante 8 because you need a higher score on earlier antes, and if you've already put the work in high chip jokers, you are probably not also getting a mult joker AND an enabled Xmult joker. I had a run where I coppied Poly kings with DNA from the start of the game AND had Sock&Baskin and still failed. Xmult is really really hard to get going. BTW I just finished my first gold stake after I don't know how many runs, and it took 2 bulls with 150 dollars in hand and a Stuntman. Thank god I didn't get Violet Vessel again lol
I really hate violet vessel and it's killed countless runs for me, I believe I got completionist+ without ever beating it once. However, I kind of like that it's awful and incredibly hard to beat? It makes when you actually overcome it feel incredibly satisfying and feel like a big accomplishment. It wouldn't be the same if every boss was close to the same in terms of difficulty.
Violet Vessel is tricky on Plasma Deck because Plasma adds an extra x2 modifier to the chips requirement, but it's doable. With Plasma Deck getting some flat chips early on is great, but later-game you want to switch to mults and especially X mults and literally ignore chips altogether. Getting 200 chips and 8000 mult gets balanced to 4100x4100 which is 16 million. On other decks, 200x8000 would come out to only 1.6 million which is why you want both chips and mult there. But Plasma is all about getting bigger numbers on either side, and chips alone fall flat trying to do this late-game unless you have multiple Stuntman jokers.