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For a game that revolves around its Jokers,Balatro’s ultimate challenge asks you to forget everything you know about Blueprint, Egg, and Gros Michel. Jokerless Challenge is, as the name suggests, beating Ante 8 without using any Jokers whatsoever.
Jokerless tests your skill, patience, and problem-solving abilities in a grueling gauntlet, with all the trappings of a regular Balatro run, without the usual tools that give this game its identity. Nothing but Playing Cards, Tarot Cards, and Planets can save you. Here’s how we suggest approaching this behemoth of a challenge.
How To Unlock Jokerless Challenge
Balatro has 20 challenges in its challenge mode, with Jokerless being the 20th.By completing 15 challenges, Jokerless becomes available to you.
If you want to try Jokerless without putting in the legwork of unlocking it,you can create a profile within Balatro and select the “Unlock All” option in the profile menu.However,achievements cannot be completed if this option is selected.
Deck
Standard 52 Cards.
Any feasible ways of acquiring Jokers are unavailable in this challenge.Even if youcouldfind a Joker, you don’t have any Joker slots for it anyway.
The Antimatter Voucher is banned in this challenge, but its prerequisite voucher, Blank, is NOT banned. True to its description,Blank literally does nothing in Jokerless.
How To Approach Jokerless
The only cards available to you in Jokerless are Tarot Cards, Planet Cards, Spectral Cards, and Vouchers.If you buy the Magic Trick Voucher, Playing Cards can be purchased from the shop.
Booster Packs of Playing Cards become much more valuableas well, giving you the chance to find Enhanced Cards or Sealed Cards. You need to treat select cards from each of these categories almost as if they were Jokers, asthey’re the only way to increase your score.
Establish A Winning Hand
A winning hand is a combination of played cards and cards held in hand that will award you the highest score.Choose a build to work towards as early in your run as you’re able to, so you can be more efficient with your shops in between blinds.
Low-value poker hands like High Card, Pair, and Two Pair would be difficult to succeed with in Jokerless, as they don’t score five cards when played, severely hindering your Chip score. They also don’t scale very quickly when leveled up with Planet Cards.
For instance,if you happen to find an early Ouija Spectral Card, it will convert upwards of eight cards in your deck into the same Rank, making high-value poker hands like Four Of A Kind and even Five Of A Kind more feasible.If you happen to find the Telescope Voucher early, which makes the Planet Card of your most played poker hand always appear in Celestial Packs, then leveling a single poker hand (ideally a mid-to-high-value one) will take you far.
Every run is going to be different, butit’s up to you to recognize what’s worth purchasing in the shop with your limited amount of money.Taking chances on Celestial packs without the guarantee of a Planet Card you need could be a huge waste.
You’re often using all of your hands to reach the required scores for each Blind, so accumulating Interest is one of the best ways to maintain money during Jokerless.Avoid spending below $5 early in your run, as it’s difficult to get out of that hole.
Focus On Improving The Cards Included In Your Winning Hand
Once you’ve established what hand and cards will lead you to victory,it’s important to gradually improve your high-value cards. These cards include the ones that create your winning hand, as well as cards that provide value by remaining in your hand, like Steel and Blue Seal cards.
Tarot Cards like Hierophant and Empress can make your cards provide Chips and Mult, respectively.Chariot, in particular, which enhances a card to be Steel, is one of few ways to multiply your Mult in Jokerless.
Spectral Cards, available through Spectral Packs and the Ethereal Tag, can dramatically improve your deck with valuable seals. Red Seals to retrigger valuable card enhancements, Purple Seals to create more Tarot Cards to improve your deck, andperhaps the greatest Seal of all: Blue Seal.
Blue Seals And Planet Cards Are The Main Ways To Scale
If you haven’t played Balatro in a while, it might surprise you to read that Blue Seals are so valuable. Before the most recent update, Blue Seals would create a random Planet Card at the end of the round if held in hand.
Since update 1.0.1,Blue Seals create the Planet Card of the final-played poker hand of the round if held in hand.This dramatically improves Blue Seal’s value, and actually allows you to scale your poker hand of choice quite effectively.
How We Completed Jokerless Challenge
After many attempts,our successful Jokerless run had leveled Flush to level 39,which is achieved with anearly Blue Seal from a Trance Spectral Card, from a Spectral Pack.This Blue Seal 3 of hearts was enhanced to a Steel Card, providing both scaling from leveling Flush, and Mult multiplication when the Flushes were played and it remained in hand.
Most of the deck was converted to Clubs, simply because Clubs were the most common suit when the winning hand was established, andmany of the Clubs were enhanced by Empress and Hierophant.The clincher wasenhancing a 2 of Clubs with a Justice Tarot Card, making it Glass, which multiplies the Mult by two, but has a one in four chance to shatter and be destroyed; later, a Deja Vu Spectral Card gave the Glass 2 of Clubs a Red Seal, allowing it to retrigger its Glass effect.
Retriggering Glass Cards only affects their Mult effect,not the one in four chance to be destroyed. Phew!
The ideal winning hand featured a Club Flush with five enhanced Clubs, withthe Red Seal Glass 2 on the right of the hand to multiply any added Mult from other enhanced Clubsin the Flush. Two Blue Seal Steel 3s of Hearts were also held in hand to further multiply the Mult, and provide two Jupiters to level Flush.
This Isn’t The Only Strategy
The beauty of Balatro is that there are many ways to complete a run.Experiment with different strategies and synergies to find what works with what the run has given you, and don’t be afraid to reset if the vibes are off.
