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The scores you can achieve inBalatroare out of this world. By combining Jokers and playing cards that work well together, you can reach the billions, trillions, quadrillions, and so on - even infinity is possible.
The standard Balatro run just requires you to beat the Ante 8 boss, but once you do, you’re presented with the option to continue your run into Endless Mode. But by the end of Ante 8, the score you have to achieve is usually 100,000, so how on earth can you reach the score required to hit Ante 16?
Base Scores For Every Ante
Within the Collection menu, you’re able to view the base scores for every Ante, as well as every Boss Blind and their effects. The base score for Ante 8, for instance, is 50,000, but that gets multiplied by one of the five Boss Blinds by two, or by six if it’s the Violet Vessel.
Beyond Ante 8, the base scores of each Ante increase exponentially.Ante 11 is usually the first major wall in Endless Mode, requiring your played poker hands to hit the millions.
What Does “e” Mean?
You’ll notice that beginning with Ante 14, the score is represented as 2.900e13, which is 29 trillion. “e” dictates the amount of numbers after the decimal.
Ante 16 is the final Ante listed in the above image, but you’re able to go well beyond it as long as you can keep scoring high enough. But, since Ante 16 is another eight Antes after the first Boss Blind, another difficult Boss Blind awaits you if you make it that far.
How To Prepare For An Endless Run
For the best chance at hitting the higher Antes’ base scores, you should play your run on White Stake difficulty. You’re welcome to attempt an endless run on a higher difficulty, but the task at hand is already hard enough.
Beginning with Black Stake difficulty, Eternal Jokers can appear in the shop and in Buffoon Packs. Eternal Jokers cannot be sold or destroyed, which can sometimes be a benefit if other cards can destroy your Jokers.
If you haven’t played Balatro for very long,attempt to unlock some valuable Jokers that aren’t available to you at the beginning of the game, like Brainstorm and Blueprint. You can also play more of the difficult stakes to unlock more powerful decks like the Ghost Deck, Anaglyph Deck, and Plasma Deck.
Which Decks To Play For An Endless Run
Every deck is powerful in its own right, but some decks provide strong deck-fixing capabilities to get you playing good cards sooner. Here are some decks to consider:
The Nebula Deck
Start run with Telescope Voucer. -1 Consumable slot.
The Telescope Voucher makes every Celestial Pack contain the Planet Card of your most played hand.This deck allows you to scale your poker hand of choice quite effectively.
Having the Telescope Voucher early means you have the chance of finding the Observatory Voucher sooner, which makes Planet Cards held in your consumable slots give X1.5 Mult for their respective poker hand. This combines really well with Perkeo, who can create negative copies of your consumables, making each of the Planet Cards in your consumables provide a ton of Mult multiplication.
The Ghost Deck
Spectral Cards may appear in the shop. Start run with a Hex card.
The Hex Spectral Card makes one of your Jokers Polychrome, which gives X1.5 Mult, but destroys your other Jokers. But, having this Spectral Card early in a run, especially when you only have one Joker, means you’re able to enhance that Joker without the penalty of losing the rest of them.
Spectral Cards are some of the most powerful cards in the game, and being able to find them in the shop is fantastic! Cards like Ouija, Aura, Immolate, and Cryptid are great for deck-fixing, while Ectoplasm, Ankh, and Hex can enhance and even create copies of your Jokers.
Deck-fixing: enhancing the cards in your deck that you’re aiming to play and removing the ones that you don’t want to draw.
The Checkered Deck
Start run with 26 Spades and 26 Hearts.
The Checkered Deck effectively turns Clubs into Spades and Diamonds into Hearts, making Flushes much more playable. However, you can aim to convert the entire deck to either Spades or Hearts andaim for higher-value hands like Straight Flushes, Flush Houses, and Flush Fives.
The Painted Deck
+2 hand size. -1 Joker slot.
Now, -1 Joker slot might not seem that great, but +2 hand size is incredible. With the Painted Deck, your base hand size is ten cards, making high-value poker hands easier to draw.
But what’s interesting about having a higher hand size isplaying fewer cards and getting value from your cards in hand.Steel Cards, which give X1.5 Mult when held in hand, and Gold Cards, which give $3 when held in hand, that are enhanced with Red Seals to trigger twice, or Blue Seals to give you Planet Cards, work wonders with a large hand.
Jokers like Mime, which retriggers all held-in-hand abilities, and Baron, which gives X1.5 Mult for each King held in hand, can take advantage of a large hand size. Believe it or not, you can make a very effective High Card build with this deck.
The Plasma Deck is a very powerful deck that plays the average of the Chip and Mult scores. Because of this,the Plasma Deck requires a wholly unique playstyle- that’s often more Chip-oriented - which can be hard to wrap your head around.
Make Long Term Decisions During The First Eight Antes
Throughout the first eight Antes,focus on deck-fixing, leveling up your poker hand of choice with Planet Cards, and establishing your long-term game plan.Thinning your deck with the Hanged Man Tarot Card and even the Immolate Spectral Card will help you draw the cards you want to see.
Adding unnecessary bulk to your deck will only hurt your chances of drawing your good cards in the long run.For instance, if you open a Booster Pack and there’s a Multed Polychrome 6 of Clubs, but you’re playing Flush Fives of Kings of Hearts, that 6 will likely never get played anyway, so you shouldn’t take it.
Retriggering Cards Is The Key To High-Scoring Hands
Retriggering your cards’ effects is the key to scoring high in Balatro. Jokers like Sock & Buskin, which retriggers face cards, and Hack, which retriggers 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s, are great when combined with other Jokers that provide score or scale when a played card is triggered.
Take this combo for example:Triboulet is a Legendary Joker that gives X2 Mult for each King and Queen played. Sock & Buskin retriggers all face cards, meaning a poker hand like Five Of A Kind Kings would multiply X2 ten times.
Now, what if the Kings are Red Sealed, making them retrigger yet again? What if they’re Glass, providing X2 Mult when triggered, but with a one in four chance to break and be destroyed, AND what if they’re Polychrome, providing yet another X1.5 Mult when played. All told, each Red Seal Polychrome Glass King of Hearts would give X2 Mult, X2 Mult, and X1.5 Mult fifteen times.
The amount of retriggers can increase further by copying the effects of Sock & Buskin with Brainstorm or Blueprint.All of this mult can finally be multiplied by a Joker or two with a high scaling Mult multiplier like Steel Joker, Constellation, Hologram, Glass Joker, or Campfire.
Mult Your Mult
Multiplying your Mult as much as possible unlocks the ability to hit super high scores.Glass cards become especially valuable, and likewise volatile, towards the end of your run, but there’s no point in holding onto them if you need to hit a score in “e” territory.
In the above video, every played King of Hearts is multiplying the Mult by X2 because of The Idol Joker. This effect is retriggered with Sock & Buskin, and ultimately, the final big multiplication comes from the Lucky Cat Joker, a Joker which increases by X0.25 Mult every time a Lucky Card is successfully triggered.
Full disclosure, even with all this, this run ended at Ante 15. Ante 16 is within reach; keep plugging away, and you’ll climb that mountain!
