Balatro Hidden Mechanics Guide: What The Game Doesn't Tell You

[@lukaschen3009]

5:44 need to fact check. I think rare tag spawns a rare Joker in the shop instead of making the next Joker shop into a rare one

[@ZainoTVLive]

Pinning this comment, as I think you're right. I should have spoke to rare & uncommons can stack with negative/holo/poly tags. However, believe rare and uncommon tags force a joker in the shop! Thank you @lukaschen3009

[@Nanocryk]

By experience it changes a Joker in the shop and doesn't force a Joker to spawn. I had that bad surprise in one game. But maybe it was a bug or it was changed afterward?

[@marcuscostello5635]

Bro..... several of these are wrong

[@ZainoTVLive]

@@marcuscostello5635 Elaborate please!

[@ottojagenstedt9740]

@@marcuscostello5635 So which ones other than that buddy?

[@Thush007]

One thing I noticed yesterday was that the extra hands provided by Burglar overrides the single hand requirement of The Needle.

[@ZainoTVLive]

YES! There will 100% be a part two to this video with some rapid fire tidbits like this.

[@Thush007]

@@ZainoTVLive looking forward to it! 👏🏽

[@askthepizzaguy]

@@ZainoTVLive same

[@RogueBones3]

You can also copy the extra hands effect with brainstorm or blueprint

[@joshualovelace119]

You can sell Burglar as part of the "sell a joker" requirement for Verdant Leaf but keep the extra hands for use during that round.

[@gus9797]

Fun fact: if spades / diamonds / clubs / hearts are disabled by the first boss, that suit is safe from boss blinds for the rest of the game, so you can build your deck around them without worrying

[@psychickumquat]

That Gros Michel/Cavendish interaction is a deeply nerdy joke reflection what actually happened with those banana varieties. I adore it

[@TonyTheTGR]

TFW someone tries to trade me a Banana card and all I offer them back is a Gros Michel

[@CrimsonFlameRTR]

And everyone on KZbin calls it 'gross' michel lol.

[@TonyTheTGR]

@@CrimsonFlameRTR "Gross, Mitchell!"

[@pook49]

1. Holding a consumable card or joker means that another copy cannot spawn 2. Gros Michel allows Cavendish to spawn. 3. Glass joker, stone joker, lucky cat, and steel joker will not appear without having at least one of their synergistic cards in your deck. 4. There are three secret hands, Five of a Kind, Flush House, and Flush Five, and each has an associated planet card. Also, Royal Flush borrows from the Straight Flush level. 5. Wildcards are every suit simultaneously, including buffs and debuffs. 6. Each voucher has a secondary, powered up version that can appear in the shop. Also, Blank voucher unlocks the possibility of the Antimatter voucher to show up. 7. Tags applying Polychrome, Foil, Holographic, or Negative to the next joker in the shop does not guarantee a joker will be in the shop. If you reroll into a joker, that joker will get the effect of the tag. 8. The number of cards you can modify in Arcana and Spectral packs correspond to your actual hand size, 9. Blueprint and Brainstorm are a powerful combo. 10. The Idol is very powerful with dozens of copies of one card, as the random card it chooses will often be that card.

[@LucasTheF]

The wiki says blank needs to be bought 10 times across runs and then antimatter will unlock

[@Blackwoodcwc]

Yes, it needs to be bought 10 times over all unseeded runs before it is available at all. Then, after it is unlocked overall, in each specific run, it will only appear if the blank voucher is bought first. ie: 10 unseeded runs where you buy it removes the lock from the collection, but in each run thereafter you still need blank voucher before antimatter will show up in that run.

[@unflushablepoo8243]

@@Blackwoodcwcfun fact: you can save scum to unlock antimatter quickly by buying then exiting to main menu, reloading and buying again.

[@demonqiqi]

One thing from me, the joker that double the possibilities also double the blind that has the 1 in 7 card dawn face down possibilities

[@memekat10]

i learned today that misprint will show the top card in your deck for a brief moment in its flashing. it’ll be formatted like this: @10C = 10 of clubs @8D = 8 of diamonds

[@siweq1986]

One thing i learned today is that when you buy something from shop and then overstock voucher whole shop will be restocked without paying for reroll.

[@SEgrin28]

I played a Royal Flush against a "You can only play one type of hand" boss. I got excited and realized my mistake too late hahaha

[@hexacryonic2323]

Something else: The definitions the game gives to Straight Flush, Flush House, and Flush Five are wrong. They track if you have a Straight and a Flush, a Full House and a Flush, and a Five of a Kind and a Flush in the same played hand, respectively. Why is this distinction important? Well, Four Fingers lets you play a Flush with only four cards, so your fifth card can complete the requisite secondary hand without contributing to the Flush!

[@ValkyRiver]

Example: 7♣ 7♣ 8♣ 8♣ 8♥ would qualify as a Flush House when one has the Four Fingers joker.

[@aetherarcanist4819]

that's correct! and if I remember correctly, a hand like A❤ K❤ Q❤ J❤ + Stone will still count as a Royal Flush

[@Ashebrethafe]

Four Fingers also lets you play four-card Straights, doesn’t it? So A❤ K❤ Q❤ J♠️ 7❤ would also count as a Royal Flush.

[@omegahaxors9-11]

Extremely powerful hidden detail: Jokers can be rearranged during a hand. Once before playing the hand and once after it's played. You can arrange a scoring arrangement before playing and then while it's scoring rearrange it for effects that go off after the hand. This can be used to extreme effect with gold cards allowing you to both gain the benefits of max score while also gaining hella econ.

[@ZainoTVLive]

Was just using this on steam today, great point.

[@DrMonty-ng5fo]

Not really. It only works with Mime and Gold cards/blue seals. That's the only time it works.

[@emeraldnickel]

5:00 extra clarification: only BASE EDITION jokers will turn to foil/negative/polychrome/holographic. If your next shop has a foil joker and a holographic joker naturally, you won’t lose a tag and neither will change until you find or reroll into a joker that doesn’t have an edition.

[@jdblick1002]

Wow! A genuinely helpful Balatro tips guide that covers game mechanics, just what I wanted. Most videos seem to be the exact same basic tips like 'go into the settings and you can alter card colors and speed up the game', or 'jokers work from left to right'. Thanks 😄

[@pentbot]

The sell price of Jokers/consumables is based on your current shop discount you have attained through those vouchers - i.e. if you want to sell something and buy that voucher, I recomend selling first, then buying the voucher.

[@AWanderingSwordsman]

Maybe this isn't super hidden but one thing I found really helpful was swapping between rank and suit to deduce which cards are flipped over in some of the boss blinds. Especially helpful on checkered deck where you can almost always figure out how many of each suit you have so long you have 1-2 cards showing.

[@ZainoTVLive]

Good point! I'm making a follow up and maybe letting people know the suits go Spade, Heart, Club, Diamonds would help

[@TheTundraTerror]

If you get Bluestorm combo, you can save yourself some headache by having them look at each other on the farthest right and they're copy the left most card. Makes micro easier. Also, Jokers that gives chips when your played hand contains X count retrograde. So, playing 4 of a kind will also give pair and three of a kind.

[@ammakko]

Certain bosses make you draw cards face down. You can still order them by suit or value to guess what they are. You can also modify them, with a tarot for example. When you modify a card it flips twice, so you can briefly see it face up!

[@kwirkLA]

I got the cavendish joker so early on in my time with the game I didn't know it was connected to the gros card, and it's been so long ago I forgot it was a 3x mult card and/or didnt realize how powerful it was at the time. I'll buy those bananas more often now thanks to this, lol

[@ohay12]

oh my god Stone Joker is the only non-legendary joker I still haven't discovered after about 100 hours, thank you so much for #3 I've been tearing my hair out wondering why I haven't been able to spawn it (outside of the Medusa challenge, which doesn't count for unlocks)

[@ZainoTVLive]

Glad I could help! I found this out on accident from Reddit the other day.

[@NaudaBase]

90 hours in, same situation ; I'm missing Yorick and Stone joker. The mystery is finally explained here.

[@enanta7]

How can I discover zhe stone joker?

[@NubTactics]

An addendum/exception to Mechanic 5 that should be noted: For the flower pot joker, which requires you to play a hand with 1 of each suit, multi-suited cards can only count for one suit at a time. So, if you have a flush with 4 hearts and a wild card, flower pot won't trigger just because you have the wild card, because in this specific scenario, the wild card doesn't count as all 4 suits. However, if you have 2 spades, one heart, one diamond, and a wild card in your played hand (and they all score), the wild card will auto-correct to the club suit that you're missing which satisfies the condition for flower pot. Funnily enough, if you do manage to play a flush with 5 wild cards, it *should* trigger flower pot-though I haven't tried this personally.

[@sol_ARG]

Royal Flush being scored separately from Flushes and Straight Flushes straight-up saved my Rich Get Richer challenge run once -- i'd managed to spec heavily into a Flush deck at the time and then run into the Ox blind, but was able to beat the blind without having my chips disappear by playing a Flush House and then Royal Flush.

[@ZainoTVLive]

GOAT. That's awesome

[@CrimsonFlameRTR]

Royal Flush is *not* scored differently than a straight flush.

[@sol_ARG]

@@CrimsonFlameRTR bad wording on my part - it isn't scored differently, but it's considered a different hand type. or at least was at the time this comment was written

[@Rikolus8383]

I'm a more casual player. But appreciate the brilliance of this game, because it can be a challenge for advanced players trying to win at very high levels. But likewise, people like me can be thrilled to just get a level White 8-Ante Standard WIN. Great video and very interesting Comments section for additional tips!

[@hexacryonic2323]

A tip regarding interactions that can only be done on Black Stake and higher and in some Challenges: Madness cannot delete Eternal jokers, but it will still gain + x0.5 Mult. You can see how broken this can get. If you want to use Ceremonial Dagger with full Joker storage without micromanaging it (like if you have multiplicative Mult boosters at the end), you can place an Eternal joker in between it and the other cards to its right.

[@nishiki2753]

Another interesting interaction i found out last night, the Four Fingers joker can make straight flushes without them being an actual straight flush. As long as 4 of the cards you play are same suit, and 4 cards are straight, it counts. For example: 4H 5H 6H 7C 10H is a straight flush, you have 4 hearts and separately 4 consecutive cards.

[@vitorluiz7538]

I believe the higher the Ante the greater the chance to find playing cards with seals/editions/enhancements in packs.

[@ZainoTVLive]

I need to look into this more.

[@vitorluiz7538]

@@ZainoTVLive looking more into it I think I was mistaken. Oh well.

[@mrlucasftw42]

LOL - I got a natural royal flush surprisingly fast (I thought I was going to have to use a change 3 cards to one suit tarot to pull it off). Shucks that it didn't do anything special.

[@SillySillygoose_]

Well, the first one is indirectly told by showman description, but not really much

[@ZainoTVLive]

Hey All! What hidden mechanic do I need to cover next time & what tutorial video would you love to see next?!

[@tomericksen154]

how about the best left to right order for various jokers/cards to trigger?

[@ohay12]

I think a quick addition to #10 is that Mail-in Rebate, which selects a random rank each round, is also weighted by your current deck composition. I had an endless run with an entire deck of kings and I was able to use that plus a Blueprint to consistently generate $90 a round before playing my winning hand. The wiki also says that Castle's suit selection is weighted by deck composition, so it seems like Ancient Joker is a specific exception to the rule (maybe because it would have been seen as too powerful with Checkered Deck?)

[@ZainoTVLive]

@@tomericksen154 I've covered this a bit in other videos, but can make a "Basics of a hand" video where we talk through this.

[@ZainoTVLive]

@@ohay12 Oh very true, I had this written down in the script but forgot to get to it while recording. 100% will mention in the next video, but its a great tip!

[@alexB-nd7xt]

you can move mime after you click play hand so that you get maximum retriggers on gold cards, its a gamechanger for the economy if you need to copy another joker for scoring

[@MytzerL]

I love this game but i suck at it. I cannot understand how you can modify your deck so much in order to get all your card in the deck to be Kings, for example. Any ideas of doing a video on how to properly build a deck during a run? Or maybe i've missed this kind of video...

[@ZainoTVLive]

Its on the channel! kzbin.info/www/bejne/bKTZi4NorcSAgJo

[@ValkyRiver]

Question: is it true that stone cards actually have a “hidden” rank and suit that isn’t usually visible? Roffle Lite managed to get a stone straight in one of his runs.

[@ZainoTVLive]

Yes, but I believe they don't count as the suit underneath, while stone. That seems like a bug/accident or Roffle had four fingers. i.e. I have changed a king to stone, played it with 4 other kings and it was still four-of-a-kind, I changed it back and it was still that king.

[@FireKing003]

I don’t know if this has been updated in the last month considering this video came in last month for me, but ancient is now it’s not waited, but if you don’t have that Suit it does not show it you’re playing checkered. It has no chance of showing the clubs or diamonds.

[@frqctal2601]

I think one interesting thing about wild cards is that they dont immediately trigger flower pot if you just trigger one (which one might expect considering it is technically all 4 suits) you still need 4 cards scoring that can count as different suits

[@Erlewyn]

Oh, I was wondering about that, but never managed to have both at the same time to try it out 😅

[@Alorand]

If a Wildcard is every suit at once, can one Wildcard high card turn on a Flower Pot's xMult, or can it not count as two suits at once?

[@ZainoTVLive]

Cant be two at once :(

[@Alorand]

@@ZainoTVLive Thanks for your prompt reply. Love your content. It might make a Balatro newbie like me decent - eventually... Until then I'll keep holding "R"

[@annonymous7112]

We need to know how the played cards and jokers have to be sorted please !!!

[@lauramay0589]

Nice one! Been playing a few weeks and a few things in here I didn't know/hadn't really thought about. Super useful 👍 One I don't really get is antimatter. Do you have to take 10 blanks total first? Then also get it in the same run you want antimatter ?

[@marktheslug]

Once you’ve purchased a blank voucher 10 times (across all your games, not just the one you’re playing), you’ve unlocked the antimatter voucher.

[@lauramay0589]

@@marktheslug awesome, thanks!

[@ZainoTVLive]

The 10 is to unlock it on your profile. Then, in future runs you need to buy blank voucher once to unlock the possibility of anti matter showing up in the shop for that run!

[@lauramay0589]

@@ZainoTVLive brilliant, cheers for that!

[@marktheslug]

@@ZainoTVLive - Thank you for the clarification! I didn’t realize a blank voucher had to be bought to unlock it on a per-game basis as well. I appreciate the heads-up.

[@Alluvian567]

I was hoping to find tags explained here. Ended up going to the wiki to see them explained. I may have missed it, but I just started and I never saw tags explained at all in any tutorial form.

[@ZainoTVLive]

My first ever video should have gone over them a bit, but they can be confusing.

[@PatrickBrophy]

I’ve played 100 hours all the way up to purple stakes so far and still have never seen Cavendish pop up once for me.

[@ZainoTVLive]

Yeah unless you reroll a lot of get Gros Michel early, it's not super likely

[@finlay9260]

For mechanic #3, do you know if, after having e.g. 1 glass card in your deck, but losing it again, the glass joker can still spawn? Aka. does it check if you have a glass card in your deck, or does it only check if you've had a glass card in your deck this run?

[@ZainoTVLive]

I do not know for sure, but I think it can still appear.

[@RajaGSD]

I somehow unlocked a release of every single card and I had just started playing so I said yes…is this common? After about several hours of play

[@ZainoTVLive]

That means you can earn achievements on that profile, you can make a new one where you start from fresh

[@pg-erk3938]

Goated video

[@repo126]

Once this comes out on iOS I’m gonna have a real problem on my hands.

[@warmachine68]

These are great tips. Thanks

[@ZainoTVLive]

You are so welcome!

[@mr.blonde5344]

This game is about to push me into a murderous rampage.

[@frayzard]

Stupid caveat of wild cards: They don't count for the flower pot joker. You still need to play a card of each suit to trigger it, you can't just play a single wild card to get value from it. They also don't count as the 4th suit- for example, if I play 4 of a kind but one of the cards is a wild card, it won't count itself as the last suit needed for the pot UNLESS underneath the wild card enhancement it was already the 4th suit needed. It's stupid

[@xBinyWolf]

fun fact 1 of 1000 of cavendish it's not a joke. I lost a run.

[@kwerner]

Always bet on banana 🍌

[@TheGooGaming]

Great short vid; just wanted to say Ouija is pronounced "weegee" before more ppl annoy you about it 👍

[@ZainoTVLive]

What about Oie-Jah? XD

[@ama1319]

I am 90% sure that all jokers that changes it effect per round based on rank/suit work like the idol.

[@ZainoTVLive]

Except Ancient Joker, but I believe all else work like idol, correct.

[@ama1319]

Yep just did a run to check. Ancient joker seems to be seeded in the order of suits it works with, maybe some super niche high score seeded tech. And cards that are that are the same suit and rank have a set order they will appear in hand (i.e. if you, hypothetically, had a deck of 52 10's of spades and made the ones on the left playing enhancements and the ones on the right holding enhancements you can have some very narrow face down tech [7LB2WVPK]). And... what was- oh yeah making cards wild doesn't seem to have any effect on castle. And there was one more... ph yeah super minor to do list is also not weighted and will ask for hands that are impossible for a deck (figured but it was worth a quick check.) But anyway the idol, the castle, and mail in rebate randomly select a card in the deck, and ancient joker and to do list grab a random available hand... variable, whatever And had a hunch and checked and yes the order that cards of the same suit and rank appear in hand is the same as how they appear in view deck.

[@Linck192]

It's a shame the game doesn't tell these mechanics to the player

[@vote4peter]

I like your voice. Can you be my dad?

[@christopherknowles]

The narrator sounds AI generated.

[@ZainoTVLive]

I can assure you I am not AI

[@christopherknowles]

@@ZainoTVLive the only way to prove you are human and not an ai is for you to say a racial slur.

[@vedgsesh]

​@@ZainoTVLive I think its because you prounce some things oddly, like "oh-we-juh" instead of "we-gee" for Ouija.

[@ZainoTVLive]

@@vedgsesh Yeah Im just dumb

[@Itz_Verius]

all these are SECRET mechanics? man u just need to pay attention to what ur doing on the game... i had less than 5 hours in the game when i learned all these just by trying stuff... dislike for tryingg to monetize this useless video

[@docrock3234]

Great video👍

[@docrock3234]

I wish they made a reskin of this game, or maybe someone else could came along and rip this game off and give it a different theme… I love pretty much everything about this game, but I like knock offs too… what I’m saying is they should make their own alien cards and ditch the earth cards. 😯☝️or Make full skin overhauls… multiple reskins, hieroglyphics, tarot as the main deck, maybe Japanese words and shit… anything that would look foreign and scary to old people… or any outsider…. Basically anything that makes me look smart to people who don’t know what the fuck I’m doing . Anybody know if they are taking this game to the next level?

[@ZainoTVLive]

There are a lot of skin overhaul mods on the official discord!

[@docrock3234]

Raspberries! 😆burned by owning a console again.

[@docrock3234]

@@ZainoTVLive do you remember any skins overhauls they made off the top of your head?

[@ZainoTVLive]

@@docrock3234 Crimson Heart has a few /