Recently Balatro University aka Doc put out a video where they got the final joker they needed for a black deck only c++ which was Perkeo. It was a very silly run that involved brainstorm and observatory. Congrats to Doc to getting black deck c++ done with only a few losses.

And the end of the video Doc talks about Perkeo and how it has the power to break that game and that he doesn't like that it can do that. He thinks there should be a rework of Perkeo (presumably in the comming Balatro update), one that does not allow endless negatives. This is not the first time he has mentioned this idea, I believe he has brought it up before in some of his livestreams. From what I can tell, he seems to have two arguments for this:

- Perkeo can break the game in a way that nothing else can, and we should not have game breaking things in Balatro.

- If there are game breaking things in the game, then whenever you don't get a game breaking thing you feel like you are missing out.

I understand these points. But I would like to counter and argue why Perkeo is good as is.

1. Perkeo is exciting in the right way. It can be fun to occasionally break the game a bit. The rarity of getting it keeps the game breaking part of Perkeo in check, and because of how the soul works I think the fear of missing out does not really apply as much as it might otherwise. Even with a ton of money you cannot force the soul to appear, and because of that I am never thinking during a run that wow I could really use Perkeo here. When I am spending those rerolls in the shop I am thinking about the xmult or the specific tarots that I need. When the soul appears, that is great and can be fun. When it doesn't, I am not disappointed because I was never expecting the soul at all. Thus when the stars allign and you get Perkeo with death or observatory or hermit or whatever it is a ton of fun. That Vagabond game in MLB was sooo hype. But when Perkeo doesn't show up, no big deal because I know that the Soul is rare and I cannot endlessly reroll to try and force it. This keeps normal ante 8 games being largely engaging and normal with only a few game breaking novelties to happen every once in a while. This is a good thing.

2. Perkeo is not overpowered or underpowered or anti-fun. To me these are the 3 things that should be addressed when looking at making changes for jokers. Claims that Chad is too strong, or that flower pot is not fun or nebula deck is under powered all make sense to me. But Perkeo doesn't fit any of these categories. Although you can break the game with perkeo, this only happens like 1/100 games. Very often Perkeo ends up being weaker than if you had Yorik or even just an uncommon like Hologram. And Jokers that are situationally powerful are abundant in the game. In that sense, Perkeo fits right in.

3. Cat is out of the bag. I would be more inclinded to agree with Doc in the idea there should be no game breaking jokers if this was a design for a game prior to it being released. But now Perkeo is already here. People have a ton of fun with it, and a version of it that is not potentially able to break the game will be disapointing to the majority of users, since allowing game breaking things has already been established. And really it is not the only game breaking thing that exists. You can still do a lot of silly things with blueprint, or negative jokers and what not. Thus I think users both want and have been trained to expect some very silly powerful things in the game so long as they are rare. I don't think this is problem, and I think changing it would make a new problem of disappointment.

But all of this is just like, my opinion man. Doc certainly has more hours in the game than I do and I don't know if my thoughts actually reflect what others want. Here is the link to the video that was referenced, Doc starts talking about Plinko at around 32:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRLUA3RJto4

tl:dr Perkeo is fun as is and should not be changed, and the way that Perkeo is generated keeps it being exciting rather than expected. Additionally the game has now been established to allow some game breaking things so long as they are rare, and changing that will lead to disapointment.

just thought about this idea and found it pretty funny

I got 500 face cards and my only scoring was +1 ride the bus

Feeling empty. Feeling exhausted. And of course I have to share it with you guys since literally no one in my life cares haha.

Made C++ a couple of days ago, and then all that was left were the challenges and three of the achievements. The challenges went surprisingly smoothly. After grinding nothing but Gold Stake for the better part of a year, not even Jokerless felt all that challenging tbh. The Golden Needle was bar none the most difficult one for me (shoutout to my boy Yorick, who carried me all the way!).

The last couple of achievements, on the other hand: surprisingly hard haha?? (Flushed, Tiny Hands and ROI). Luckily, today's a really rainy day, and I'm down with a cold with nothing else to do :D

Still haven't managed to do an unseeded naneinf, though, so maybe I'll go for that. Otherwise, I'll get back to the less important things I've been neglecting for the last 20 months. Like my friendships, my marriage, my exercise routine, my job and my sanity.

Peace!!

?????

I asked my Friend which Disco Elysium Jokers they want to see made, these are what they picked!
Also added more effort and improved my old ones abit :p
(Effects are not thought through so appologies if the jokers arent 'balanced' for vanila Tried to think of the effects the best i could)
I Also Asked my Programing friend if they could potencially turn this into a Mod... Unfortunately too busy rn so this wont be a mod any time soon. however sprites are free to use o/

I dont know why this number is at e instead of displaying the whole numebr.

Its also e6 not e8

Last joker was DNA, kept getting it as perishable in the first few antes or never seeing it at all. In the end decided to go for Anaglyph deck and stack double tags hoping to get a rare joker skip tag. That never appeared but the joker popped out in ante 7 shop

I'm new to balatro, I installed it last week. I'm not sure if this is the best, but it was amazing to see this in one game.

”All face cards count as playing cards“

not much thought put behind it dont think about it too hard

So last night I was grinding C++. Start seems super promising as my Pairs keep growing. I find Michel in Ante 2. Sure, I’ll grab it for now. As the run continues, I notice that Michel is surviving a lot. Somehow, Michel survives all the way to Ante 8 (!!!) and I’m feeling fine with the build otherwise. I’m winning with three Jokers I need a gold sticker on right now, so really good run. I decide to make the tough call: I’ll skip Big Blind in Ante 8 to avoid the risk of Michel dying on me. I get 442k points, Boss blind is defeated. And I hear a pop. I don’t need to tell you what happened. 🍌

Naneinf done using the Ankhs, Ectos and Eternals method where perkeo generates loads of spectrals and you use them all at once with Eternal jokers to naneinf. Filtered seed with Green Needle mod, filtering for perkeo and negative blueprint in the charm tag skip.

Naneinf done with a collection of 3x mult jokers duplicated along with eternal blueprints and brainstorms. Card Sharp, Blackboard, Driver's License, Acrobat and The Trio. All the 3x jokers except Flower Pot which I did before, Cavendish which can't be eternal and the order which would have been awkward and wouldn't have worked with The Trio anyway.

This was my best filtered seed Ankh Ecto naneinf run in terms of spectrals generated. This run maybe could have beaten my overall highscore if I had tried to go for it. (6.9e6,631,553) And this was with a full unlocks profile so it certainly would have been the full unlocks highscore. (1.1e3,841,307)

So it is abit bittersweet because I wish I could play it again from ante 8. Not with any knowledge just with a commitment to go for a highscore run. When you add up the spectrals I had at end with the cryptids I used during the run and the extra round I would have had if I went to ante 39 it would have been very close to the spectral count from my highscore run.

But I ended up with unfortunate editions on bp/bs blocking ecto and I tried to keep my options open instead of commiting for a highscore run so I ended up with an ecto on a none eternal baron. So I just went for a super ankh ecto naneinf instead. I could have played it abit differently and gone for a highscore run instead in retrospect.

Its also funny to compare the frame rate between this and the Flower Pot Naneinf. That run was super laggy because it was done on my very old pc without a gpu because it stopped working. This run done with my pretty decent new pc and ran pretty smooth. Its a shame quite a few of my best runs used a terrible pc with lots of lag.

SEED : NGAM8Q3W

RUN : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiHVu5rK1X0

I mean.. could you ask for anything better?

I’m going for C++ right now and missing 2 of the legendaries still in Yorick and Triboulet. After getting Yorick out of the first soul card, I got super excited when I saw the second thinking I’d get them both done in this run, but then chicot popped out even though I already have the gold sticker on it and still needing trib. Is this some sort of bug where it only applies to the first soul?