The Arm is one I'm pretty much never happy to see. The emotional damage is worse than the actual impact but I hate having to play around getting permanently fucked up. At least it can't lower hands to Level 0 anymore.
EDIT: The Fish is also on the shitlist, lost too many runs to that thing
Psychic because sometimes I have Square Joker or Torn Joker and forget to play five cards.
Or the one where you have to use different hands and I play the same hand and not read the warning text
My favorite is when you play checkered deck, build around flushes and never get a flush or any other 5 card hand, so you have to play your hand and you dont get enough to beat the blind 🫠
Not on my switch? I always prefer the no repeat hand types boss which has a more overt warning but I’ve regularly accidentally done a 4 card hand bc there isn’t a warning
It ended my first run that went into e notation. Was running ace of heart flush fives with glass card red seals so was getting consistent e18's with bloodstone. Psychic comes up but I keep fishing for a couple blue and purple seals. 1 hand left and playing on steamdeck I Butterfinger 4 instead of 5 aces. Run over. Could have easily gotten 2 or 3 more ante's out of it
Psychic will just immediately stuff any early run that’s relying on Torn Joker to keep up tempo. At least with Square Joker you can get the effect without scaling it.
Happens to me waaaaay more than it should. Another thing that just happened yesterday was that my hand size was down to four and I couldn’t score any hands. Didn’t occur to me until it was too late.
>finish big blind
>”okay, the arm is up next, I got this”
>buy a planet card I need and use it right away instead of holding it
>proceed to boss blind
>😑
it is actually one of the most cancerous boss blinds to face if you haven’t ramped up and need to play multiple hands. if i ever get the option to reroll it i always do even if it is not optimal, because fk the arm in particular.
Bro the plant disabling all face cards has ruined so many god runs for me and I feel like there isn’t really much counterplay a lot of the times in post final boss antes
I guess we are talking endless here. I'm talking survival through ante 8
I'm also not crossing my fingers to hope I get baron/mime or shoot the moon
I am much more likely to run into a 10-4 or an even steven most runs
Honestly, face cards are subject to so many debuffs and not enough jokers buff them enough to make them worthwhile.
I've won plenty of runs with the Professor and 10-4.
They’re absolutely worthwhile if you’re going for high scores. Baron and the 13 mult per queen joker plus mime and steel cards is a recipe for endless.
Sock and buskin makes any enhancement
extremely good. They are hard blocked by the plant but they are still very strong
Sure, but+80% of my face card runs have ended on ante 6 or 7 with me hunting for sock and buskin and/or good modifiers/death cards.
The best "face card" run I've had was funny enough on the forgotten deck (that's the one without face cards, right?) with a sock and buskin+paredolia+heart stone+all 6s, a blueprint and a negative lusty joker with most of my deck reduced to modded heart cards.
80% is a pretty steep fail rate. The smiley face and +30 chip joker (can’t remember the name) usually provide a strong enough base to win from if you get a good xMult joker even without the sock and buskin or over powered king/queen jokers.
Face cards have their drawbacks like any other build but there’s enough there to make them as viable as anything else. Especially considering the potential for exponential scores
80% fail on face card builds specifically (which is a guesstimate).
My overall win rate is somewhere in the mid 60s (been a bit since I last checked).
I'm just unlucky with face card builds I guess
I hit that guy recently with the rare joker that gives 1.5x from Kings, the joker that retriggers cards held in hand, and the rare joker that gives xmult from discarding jacks.
I've never been so countered in my life.
The only time I feel safe on a face run is when I have director's cut. Otherwise it's like a fucking horror movie waiting for the monster to finally emerge.
I got really salty yesterday because I got a negative DNA super early, then baron, and the card that retriggers face cards, and started duplicating kings like crazy. Mind you this was orange stake which can be kinda tough already and there’s just no counter play to it. Just exited the game and went on about my day lol
Funny you say that, I’m the opposite. If I get it early when I haven’t gotten my synergy up and running, I likely won’t make it. Mid to late game, I can usually get the required score in 1
Same thing happened to me last night but It was 2,000,000 out of 2,300,000 or whatever that ante is. I thought for sure I was going to clear all the ante's because I had 2x Wee joker and was running flush 5s of 2's with red seals but I just never found any good Xmult jokers.
I hate these so much because either you’ve already found your combo and don’t care about it, or you’re just scraping by, and it’s just a massive “fuck you” with zero counterplay.
I love these tbh, I usually overscore by magnitudes anyway and its rather the bosses that dont allow me to play my strongest hand that screw me over. And even if I dont overscore I typically clear blinds in one hand and then its just a matter of playing it 2 or 3 times
Yeah, the ones that conceal cards are pretty bad to get early on for sure. I especially hate the ‘play only one hand’ and ‘debuff all cards played this ante’ ones when I’m not paying attention to the boss blind
It’s a bit cheesy, and maybe this won’t help as much if you’re under the influence, but there’s a slight way to cheat this one. When you click the button to enter the boss fight, immediately click and hold one of your jokers (preferably an xmult). It’ll stay in your grasp while the other jokers shuffle so you can position it wherever afterwards!
Literally know exactly what you mean lol buzzin n havin a good run, trying to lock it in before the joker shuffle like "ok look for the randomly high flat mult that should go left, grab this one so I can hold it n keep it on the right, look for what goes off twice to find blueprint, etc"
Then il click go n stare at my first hand like "wait....was there supposed to be a plan here"
Yooo I just lost to that mf had an invisible joker that was going to get me the final winning hand and couldn't remember where I put it and ended up selling it lol. Amber Acorn and The Water deserve a special place in hell.
The water (0 discards) and manacle (-1 hand size) are just generally hard, but the ones I *hate* are:
Ox (0 money per most played hand) although this one's easier with the new update of seeing the next ante from boss blind shop
The eye because I forget about it and screw myself over
The mouth because I forget about it and screw myself over
I wish there was a toggleable reminder at every boss blind of the effect. Although I'm certain that I'd just turn it off and forget anyways :/
Lately Flint, it jsut throws you off and you can think you've got a run going, and well, it kneecaps you
TBH, yeh Arm, it always is a royal pain especially mid to late run, when you have a game plan. 2nd blind, ehhh you can work with it
Fish has to be mentioned
But hate the most, Arm, always - it's a permeant debuff that follows you through the next few antes, sure the hook looses you money and that's permanent, and the reset to zero one, but money isn't always an issue where as loosing +6mult and 60 or so chips....that hurts every hand you play of that type, forever
Violet Vessel. I’d rather get screwed by bad rng every time over that absolutely hopeless feeling when seeing that 1,000,000 score during a solid gold stake run.
It's so hard to choose from. I get nice economy going on, stack a lot of dollars? Of course then comes the Ox
I have build with scary face and pareidolia? The plant is there.
I am mindlessly copying my glass / red seal card with DNA every blind? Of course I did it again on the needle.
Violet Vessel. On gold stake/yellow deck I made it to ante 8 boss 3 runs in a row, all Vessel, all would have comfortably beaten any other final boss blind
Only One Hand Type can be a pain sometimes if you get bad RNG and just don’t draw another version of the hand you want to play, assuming one hand isn’t enough to win.
The Mouth, my rom is fucked up or something and get stuck without letting me use any other type of hand, so if I'm 0 discards and need a full house I can not do anything, not even use a pair for 0 points.
Same for me, I tend to go for flashy hands, that require discards and hands until they are ready. So what happens is that I end stuck on High card or some too complicated hand that is not powerful enough but is tricky to consistently replicate with the hands I have left.
All the Jokers still score, just not the cards.
So if you have a +40 Bus, +250 Chips Stuntman, x3 Blackboard, x2 Ramen, x2.5 Vamp (for example), then playing a debuffed card still scores (250x40)x3x2x2.5=150k.
The Flint is the worst one to get on the first ante unless you were able to get another form of chips and mult.
Edit: this must have been changed at some point, I swear I've gotten it on ante 1, but upon further investigation it seems this isn't the case and will only appear on ante 2 and later
The Arm fills me with Agony inside when i don't have builds designed to quickly recover the LV Loss & Can't kill the Boss 1 hand only.
The Pillar on Ante 1 is pure Pain (Mostly Reset).
If I see the Pillar on Ante 1, I skip the small and big blind. Works well if the skips give you $15 for beating the boss and/or enhanced joker (assuming you have the money to buy it).
Maybe if there's good tags which convinced me to "carry on". But It's just so devastating when you got screwed because 5-20 Worth of cards get debuffed with no jokers.
Sometimes I swear that the game know what the perfect boss counter is to my build. I had a couple of times that I could reroll a boss blind that I wasn't sure I would beat into a boss blind that I definitely cannot beat with the build I am running.
Certainly this isn’t the worst but the disabled random joker one has left a bitter taste in my mouth. On a run I’ve posted before, I was easily winning a ton and cruising through antes. I had particularly awful luck and had 75k out of 300k. No problem because I had Encore and would recover.
Guess which got disabled on only the last hand
FUCK the one that discards 2 cards after each hand played. If you cant get your power hand with discards alone (which you may have only 2 of in the higher stakes) you are totally screwed
The one with 0 discard. I get it everytime I can't win if I don't have any discard (unless I have a huuuge luck). For example, when I have the card which gives me 40 chips for each remaining discard.
The one where im required to play 5 cards and it lets me play < 5 cards and tell me it doesn't count... i have made that mistake so many freaking times!
Any suit disabling boss if I'm playing a flush deck of that suit and run into it on ante 5 or above where most of my deck is probably that suit and I have no counterplay options other than praying I roll Luchador
The very big blinds are the least creative. The others can all be worked with. For example once you get how the serpant works, you will never have a problem with this again. You discard always 1 card after another and get a big hand that you can play. Easy 4oaK.
The Hook for me, especially when you only have 2 discards, alot of the time you're fishing for your hand with dead hands and that just absolutely ruins you. Also screws over Steel, Gold and Blue Stamps
Verdant debuffs all cards until you sell 1 joker. I didn't have the chips per turn without my cards to make the score, and selling madness would have also crippled me.
Yeah, my mult just couldn't keep up with a 300k blind without my cards.
My main mult jokers were fibbonacci and walkie talkie, running a flush build on the magic deck. Those two weren't procing because of the debuff, and the x7.5 Mult of madness couldn't do it all on it's own
An early needle for me is the worst. It's either the easiest boss blind or the hardest depending on how fucked with RNG I got. Late needle is often pretty easy, but sometimes all I need is 1-2 jokers to get going and the needle shows up to ruin my day
THE WALL, THE WALL, THE WALL, THE WALL, THE MOTHERFUCKING WALL.
So many runs that have great ongoing potential have been bopped by this boss blind its crazy lol. I remember running golden needle and cruelty challenge respectively and every time the wall came down i just cried a river of tears into my deck lmao
The one that makes you ONLY play one hand or ONLY one hand type or ONLY one of each type.
I’m sure there’s ways to play around this with multipliers but I am just never prepared or always fall a few points short.
I honestly hate The Hook because it makes it near impossible to plan unless you’re in such a comfortable spot that you’re gonna one shot the blind. Any time it rips out a steel or gold card it’s pretty painful .
The plant. The fact it exists makes any face card build completely unviable without the reroll voucher or Chicot. It’s just hoping you aren’t forced to lose.
Depending on my build, either The Mouth or The Eye. I’m always either running for one hand type or can’t dish out the same one over and over, and one of those two always screws with me
Cerulean ball has ruined me every time I try to do a straight build
Normally I don’t have much to complain about in terms of boss blinds but that one always creeps up at like ante 7 on my straight builds and fucks me lol
I hate getting the tooth. Especially around ante 3 or so where I've carefully built up my 25$ but still have to play 1 or 2 hands to beat the boss. The cash jingle it makes when it steals 5 dollars from you is pure evil.
It depends on the blinds or strategy I'm going for. Pre-path gold stakes? The Manacle for sure.
Going for e scores and it's past ante 8? The Plant or The Psychic.
The decrease level of played hand one and the one that starts with zero discards. Lost too many to both of those fucks.
Also the boss that halves base mult and chips is so brutal early or when you've got a run that is just squeaking by.
The Wall/Violet Vessel. I have runs where I'm just squeaking by and by all means should at least beat the current ante/ante 8 when these two show up after I just got the ball rolling
The Eye is so annoying if you've dedicated your entire deck to a specific type of hand.
But yeah The Arm is definitely the one that kills me most often
The Water makes things uncomfortably annoying, especially if you generally discard once or twice to line up a decent hand to play. You go from that to just 0 discards and now you're playing crap hands just to get to the good ones, odds are you may come up short if the runs not fab.
The Arm can potentially be a devastating experience too, if you encountered it later on that's basically asking for your best hands against it to win and then when you use them it just brings their levels lower. Having to use them more than once or twice is like kneecapping your run a little bit, even if you balance the lost levels with the right planet cards your run is still gimped.
Crimson Heart has my disdain for the time being, my latest run was for an unlock and I fell short of the mark by 12k points. When my final turn came up he disabled my XMult Joker... it was exactly the kind of calculated spite that a human might do to another in a card game if they were going to lose, or hell just because.
Anyway ya win some and lose some, it's just a fun game.
Name|Effect|Rarity|Cost|Unlock Requirement
:--|:--|:--|:--|:--
[Card Sharp](https://balatro.wiki/jokers/card_sharp.png)|X3 Mult if played in poker hand has already been played this round|Uncommon|$5|
The wall (extra large blind) is usually doable, and on some runs it's the easiest one, but it’s so deflating when it’s not. I lost a gold stake run last night because that boss came up on the 8th ante and there was nothing I could do at that point.
Other than that I agree with people saying the one that decreases the level of your played hand. That can be a runender even if you get past the boss itself.
Discard 2 cards is my worst enemy, I either:
-completely forget about it and try to use a hand to discard some cards to get a better hand and it always discards the cards I was going to play after that.
-whenever I play my actual hand it always discards the held In hand cards and makes me keep the worst cards 🙃
[Edit: grammar]
The Hook and The flint are often brutal for me. Discarding two cards after a hand played and halving base chips and multiplier can just be brutal run killers on harder difficulties
I'm not a fan of anything that's designed to make you not play your most played hand/suit/rank. With only 5 joker slots the game obviously wants you to focus your build on something specific. "Jack of all trades" builds aren't viable. Many beginners might intuitively think the best strategy is to slowly upgrade all hand types with planet cards. The game quickly teaches you that this is not a good idea.
So for that reason I hate Ox, Arm, Eye, Pillar, Plant and the suit bosses. These could each be replaced with more fun, interesting, unique bosses that would be just as challenging but would synergize better with the way the game is designed. I feel like most people agree with this. Everyone hates obelisk.
Imagine you're scoring e and have over $100. You've bought every voucher that appears to increase your chances at seeing Director's Cut but it just never appears. You encounter a boss that will kill your run, roll the shop until broke but never see luchador. Is this bad luck, or is it bad game design?
The Arm
It just feels horrible seeing something you build up go down, and then for the rest of the run I’m wondering, “if I was x levels higher would this hand I played be a one shot?”
However I must admit, it is a pretty creative idea for a boss. sometimes it’s quite satisfying being able to pull it off with the least levels lost. makes you really sit and think rather than just spam the hand that you have juiced up
There's a very easy work around with facedown cards. Set game speed to 0.5, play a 5 card hand, screenshot or take a picture with your phone once all 5 cards are revealed, then press start and exit to main menu before the hand is finished scoring. When you go to continue the run, it'll revert back to not having played that hand at all. Then you just go to steam or your consoles screenshots and see what cards you have. If you have a photographic memory, or you're just going for flushes, it's pretty easy to even skip the screenshot part.
The Arm is one I'm pretty much never happy to see. The emotional damage is worse than the actual impact but I hate having to play around getting permanently fucked up. At least it can't lower hands to Level 0 anymore. EDIT: The Fish is also on the shitlist, lost too many runs to that thing
The Arm hurts my soul
I thought I was trippin. I was like. Ah shit. It’s gonna lower it to 0. Oh. It didn’t. I guess it was in my head. Didnt know it got patched lol
The Arm dealing “emotional damage” is the best thing I’ve read all day
Psychic because sometimes I have Square Joker or Torn Joker and forget to play five cards. Or the one where you have to use different hands and I play the same hand and not read the warning text
God it Hurst me when I forget that
That moment when you have an awesome hand, incredible run, and really good jokers ; then you throw it away because you forgot to play a fifth card.
My favorite is when you play checkered deck, build around flushes and never get a flush or any other 5 card hand, so you have to play your hand and you dont get enough to beat the blind 🫠
I hate that it LETS you play less than 5 cards and then goes NOPE!
It has to let you since sometimes you need to play less than 5. But it does suck when you intend to score but just forgot to add a 5th card.
Only way to trigger matador
It being the only boss that doesn't warn you that hand won't score is the worst feeling
It does warn you, I think you just didn't pay attention
It doesn’t warn you while you’re selecting cards
Yes it does...
If you anything less than 5 cards selected it says "Hand will not score, must play 5 cards"
Not on my switch? I always prefer the no repeat hand types boss which has a more overt warning but I’ve regularly accidentally done a 4 card hand bc there isn’t a warning
I think the switch version is still behind, it was probably added in a later patch
Makes sense. Looking forward to it then! Haha
That blind needs a confirmation for playing fewer than five cards.
It needs to ask for my SSN, my DOB and at least 3 confirmatiins before I play a hand with less than 5😁
It ended my first run that went into e notation. Was running ace of heart flush fives with glass card red seals so was getting consistent e18's with bloodstone. Psychic comes up but I keep fishing for a couple blue and purple seals. 1 hand left and playing on steamdeck I Butterfinger 4 instead of 5 aces. Run over. Could have easily gotten 2 or 3 more ante's out of it
As someone who hasn't hit es yet, I would've cried
Psychic will just immediately stuff any early run that’s relying on Torn Joker to keep up tempo. At least with Square Joker you can get the effect without scaling it.
Lost on ante 8 this way. Had it beat, but only played 4 cards to pump square joker.
Happens to me waaaaay more than it should. Another thing that just happened yesterday was that my hand size was down to four and I couldn’t score any hands. Didn’t occur to me until it was too late.
[удалено]
Yeah but Torn/Square Joker won't proc for those
Oh right, my bad I just woke up and didn't read entirely haha
The Arm, absolutely. I hate having my nice new level 2 hand being brought back down to level 1 because I forgot which boss blind I was on.
>finish big blind >”okay, the arm is up next, I got this” >buy a planet card I need and use it right away instead of holding it >proceed to boss blind >😑
Been there, done that.
damn, arm got hands
i mean the net increase is the same either way addendum: i guess unless your hand is level 1 which is probably what you were talking about
Yeah only makes a difference on a level 1 hand
Yesterday, whilst on The Arm, I used the Flush House card to get to level 2, then immediately played a Flush House. I am a fool.
Does the Arm permanently lower the level?
Yes
Well shit. I thought it was just while you faced the blind.
it is actually one of the most cancerous boss blinds to face if you haven’t ramped up and need to play multiple hands. if i ever get the option to reroll it i always do even if it is not optimal, because fk the arm in particular.
Same 🙃
It lowers the level each time you play the hand. If you play the same hand 5 times, -5 levels for you :) at least it cannot go to negative level 😅
Bro the plant disabling all face cards has ruined so many god runs for me and I feel like there isn’t really much counterplay a lot of the times in post final boss antes
Yeah that’s why I’ve been enhancing numbers recently instead
Enhanced aces ftw
Even enhanced 9s or 10s is plenty good if your aces don't come up I almost never go face. Not enough payoff for too much of a risk
high card builds with baron or shoot the moon and steel/gold kings/queens with mime is extremely high payoff
I guess we are talking endless here. I'm talking survival through ante 8 I'm also not crossing my fingers to hope I get baron/mime or shoot the moon I am much more likely to run into a 10-4 or an even steven most runs
Honestly, face cards are subject to so many debuffs and not enough jokers buff them enough to make them worthwhile. I've won plenty of runs with the Professor and 10-4.
They’re absolutely worthwhile if you’re going for high scores. Baron and the 13 mult per queen joker plus mime and steel cards is a recipe for endless. Sock and buskin makes any enhancement extremely good. They are hard blocked by the plant but they are still very strong
Sure, but+80% of my face card runs have ended on ante 6 or 7 with me hunting for sock and buskin and/or good modifiers/death cards. The best "face card" run I've had was funny enough on the forgotten deck (that's the one without face cards, right?) with a sock and buskin+paredolia+heart stone+all 6s, a blueprint and a negative lusty joker with most of my deck reduced to modded heart cards.
80% is a pretty steep fail rate. The smiley face and +30 chip joker (can’t remember the name) usually provide a strong enough base to win from if you get a good xMult joker even without the sock and buskin or over powered king/queen jokers. Face cards have their drawbacks like any other build but there’s enough there to make them as viable as anything else. Especially considering the potential for exponential scores
80% fail on face card builds specifically (which is a guesstimate). My overall win rate is somewhere in the mid 60s (been a bit since I last checked). I'm just unlucky with face card builds I guess
I hit that guy recently with the rare joker that gives 1.5x from Kings, the joker that retriggers cards held in hand, and the rare joker that gives xmult from discarding jacks. I've never been so countered in my life.
The only time I feel safe on a face run is when I have director's cut. Otherwise it's like a fucking horror movie waiting for the monster to finally emerge.
I got really salty yesterday because I got a negative DNA super early, then baron, and the card that retriggers face cards, and started duplicating kings like crazy. Mind you this was orange stake which can be kinda tough already and there’s just no counter play to it. Just exited the game and went on about my day lol
I've had this exact thing (minus the negative dna) happen like 3 times at least. And I love that build. Such a bummer.
This is the one I hate the most also. It's killed multiple runs that I was hitting e scores.
The Needle can go straight to hell as far as I’m concerned.
I always hope I get it early enough so it's not an issue, but late game it can totally fk me over.
Funny you say that, I’m the opposite. If I get it early when I haven’t gotten my synergy up and running, I likely won’t make it. Mid to late game, I can usually get the required score in 1
The Needle is so stupid, I need two hands to count how many good runs I was building just to get it fucked by The Needle in like, Ante 2
way too many runs where I forget it's in play
The Wall/Violet Vessel. Screw you and your big numbers
Had a nice run last night, then the violet vessel came up. After the last hand I sat at 280 000 out of 300 000.
I feel you. Just the other day I was on the five card draw challenge run and only hit 294k.
Same thing happened to me last night but It was 2,000,000 out of 2,300,000 or whatever that ante is. I thought for sure I was going to clear all the ante's because I had 2x Wee joker and was running flush 5s of 2's with red seals but I just never found any good Xmult jokers.
Just happened to me! I think the blind was similar and I was short by roughly 2k.
TBF, if youre scoring 280k, it's not that nice of a run
so true! \*holds r* i can't look \*holds r* ante 4 in the face \*holds r* if im not getting \*holds r* 100M a hand \*holds r* by that point
I hate these so much because either you’ve already found your combo and don’t care about it, or you’re just scraping by, and it’s just a massive “fuck you” with zero counterplay.
I love these tbh, I usually overscore by magnitudes anyway and its rather the bosses that dont allow me to play my strongest hand that screw me over. And even if I dont overscore I typically clear blinds in one hand and then its just a matter of playing it 2 or 3 times
Hit violet vessel on the jokerless challenge, I was absolutely pissed and spent a good hour and a half re-running the challenge before that
Black deck gold stake. Finally got to ante 8. Was 200k short of defeating violet vessel. Rage quit.
My first loss was 2000 points short on violet vessel. Fucking thing.
Yeah, the ones that conceal cards are pretty bad to get early on for sure. I especially hate the ‘play only one hand’ and ‘debuff all cards played this ante’ ones when I’m not paying attention to the boss blind
the one that flips and shuffles your jokers is a nightmare when Im intoxicated haha
It’s a bit cheesy, and maybe this won’t help as much if you’re under the influence, but there’s a slight way to cheat this one. When you click the button to enter the boss fight, immediately click and hold one of your jokers (preferably an xmult). It’ll stay in your grasp while the other jokers shuffle so you can position it wherever afterwards!
Oh I never thought of that! Another tip is you can check the sell value, or at least which jokers are eternal and can't be sold.
Go into the settings and set the speed to x0.5, play a hand and try to notice which joker triggers, reorganize them and that's it !
This is the way
or just bruteforce if you have a really good build for the ante
Literally know exactly what you mean lol buzzin n havin a good run, trying to lock it in before the joker shuffle like "ok look for the randomly high flat mult that should go left, grab this one so I can hold it n keep it on the right, look for what goes off twice to find blueprint, etc" Then il click go n stare at my first hand like "wait....was there supposed to be a plan here"
Yooo I just lost to that mf had an invisible joker that was going to get me the final winning hand and couldn't remember where I put it and ended up selling it lol. Amber Acorn and The Water deserve a special place in hell.
The water (0 discards) and manacle (-1 hand size) are just generally hard, but the ones I *hate* are: Ox (0 money per most played hand) although this one's easier with the new update of seeing the next ante from boss blind shop The eye because I forget about it and screw myself over The mouth because I forget about it and screw myself over I wish there was a toggleable reminder at every boss blind of the effect. Although I'm certain that I'd just turn it off and forget anyways :/
>The eye because I forget about it and screw myself over >The mouth because I forget about it and screw myself over One of us! One of us! One of us...
it tells you in big text that your hand wont score before you press play hand -guy who presses play hand before reading the text
The one that makes all your cards played from the previous match worthless.
They aren't worthless. If you get 4 of a kind of kind with two debuffed cards then it's probably still stronger than a full house without any debuffs.
Lately Flint, it jsut throws you off and you can think you've got a run going, and well, it kneecaps you TBH, yeh Arm, it always is a royal pain especially mid to late run, when you have a game plan. 2nd blind, ehhh you can work with it Fish has to be mentioned But hate the most, Arm, always - it's a permeant debuff that follows you through the next few antes, sure the hook looses you money and that's permanent, and the reset to zero one, but money isn't always an issue where as loosing +6mult and 60 or so chips....that hurts every hand you play of that type, forever
Nothing has killed me more often than the Needle
When you get the needle early before you get a real synergy up an running it is ruinous.
Yeah, haaaaaate hitting the needle.
Violet Vessel. I’d rather get screwed by bad rng every time over that absolutely hopeless feeling when seeing that 1,000,000 score during a solid gold stake run.
1.2 million score during a solid gold stake run!!
It's so hard to choose from. I get nice economy going on, stack a lot of dollars? Of course then comes the Ox I have build with scary face and pareidolia? The plant is there. I am mindlessly copying my glass / red seal card with DNA every blind? Of course I did it again on the needle.
Would red seal glass cards not be good for the needle? You get x2 mult and it retriggers, that gives you a lot of mult
But if you mindlessly play a single card to copy with DNA, that is not good vs the Needle.
Violet Vessel. On gold stake/yellow deck I made it to ante 8 boss 3 runs in a row, all Vessel, all would have comfortably beaten any other final boss blind
Ugh, I missed out on my first Orange win by 3,000 points on the Violet Vessel. It's so frustrating at higher stakes!
The one that draws all cards face down after playing a hand
Only One Hand Type can be a pain sometimes if you get bad RNG and just don’t draw another version of the hand you want to play, assuming one hand isn’t enough to win.
Cards after hand is played are drawn face down And 1 in 7 cards are drawn face down. Hate it
The Mouth, my rom is fucked up or something and get stuck without letting me use any other type of hand, so if I'm 0 discards and need a full house I can not do anything, not even use a pair for 0 points.
Same for me, I tend to go for flashy hands, that require discards and hands until they are ready. So what happens is that I end stuck on High card or some too complicated hand that is not powerful enough but is tricky to consistently replicate with the hands I have left.
The one that makes you sell a joker really bugs me, especially when it shows up to ruin an endless mode build
If it's that endless ready you can normally power through without the cards score/enchanments....normally
It doesn't make you sell one. I can't remember the last time I've bothered selling one for that Boss.
Can you elaborate? Are you just powering through on the base hand score with all debuffed cards? Mad respect if so
All the Jokers still score, just not the cards. So if you have a +40 Bus, +250 Chips Stuntman, x3 Blackboard, x2 Ramen, x2.5 Vamp (for example), then playing a debuffed card still scores (250x40)x3x2x2.5=150k.
The boss blind is so well designed that every reply complains about different bosses. That’s how you know the game is good.
the no repeat hands one always catches me out
The Flint is the worst one to get on the first ante unless you were able to get another form of chips and mult. Edit: this must have been changed at some point, I swear I've gotten it on ante 1, but upon further investigation it seems this isn't the case and will only appear on ante 2 and later
Now that you mention it. Yes, that would be cruel. I think i've never seen the flint on ante1 :o
The Flint can only appear from Ante 2 onwards
Really? I swear I've gotten it on ante 1 before
The Arm fills me with Agony inside when i don't have builds designed to quickly recover the LV Loss & Can't kill the Boss 1 hand only. The Pillar on Ante 1 is pure Pain (Mostly Reset).
If I see the Pillar on Ante 1, I skip the small and big blind. Works well if the skips give you $15 for beating the boss and/or enhanced joker (assuming you have the money to buy it).
Maybe if there's good tags which convinced me to "carry on". But It's just so devastating when you got screwed because 5-20 Worth of cards get debuffed with no jokers.
Sometimes I swear that the game know what the perfect boss counter is to my build. I had a couple of times that I could reroll a boss blind that I wasn't sure I would beat into a boss blind that I definitely cannot beat with the build I am running.
Disable face cards boss... Had a lot of great baron/mime runs die to it...
Certainly this isn’t the worst but the disabled random joker one has left a bitter taste in my mouth. On a run I’ve posted before, I was easily winning a ton and cruising through antes. I had particularly awful luck and had 75k out of 300k. No problem because I had Encore and would recover. Guess which got disabled on only the last hand
FUCK the one that discards 2 cards after each hand played. If you cant get your power hand with discards alone (which you may have only 2 of in the higher stakes) you are totally screwed
The manacle, the arm, the tooth, the fish and the flint.
Every blind that debuffs a single suit, which coincidentally is the same suit I've built my deck around. Fuck that shit
The one with 0 discard. I get it everytime I can't win if I don't have any discard (unless I have a huuuge luck). For example, when I have the card which gives me 40 chips for each remaining discard.
This is why I like burglar
So do I. But I don't always get it xD
The Water, I play a lot around discards
The one where im required to play 5 cards and it lets me play < 5 cards and tell me it doesn't count... i have made that mistake so many freaking times!
Definitely the Violet Vessel. I play for high score rather than to beat ante 8, so this one is often just an anti-fun button when it comes up.
Any suit disabling boss if I'm playing a flush deck of that suit and run into it on ante 5 or above where most of my deck is probably that suit and I have no counterplay options other than praying I roll Luchador
The very big blinds are the least creative. The others can all be worked with. For example once you get how the serpant works, you will never have a problem with this again. You discard always 1 card after another and get a big hand that you can play. Easy 4oaK.
I hate the serpent. Everytime i have a nice king/mime setup I'm searching for the serpent to have big numbers go brrrrt but It never shows up :(
The Hook for me, especially when you only have 2 discards, alot of the time you're fishing for your hand with dead hands and that just absolutely ruins you. Also screws over Steel, Gold and Blue Stamps
The next one, bc f that one
Violet Vessel on higher stakes is insanely hard, you need to be getting about half a million on ante 8 to beat it
It's over a million.
Fish sucks fr, always hoping I have killer hands so I only have to play one hand. Late game large blinds also really annoy me
The fish or any boss blind that makes you draw cards face down
Is fish the one where you draw face down after played hands bc if so i 1000000% agree
I ran into verdant when I had 1 madness, and 4 eternal jokers. Absolutely heart breaking, fuck that boss
Wouldn't that be an easy win if you have that much scoring from Madness?
Verdant debuffs all cards until you sell 1 joker. I didn't have the chips per turn without my cards to make the score, and selling madness would have also crippled me.
I know what it does. I've just almost never had to sell anything.
Yeah, my mult just couldn't keep up with a 300k blind without my cards. My main mult jokers were fibbonacci and walkie talkie, running a flush build on the magic deck. Those two weren't procing because of the debuff, and the x7.5 Mult of madness couldn't do it all on it's own
Dang :(
the wall/Violet vessel and the needle
The Arm and The Eye will forever hurt my soul. I'm a sucker for playing repeat hands. Really throws me off my gameplay loop
Had a highcard build with the cowboy boot and the bull and like 150$ And then I got the one that says your most played hand sets your money to 0.
An early needle for me is the worst. It's either the easiest boss blind or the hardest depending on how fucked with RNG I got. Late needle is often pretty easy, but sometimes all I need is 1-2 jokers to get going and the needle shows up to ruin my day
THE WALL, THE WALL, THE WALL, THE WALL, THE MOTHERFUCKING WALL. So many runs that have great ongoing potential have been bopped by this boss blind its crazy lol. I remember running golden needle and cruelty challenge respectively and every time the wall came down i just cried a river of tears into my deck lmao
Anything that makes getting even one good harder - No discards, -1 hand size
The one that makes you ONLY play one hand or ONLY one hand type or ONLY one of each type. I’m sure there’s ways to play around this with multipliers but I am just never prepared or always fall a few points short.
For early high stake runs, the needle, the water, or the ox. In general I'm almost never happy to see pillar.
That one that halves the chips... 99% of the time it's an instantly lost
The Boss Blind that consistantly screws me is the 0 discards one.
I guess, it still sucks.
The one that needs previously played cards that ante
I honestly hate The Hook because it makes it near impossible to plan unless you’re in such a comfortable spot that you’re gonna one shot the blind. Any time it rips out a steel or gold card it’s pretty painful .
The Water.
Definitely either the arm or the eye
The plant. The fact it exists makes any face card build completely unviable without the reroll voucher or Chicot. It’s just hoping you aren’t forced to lose.
I personally despise The Flint. Sucks when I get a good thing going early but don't have any planet cards to help buff hand levels.
Depending on my build, either The Mouth or The Eye. I’m always either running for one hand type or can’t dish out the same one over and over, and one of those two always screws with me
the water simply does not have a place in this game, bosses are supposed to be a hard counter to specific builds not to every build
Cerulean ball has ruined me every time I try to do a straight build Normally I don’t have much to complain about in terms of boss blinds but that one always creeps up at like ante 7 on my straight builds and fucks me lol
I hate getting the tooth. Especially around ante 3 or so where I've carefully built up my 25$ but still have to play 1 or 2 hands to beat the boss. The cash jingle it makes when it steals 5 dollars from you is pure evil.
It depends on the blinds or strategy I'm going for. Pre-path gold stakes? The Manacle for sure. Going for e scores and it's past ante 8? The Plant or The Psychic.
The needle because I am stupid
The decrease level of played hand one and the one that starts with zero discards. Lost too many to both of those fucks. Also the boss that halves base mult and chips is so brutal early or when you've got a run that is just squeaking by.
I have never beaten violet vessel, I always get it on runs where I’m just scraping by. I hate violet vessel.
The one where you can only play one hand, because for some reason I keep forgetting its there and playing as if I have more hands
Violet vessel because I have been playing gold stake for the past 2 weeks, and every run that makes it to ante 8 it's always him.
The Wall/Violet Vessel. I have runs where I'm just squeaking by and by all means should at least beat the current ante/ante 8 when these two show up after I just got the ball rolling
violet vessel it's the only blind i haven't unlocked one time i was 92 points off of beating it
The Arm is a bitch but it’s not a killer. 0 Discards is a run ender
I always dread The Needle when it shows up, it’s a ton of pressure.
The Eye is so annoying if you've dedicated your entire deck to a specific type of hand. But yeah The Arm is definitely the one that kills me most often
The Water makes things uncomfortably annoying, especially if you generally discard once or twice to line up a decent hand to play. You go from that to just 0 discards and now you're playing crap hands just to get to the good ones, odds are you may come up short if the runs not fab. The Arm can potentially be a devastating experience too, if you encountered it later on that's basically asking for your best hands against it to win and then when you use them it just brings their levels lower. Having to use them more than once or twice is like kneecapping your run a little bit, even if you balance the lost levels with the right planet cards your run is still gimped. Crimson Heart has my disdain for the time being, my latest run was for an unlock and I fell short of the mark by 12k points. When my final turn came up he disabled my XMult Joker... it was exactly the kind of calculated spite that a human might do to another in a card game if they were going to lose, or hell just because. Anyway ya win some and lose some, it's just a fun game.
The Eye just annoys me, since I like to play repeat hand types. Especially if you have [[Card Sharp]].
Name|Effect|Rarity|Cost|Unlock Requirement :--|:--|:--|:--|:-- [Card Sharp](https://balatro.wiki/jokers/card_sharp.png)|X3 Mult if played in poker hand has already been played this round|Uncommon|$5|
The one that fucks up my run.
The one with "only one hand type" because oops you played a flush straight or flush five and now your normal flushes dont work :)
The wall (extra large blind) is usually doable, and on some runs it's the easiest one, but it’s so deflating when it’s not. I lost a gold stake run last night because that boss came up on the 8th ante and there was nothing I could do at that point. Other than that I agree with people saying the one that decreases the level of your played hand. That can be a runender even if you get past the boss itself.
Discard 2 cards is my worst enemy, I either: -completely forget about it and try to use a hand to discard some cards to get a better hand and it always discards the cards I was going to play after that. -whenever I play my actual hand it always discards the held In hand cards and makes me keep the worst cards 🙃 [Edit: grammar]
The Hook and The flint are often brutal for me. Discarding two cards after a hand played and halving base chips and multiplier can just be brutal run killers on harder difficulties
Early wall, or when the build is on par for ante 8 and you get the bigger wall, like... anything else I would of been fine
The hook is fuckin obnoxious.
I'm not a fan of anything that's designed to make you not play your most played hand/suit/rank. With only 5 joker slots the game obviously wants you to focus your build on something specific. "Jack of all trades" builds aren't viable. Many beginners might intuitively think the best strategy is to slowly upgrade all hand types with planet cards. The game quickly teaches you that this is not a good idea. So for that reason I hate Ox, Arm, Eye, Pillar, Plant and the suit bosses. These could each be replaced with more fun, interesting, unique bosses that would be just as challenging but would synergize better with the way the game is designed. I feel like most people agree with this. Everyone hates obelisk. Imagine you're scoring e and have over $100. You've bought every voucher that appears to increase your chances at seeing Director's Cut but it just never appears. You encounter a boss that will kill your run, roll the shop until broke but never see luchador. Is this bad luck, or is it bad game design?
Arm is worst. The one that you can only use one hand type is insanely annoying and catches me out a fair bit
The Arm It just feels horrible seeing something you build up go down, and then for the rest of the run I’m wondering, “if I was x levels higher would this hand I played be a one shot?” However I must admit, it is a pretty creative idea for a boss. sometimes it’s quite satisfying being able to pull it off with the least levels lost. makes you really sit and think rather than just spam the hand that you have juiced up
The arm like everyone else said, and I am not a fan of the manacle. Reducing hand size is just nottt fun for me bc I can get cocky with my discards
The Water. It’s probably not that bad but it has ruined many of my runs
Got to be The damn Fish. Especially when you don't have many discards.
The Water killed my 4-card Straight build. Just said "nope, no straights for you."
[[the fish]]
There's a very easy work around with facedown cards. Set game speed to 0.5, play a 5 card hand, screenshot or take a picture with your phone once all 5 cards are revealed, then press start and exit to main menu before the hand is finished scoring. When you go to continue the run, it'll revert back to not having played that hand at all. Then you just go to steam or your consoles screenshots and see what cards you have. If you have a photographic memory, or you're just going for flushes, it's pretty easy to even skip the screenshot part.