Generally some good advice is that Balatro is a math game first and foremost so you want to focus on things that raise your score the quickest. So adding chips is ok, adding multiplier is better, and multiplying your total is the best.
For example let’s say you are playing straights and you have a 10-6 with level 3 straights. So you’d have:
10+9+8+7+6=40
(40+90)x10=1300
So let’s compare how jokers impact that score:
Devious joker: +100 chips if you have a straight
(40+90+100)x10=2300
Crazy joker: +12 mult if you have a straight
(40+90)x(10+12)=2860
The order: x3 mult if you have a straight
(40+90)x(10x3)=3900
You can see those are very big differences! It’s also helpful to pay attention to the order of your cards. Generally Balatro cards are scored left to right. The most important thing is to take any card that multiplies any part of your score on the right so you can add as much to the score as possible, then you multiply that number
So in short: multiplier jokers are best, additive multiplier jokers are good, additive chip jokers are ok, and pay attention to the order of your jokers/played cards
sushibowl@feddit.nl 3 months ago
This is basically correct but i would add sometimes it’s better to add chips than to add mult. For example, if your score is something like:
10 x 50 = 500Adding +50 mult here would give you 10x100=1000 points. Adding +50 chips will give you 60x50=3000 points.
Adding to the lowest of the two numbers improves your score the most. Especially early game, mult is much lower than chips, so you want to improve mult. However once you have some good mult jokers improving chips becomes important. Especially in high card based decks, where you get very few chips from your hand.
If the multiplier jokers come in, the picture can change again. It makes adding mult more valuable because the addition will be multiplied.