Top 10 Common Balatro Jokers
Jokers in Balatro are categorized into one of three rarities: Common, Uncommon, and Rare.
Common jokers appear frequently and are especially helpful in the early antes of your play session. Uncommon jokers are one tier higher but still provide useful benefits without being too overpowered. Rare jokers, as their name suggests, are very hard to come by. When they appear, they offer powerful abilities that can benefit you at any stage of your run.
For all the flak common jokers get from tryhards, I've rounded up the select few that are helpful regardless of what ante you're at.
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Hanging Chad
A joker so powerful, I'd argue it's too broken for its rarity. This one retriggers your first scored card twice and is unlocked after finishing a boss blind with a high card.
Most retrigger jokers are uncommon and only work in select scenarios (Dusk), target select cards (Hack and Sock and Buskin), and run out after a handful of uses (Seltzer). Chad is the only joker in the game that retriggers cards more than once, and it can lead to some interesting results, like using it on a lucky card for a chance to trigger its abilities or getting x6 mult from Glass cards.
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Photograph
An autographed picture of Jimbo that gives you x2 mult for the first scored face card. Pair this up with another elite joker (Hanging Chad) and you get the Photochad synergy, which gives you x6 mult for the first scored face card.
Double the amount if it has a Glass enhancement. Depending on your build, Photochad is a no-brainer for reaching Naneinf.
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Mail-In Rebate
One of my favorite economy jokers, this one gives $5 for every discarded card of a specific rank, which is never the same for each round.
It's a nice and convenient way to get some easy cash by discarding, which Delayed Gratification advises against for a smaller amount of money, despite having the same rarity.
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Shoot the Moon
A good joker that encourages using held-in-hand card abilities. This one gives +13 mult for every Queen held in hand and is unlocked by playing all of the Hearts in your deck.
It's pretty solid for a common joker, though you'll eventually want Baron as soon as you find it.
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Credit Card
The only $1 item in the shop, this joker allows you to keep spending money past $0, all the way until you accumulate -$20 in debt.
Be sure not to overdo it with the spending or sell this joker, because if you do, the debt doesn't wear off and you can't buy anything with your negative balance. Make sure you have a good amount of money before selling this joker. Using Wrath can set your money to $0 for a Rare joker, clearing your debt in the process. This is a classic example of risk and reward systems and a great way to educate the player on such.
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Gros Michel
This joker is just a picture of a banana that gives you +15 mult. Nothing too special, right? Try saying that when you see the joker disappear, followed by some white text that says "extinct".
This joker has a 1 in 6 chance of extinction, and when that happens, you'll encounter the Cavendish joker, a more powerful variant of Gros Michel, one that gives you x3 mult instead of +15. I'd bump this up to Rare if it weren't for the 1 in 1000 chance of extinction. Just because the probabilities are distant doesn't mean it's impossible.
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Half Joker
This one gives you +20 mult if your played hand contains three or fewer cards. A great way to encourage the player to use small card hands like high card or pair, and it even allows for unplayed cards to trigger their held-in-hand abilities.
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Raised Fist
Raising your fists in Balatro terms refers to this joker, which adds double the rank of the lowest card held in hand to +mult.
A very solid joker for its rarity and good for educating players on the benefits of held-in-hand cards.
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Riff-Raff
Have you heard of a joker that gives jokers? In Riff-Raff's case, this gives you two common jokers when a blind is selected.
This joker can create any common joker, from plain ones like the +4 mult joker to elite ones like Hanging Chad and Photograph.