[TAS] Balatro "maximum score" in 5m 48.23s
11,866Explaining the rules of Balatro would take too long, but here is an overview of the relevant strategies I used aiming for the highest score:
TL;DR: Perkeo amassing Cryptids eventually copying Red Seal Steel Kings. Brainstorms and Blueprint copying Baron and Mime. Win.
I made this TAS (Tool-Assisted Speedrun) in libTAS.
First, increase speed of the game, unlock all jokers, and then play through the unskippable tutorial.
Start a new Ghost Deck game, so that Spectral Cards appear in shops. Critical for my high-score strategy.
Ante 1
I pick up Brainstorm, a very useful copying joker. I use Hex to help with earlier rounds.
• Brainstorm (Joker): "Copies the ability of leftmost Joker"
• Hex (Spectral Card): "Adds 'Polychrome' to a random Joker, and destroys the rest."
• Polychrome (Modifier): "X1.5 Mult"
Then I use Soul to get my Perkeo joker.
• Soul (Spectral Card): "Creates a Legendary Joker"
• Perkeo (Joker): "Creates a Negative copy of 1 random consumable card in your possession at the end of the shop"
• Negative (Modifier): Negative cards don't take up a slot, so you can have an infinite amount of them
I then pick up a Cryptid card, to start copying, which is the main strategy.
• Cryptid (Spectral Card): "Creates 2 exact copies of a selected card in your hand."
Ante 2
For scoring purposes I pick up Earth.
• Earth (Planet Card): Makes Full Houses give a higher score.
For early scoring I pick up the Flash Card (Jj) joker.
• Flash Card (Jj): "This Joker gains +2 Mult per reroll in the shop "
I use Deja Vu to create a Red Seal on my King, part of the scoring strategy.
• Deja Vu (Spectral Card): "Adds a Red Seal to 1 selected card."
• Red Seal (Modifier): "Retrigger this card 1 time"
Ante 3
I use Ectoplasm to make room for more jokers.
• Ectoplasm (Spectral Card): "Add Negative to a random Joker, but -1 hand size."
I use a Chariot to make a Steel Ace. I actually want the Steel to land on the Red Seal King, but that's later.
• Chariot (Tarot Card): "Enhances 1 selected card into a Steel Card"
• Steel Card (Modifier): "X1.5 Mult while this card stays in hand"
I need money to reroll, luckily I have valuable jokers, so I use Temperance.
• Temperance (Tarot Card): "Gives the total sell value of all current Jokers"
Conveniently, a Showman appears right before the next Brainstorm, the copying joker I already have. I can pick up the Showman and reroll and sell it again.
• Showman (Joker): Usually jokers can't appear in the shop if you already have them, but holding Showman allows them to reappear.
With Mail-In Rebate landing on Kings, I can duplicate my Red Seals, making it more likely to draw later on a Chariot, and also discard them for a lot of reroll money.
• Mail-In Rebate (Joker): "Earn $5 for each discarded [rank], rank changes every round"
Three of a Kinds are faster for scoring than Full Houses, so I switch to those with a Venus card.
• Venus (Planet Card): Makes Three of a Kinds give a higher score.
With the reroll money, I can reroll to the Blueprint, which is yet another copying joker.
• Blueprint (Joker): "Copies ability of Joker to the right"
Ante 4
I replace my Flash Card (Jj) with The Trio and pick up another Venus. This together is now enough to beat the Ante 6 and 7 bosses, which get in the way of my scoring strategy.
• The Trio (Joker): "X3 Mult if played hand contains a Three of a Kind"
I can finally use Chariot to Steel one of my Red Seal Kings, which completes the deck setup for the final hand. Now all I need is find the necessary jokers and amass enough Cryptids.
Ante 5
I can skip a blind, because I'm getting close to having enough Cryptids. In fact, I even use a Cryptid to copy my Red Seal Steel King, which allows it to show up faster in the final Ante.
Ante 6
I simply reroll for the Baron.
• Baron (Joker): "Each King held in hand gives X1.5 Mult"
Ante 7
I immediately skip to the boss blind, because I don't need any more Cryptids. I only need the Mime of Ante 8.
Ante 8
I reroll until the Mime, completing the scoring setup.
• Mime (Joker): "Retrigger all card held in hand abilities"
Final Hand
This is what happens:
Every Red Seal Steel King held in Hand has the following:
• 4 X1.5 Mult abilities: Steel + Baron + Brainstorm + Brainstorm
• 4 retriggers: Base Trigger + Red Seal + Mime + Blueprint
This gives 4x4 = 16 X1.5 Mult calculations, which is X1.5^16 = X656.8 for each card.
I use 54 Cryptids, which gives 1 + 54*2 = 109 cards. This means a mult of X656.8^109 = X1.2e307.
With the non-steel Red Seal King we get another X1.5^12 = X129.7, which puts us beyond X1.7e308 = 2^1024, which is the largest number represented by the double-precision floating-point format used by Lua in the LÖVE framework, which Balatro is programmed in.
Due to implementation details, it results in a "nan" value before the "e" and a "inf" after it, so we get a score of "naneinf".