Pampa Joker Pack

[violet lodge]

https://batabata3.github.io/balatro-pampa-joker-pack/

Adds 28 jokers to the game. Tested on Steamodded 0.9.7

This was supposed to be a 30 jokers pack but I ran into some technical issues with 2 jokers. Maybe I'll add the missing jokers in the future, Balatro modding scene is still young so I'm fine with the current roster.

As expected from a first version, balance is most likely off and some bugs/crashes related to joker interactions may happen. btw the code is pretty bad, I really need to use the new joker API properly.

I've tried to run this mod together with the following mods:

• JellyMod
• Bunco
• Mika's Mod
• More Fluff
• Jankjonklers
  I did a couple of successful runs (including Jelly's custom tarot cards) with all these mods enabled but bad things may still randomly happen.

[fluid ledge]

Maybe post what the jokers do their effects and buffs and debuffs so we can know before installing?

[proven hemlock]

Snecko eye? I'm sold

[violet lodge]

oh crap I forgot to include the html page. Should be good now

tbf I struggled a lot with snecko eye effect and I'm not satisfied with the current version, might change it later

[fluid ledge]

Thanks

[bronze sparrow]

This is so fucking cool

Great job! Hoping to try out after work

I also wonder are you looking for balance feedback or do you prefer just looking on that on your own preferences!

[violet lodge]

yeah no prob, balance is really hard so feedback is valuable. I think I've played like 10 full runs with my jokers but even then it's hard to get a grasp on what needs to be changed. Especially when the effect is complex and depends a lot on the context.

Right now I believe matryoshka needs a buff and the snecko eye penalty may be too rough (randomizing the rank of 6 cards for a few rounds can be useful but this is pretty risky).
Grand Slam is also a pain to balance. It's uncommon so I wanted it to be weaker than The Tribe but it means you need to play 2 different flush suits to get x2mult so idk.

[kindred shell]

dude, awesome artwork

and the github page is so cool

[bronze sparrow]

i think grand slam as a concept is very cool, though just seeing it - i think the issue with their balances revolves around the fact that theyre dependent on a second hand and a third hand, etc. - to make useful

a joker such as card shark has a x3 and is uncommon without much effort to play off

i feel like grand slam could get a mild buff / make the mult scaling slower like .25 per unique flush played and let it stay after rounds

and this would essentially make it so you want to save your best flush for last which is cool mechanically

you would have to then play 4 hands to get x1 scaling up which is somewhat slow scaling wise compared to things such as hologram and others but finds a really cool niche in its own right

so something like card shark would be easier immediately after grabbing but grand slam would be able to get some mult increase every round

[potent sable]

snecko eye seems objectively bad

[kindred shell]

I feel like the randomized ranks is a bad thing rather than a good thing, so it should be plus hand size

[violet lodge]

It's a tough one. At first, I initially thought + hand size made more sense, and that's how it works in slay the spire (random cost but draw 2 more cards). But then I wondered if the effet should be permanent or temporary (just for the round).

If it's temporary, snecko basically kills any x-of-a kind hand higher than 3oak. If we include some + hand size effect, it hasically becomes a straight joker. It's also a bit harder to code because you need to restore original ranks at the end of round, which may be a challenge when accounting for deleted or created cards.

If snecko effect is permanent (and this is what the current implementation uses), it's a whole different beast. Snecko basically becomes 'eratic deck at home'. If you use snecko for a few rounds and then sell it, you'll get some ranks with more than 4 copies, providing early strong directions for the run. That's what happened in my test runs and why I thought the hand size penalty may actually be necesary to balance the joker (-1 may be punishing enough though).

I'm not too sold on my own idea though. I love the flavor of the joker but translating it to balatro is tougher than expected

[potent sable]

the +X mult in konbini is improperly colored btw

[storm sparrow]

i really like the joker art

oh the website is really cool

every mod should do that

[storm sparrow]

maybe have it be +2 hand size for first hand of each round and -1 discard

kinda like troubadour

or maybe +2 hand size, -1 hand size for every hand/discard used (resets at end of round)

[marsh quartz]

fans of Bowie？

[violet lodge]

smol update:

• Grand Slam scaling reduced to x0.5 mult but the first played flush now starts at x1.5mult. This joker can be tricky to use so getting a small reward when playing your first flush may be a good compromise. Not sure if it's worth it playing 4 different flushes now but at least it has more uses.
• Matryoshka slightly buffed to +30 chips.
• Trying a new snecko eye version with no hand size penalty. Also modified wording to indicate the effect is permanent. It's pretty powerful tbh, attached image is an example of what I got when using the snecko eye for 3 rounds on a vanilla deck before selling it. But it's still in some way a risky play if you already modified your deck.

[violet lodge]

yeah, I used to listen to a lot of stuff and Bowie is among my favs. There is another band referenced in the pack, but this one is more obscure.

[marsh quartz]

it seems incompatible with deck creator

[marsh quartz]

oh really? I haven't found any clues lol

[potent sable]

no deck creator just doesn't work on latest steamodded

[marsh quartz]

oh no wonder. Also Jellymod is incompatible with latest steamodded.

[potent sable]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[craggy dune]

so this is compatible with morefluff?

[elfin kiln]

Fantastic pack. Great artwork, the cards are ones that actively encourage shifting playstyles (which is a great indicator of balance) and there's bowie, scopedog, lum refrences? great taste.

[violet lodge]

I've completed a few runs with morefluff and I have no issue to report (I really liked the synergies between the two packs with jokers revolving around enhancements btw). So far the only incompatibility I've found is jankjonkler but I think Lyman was working on a new version recently so it might solve the problem. To be fair, reworking my code should be my current priority, it doesn't use the recent joker API functions and there are lots of dirty bits, or old commented code sections.

[violet lodge]

3776 references a cool japanese band about mount fuji. Sometimes I feel like there are too many references in the pack but as a novice pixel artist it just feels easier to get inspiration from stuff I like ngl.

[dense raven]

What is the effect of The Dream?

[craggy dune]

it upgrades non-standard hands when you play them (e.g. five of a kind)

[violet lodge]

yeah, it's kinda cracked I think. I chose this because the original effect I envisioned (alternate shop layout) is a bit complex to implement at the moment.

[kindred shell]

https://youtu.be/p_VwYBbgBj0?si=zzCRGUlacdHIYNq8

No way!

[errant sinew]

I encountered an issue with The Dream where you could continually upgrade eligible hands by simply selecting and deselecting a card to recreate the hand. I'm not sure if this is a mod conflict though; these are the mods I have enabled if it helps:

• Pampa Joker Pack
• Mika's Mod Collection
• Black Seal
• Codex Arcanum
• Divvy's Real-Time Score Preview

Really digging the joker art by the way

[proper kestrel]

I put the lua file in my mods folder and I get an error when launching the game, am I missing something? I only use Divvy's score preview

[sand kindle]

same

[lunar helm]

i'm having the game crash on startup, no error, with no other mods (latest version of steamodder)

[sand kindle]

halp plez

[violet lodge]

oops, should be good now

[violet lodge]

That's interesting, I never thought about that possible behaviour, I'll try to reproduce it thanks.

The code uses next(context.poker_hands["Flush House"]) to check for a flush house when hand is played, maybe it's not the best way to handle it

By the way I also removed some unused portion of code related to a joker axed from the pack. I suspected it might cause some compatibility issues with deck mods

[violet lodge]

OK, I reproduced the bug. So it appears there is some incompatibility going on with Divvi's score mod. It runs a score simulation when cards are selected, meaning many code portions from Card.calculate_joker are evaluated, resulting in the hand being upgraded.

I'm not sure if I can fix this tbf. Divvy's mod works with space joker because it includes a hardcoded condition to prevent it from upgrading hands during preview, but doing the same with modded content would be a lot of work.

[eternal raptor]

I need to download this mod

[violet lodge]

lmao now I just want to slightly raise the position of the sun.... eternal sticker eclipse

[storm sparrow]

yes that would be really cool

like the little joker sticker on baseball card getting covered by the eternal sticker

[potent sable]

score preview i think

(oh wait it was answered)

[unkempt lance]

.

Can anyone help me with enabling this mod?

[idle heath]

same here, no clue what causes it

[indigo marten]

i keep having it crash on startup

[sacred ravine]

@violet lodge with Subway Map, should A2345 count Ace as the highest rank or 5? It currently counts Ace as highest in this case

[sacred ravine]

Download all files, and place the folder containing those files in .../Balatro/Mods/

[topaz python]

I had the same problem turns out when I unziped the files they were in a folder in a folder. Just took them out of the first folder and it worked.

[dense beacon]

these are lovely

i really like the designs of all of these

[violet lodge]

5 should be considered the highest rank when playing A2345. I added a condition to separate wheels (5 is highest) from broadways (ace is highest) but something may be wrong with the code, I'll check that later today.

I'm still not sure about the balance btw, the best possible scaling you can get with this joker is +4 mult x 10 (10 straights from 5 to ace) but it's not easy. In most cases it's going to get to like +20mult

[buoyant brook]

i would really like to play this but im having the same issue as G59Mikey its crashing on startup with no error message

would someone be able to post a screenshot of their appdata/roaming/balatro/mods so i can see if im doing this right

[violet lodge]

OK i looked at the code for subway map and.... I have no clue what the hell I was thinking when I coded this. I just pushed a new version, playing A2345 should be ok now

[violet lodge]

Mine looks like that (morefluff is another joker modpack)

and the content of steamodded, downloaded straight from the repo

I'm also using the lovely injector, it's much easier than the old method

[buoyant brook]

ok i think i may have figured it out

Error

Syntax error: game.lua:4: '=' expected near 'Game'

Traceback

[love "callbacks.lua"]:228: in function 'handler'
[C]: at 0x7ffbbfe72ed0
[C]: in function 'require'
main.lua:16: in main chunk
[C]: in function 'require'
[C]: in function 'xpcall'
[C]: in function 'xpcall'

this is the error i got

[craggy dune]

that doesn't look like an error caused by this mod

[buoyant brook]

ok i got it working just had to verify files after getting everything in the right spot thank you so much for the help

[proven hemlock]

Can bell curve hit already enhanced cards?

[last flame]

I hit an error with the Tiger Bikini - I copied its effect with Brainstorm, and it gave me negative points instead of positive points.

The turn after I moved it so Brainstorm wouldn't hit it and it still gave me negative points, and I sold it after that to try to salvage the run

[violet lodge]

I think right now it's totally random, It should not be hard to get the list of non-enchanced cards though so I think it would be better and fairer if it didn't hit them. It would make blueprint better too since the second enhanced lucky card will never be the same.

[violet lodge]

lmao that's bad. Looks like the code is missing some "not context.blueprint" check somewhere to prevent blueprint/brainstorm from doing unintended things. I'll look into it, thanks.

[violet lodge]

pushed an update for tiger bikini (should not give negative mult anymore) and bell curve (only targets unenhanced cards)

[flat spire]

where is the download

[violet lodge]

It's in the linked github (https://github.com/batabata3/balatro-pampa-joker-pack). I realize I should create a release but you can download it using Code => Download Zip

[high meteor]

now this starts to look real spooky👻

[violet lodge]

Thinking about it, this guy is broken, even without perkeo. You just need to get a few spectral cards, which isn't that hard tbf

[dense beacon]

Make it unique spectral card?

[violet lodge]

That could work, I don't mind that much perkeo shenanigans though.
It's just a bit awkward because some spectral cards come with a huge risk, I think I would never take a bad spectral just because it gives me x1 mult.

[dense beacon]

working on codex ive just accepted perkeo will always be busted

[violet lodge]

lmao yeah

[potent sable]

never change, perkeo

[fierce quartz]

snecko eye and the david bowie joker

awesome mod

i like how the blackstar joker spells joker

[harsh haven]

Is it me or Subway Map only triggers once?

[violet lodge]

Depends on what you played. If you played a AKQJ10 straight, it will never scale again because there is no higher possible straight.

[violet lodge]

thanks, for some reason I struggled with that part a lot, it was one of the very first sprites I created

[harsh haven]

Oooooh so thats how it work, I somehow misunderstood it and thought I had to keep doing the max straight possible, sorry 😅

[violet lodge]

np, I think the wording could be better because it doesn't explicitly say playing the same straight won't result in mult gain.

[late needle]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U3ebWHZEXbqdgctGlJenkdbTnpbydH2xFJF0wdNfP4M/edit?usp=sharing
Decided to go through all the jokers and give them a basic review. Obviously this is all subjective, but I've done 10 or so runs with the pack enabled, so I've had a decent chance to look at most of them.

I might come across as overly critical, but that's mostly because I focused on criticisms I could give, rather than praise, the pack is my favourite so far.

Obviously feel free to ignore all my comments, just in case you wanted some feedback.

[harsh haven]

Gotta admire the dedication

[late needle]

I mean, it took like 10-20 minutes xD. I enjoyed the mod y'know.

[harsh haven]

Can see that, still its not everyday you see someone giving opinions one a mod one by one.

[late needle]

That's fair. I feel it should be more common y'know. I'd want it for mods I'd make.

[harsh haven]

Yea feedback is always nice

[violet lodge]

Thanks ! Hearing someone say they've played 10 runs with my mod is really cool, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Analyzing a mod pack is an interesting game design excercice, we're all learning and roguelikes are just hard to balance so this is a welcome contribution. One thing I learned when designing these jokers is how hard balancing "minigame" jokers can be (things like flower pot in the original or subway map/grand slam in my mod), because they involve both micro and macro decisions and the line between being broken and way too niche can be thin.

I agree with most of your thoughts. I really want Ishihara test to work but wild cards are just a pain, I think localthunk is aware of that issue, maybe some day we'll get a wild card rework. claw is really hard to balance. This was the very first joker I designed in 2024 and back then hiker gave only one chip per card. So I chose one chip for claw because the rank condition is balanced by the fact it upgrades all the cards each time a 3 is played. But now hiker gives 5 chips and I don't know anymore. I had a run with a buffed +2 claw and hack, it was insane, I was playing 3s 5oak and each 3 was scoring 500 chips. So I nerfed it back to 1 chip but idk, you may be right.

Some disagreement points:

• I legit think cherry a good early game joker. It scales quickly and sometimes you can keep the +24 mult for the late game if you're confident you're never going to discard the very last pair.
• I like subway and thinking about my straight strategy but I def understand why some people may dislike it
• snecko can be useful early to create imbalance in your deck and find directions for the run. It's kinda like creating your own erratic deck.
• I wasn't sure about fabric design but I had a few good runs using it, playing only with enhanced cards is really powerful, it's also an econ joker because you'll get many gold cards. I agree losing all discards can be tough though, maybe setting discards to 1 would be better.

Also yeah, bell curve doesn't hit (anymore) enhanced cards. That one is awkward because the recent Magician buff made it worse, even though one lucky card each round is still nice.

I think my fav joker is pampa, it started as a private joke but I ended up really liking the effect, it has the same "no way this isn't rigged" vibe as wheel of fortune and I enjoy getting betrayed by this little guy

[proven hemlock]

is this a blessing or a curse

[meager rock]

it's a blurse

[crimson tangle]

It’s a freeloader

[late needle]

So, I finally got Cherry in the early game, and I think I agree. Actually seems fun and good. I honestly don't think I've ever played a deck that can be confident in not discarding pairs, as every deck I've played feels like it ends up going all in one a couple of numbers, but I can see it I guess.
I guess my main issue with Subway is that I feel Straights suck so much already that I feel like extra conditions are a bit harsh. I just want Straights to be more playable 😭. Make more Straights jokers plz 😛
Sure, I see that with Snecko. Shouldn't it be common then though? I feel like it's pretty useless Ante5+. Though I guess common means you see it more. I still think you could make it give random enhancements, or random chips or something though. Idk.
I really dislike setting discards. Just makes any sources of +discards useless. What about -2 discards? Or -X and you can play with the balance.

[harsh haven]

I'll steal the "make more Straight Jokers" idea 😈

[harsh haven]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwQeNM7uL0k

[trail shore]

@violet lodge i just had one small complaint about this mod; the jokers are already all revealed in the collection once the mod is installed, but it is satisfying only unlocking them once you find them in a run. Are you planning a feature to change this?

[proven hemlock]

would also be cool if you could tag your jokers so we can recognize them when played with other mods

[craggy dune]

that's a feature in steamodded already lol

[potent sable]

it's like that with every mod except codex arcanum

and i dont like that about codex

[proven hemlock]

i dont see a tag for this mod in the collection

[potent sable]

yeah idk it's weird

[violet lodge]

Yeah, it's because I made it before these features were introduced and I was too lazy to update the whole thing.
I want to do a balance patch so that gives me an opportunity to actually restructure the code

[kind pawn]

I just got a fabric design vampire run 😎

[proven hemlock]

https://discord.com/channels/1116389027176787968/1231665856619086005

i'd love to see your jokers included in here if you would be willing. Would love to see this pack expanded

[violet lodge]

Yeah no prob, it's a fun idea.

[proven hemlock]

can you explain like im a child on how voodoo doll works?

[rancid field]

checkin out this mod rn on stream if anyones interested!

[lone solar]

this really isnt the fault of anyone but more of an unfortunate coincidence

there's a rare spectral card in the codex arcanum mod, and usually what happens when you use an alchemical card during booster opening is, nothing happens and it gets returned to your consumable slots for free

i think you can kind of already see where this is going

i think i saw in some place that this trick or treat joker was going to get reworked at some point so like fair enough

its just an unfortunate mod compat thing

i forwarded this to the codex arcanum guys as well but its unlikely they'll be able to fix it, seeing as, the 'returning to hand' schtick is most likely a bandaid fix for something they couldn't work around, so yeah that's all i have to say today.

btw this is one of my favorite joker packs so if youre planning to add more or change things, keep up the good work

[unkempt lance]

.

[oblique inlet]

huh, this mod doesnt seem to have the mod tracking thing for jokers

[bronze dragon]

Yah I noticed that too

[supple glen]

Hi! I know this hasn't been updated in a while but I've just made a PR to your repo to add support for my mod #1241580123766128761
Or if it's too much trouble, I can also just add these to my mod directly if you don't mind!

[steady harness]

I've ported Pampa Jokers to SMODS 1.0, including fixing any issues that I've found that have arisen due to changes in the API. I also added the JokerDisplay definitions since porting to the 1.0 API managed to break one of the existing definitions.
https://github.com/lshtech/balatro-pampa-joker-pack

[gusty jolt]

nice!