Vanilla ReBalanced: a faithful balancing and content mod based on suggestion from creators!

[trail turtle]

https://github.com/pi-cubed-cat/Vanilla-ReBalanced

Vanilla ReBalanced is a content mod that aims to balance existing vanilla content and add new Jokers for the sake of build variety in high stakes.
Requires Steamodded 1.0.0-beta-0827c or later. For the best experience, also download the Extra Credit and Bunco (jumbocarrot fork) mods, as Vanilla ReBalanced is designed to utilise some of their additional content.

This mod takes enormous inspiration from the two videos below and aims to manifest as much as possible:

EVERYTHING I Want in the New Balatro Update by FocusSh0ck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lli4u6jKCg

Balatro has a MASSIVE balance problem by Balatro University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA_DiPpJkX8

[winter apex]

this is so cool to see! feels good to play!
if there's anything in rebaloed you like, feel free to add any part of it to your mod as i'm most likely not gonna make much more for content in the coming future.

[smoky island]

this jit is peak

[fervent musk]

Liking it very much so far, would be nice to see an explicit list of changes. Black Holes seem to show up in incredible numbers lol, it's almost to the point that with the nerfed Blue Stamp it feels like I get more upgrades to my main hand from Black Holes than Blue Stamp triggers if I run just 1-2. Just a lucky streak over 2 runs it seems.

[trail turtle]

I'll add a list of changes to the readme soon, for now you can check the additions tab when looking at the mod info in-game. With regards to Black Hole, iirc it has a 10% chance to replace each card in celestial packs (may get changed)

[fervent musk]

Chaos Theory appears to not apply its xMult for me, other xMult Jokers work as expected and it applies the x0.1 increase as expected as well. Haven't tried without any other mods yet, but if this might be an issue with the mod itself I can go do that and provide any necessary logs.

Other than that I love the experience with this and the two mods you recommend, so much more variety of viable builds!

[trail turtle]

thanks for letting me know, and glad you enjoyed playing!

[trail turtle]

list of changes has been added to the readme https://github.com/pi-cubed-cat/Vanilla-ReBalanced/blob/main/README.md

[jolly slate]

Im getting this error when trying to play on mobile, others mods works

[trail turtle]

i'll make a mod branch that removes the new edition in the mod, since its shader seems to be the issue (i'm not familiar enough with shader programming to fix problems on other platforms, so i hope this is a fine compromise)

okay i realised i can just change which shader the edition uses, so it's going to be More Gay now

[green cave]

it is easy just replace integers with floats that have no meaningful decimal portion

yes i realize this is 4 days late but you posted your mods in modding general so

[trail turtle]

oh huge, thanks!

[green cave]

ya

like ⁨float x = 1⁩ → ⁨float x = 1.⁩ (you dont even need a number afterwards, just a decimal point)

[obtuse brook]

unreleated to this mod but you seemingly know shaders can you tell me whats wrong with this one for it to work for me but crash other people i liked this shader but had to kill it off because it crashed people

[green cave]

what is the crash

[obtuse brook]

doesn't crash for me but when anyone else uses it claims it doesnt exist like cell shaded also did

[green cave]

looks like some part of the code is passing the send-to-shader variable "cell" which doesn't exist for some reason, you sure it's under the right name & definitions in code?

[obtuse brook]

yes this was fixed by simply replacing the cell shader itself

something wrong with the shader rather than the game code

[green cave]

well at some point it is trying to pass the variable cell to the shader and it has nowhere to recieve or use that variable (either one, since either way it gets basically compiled out)

thats kind of all i can tell from the info i have

[obtuse brook]

like heres the current working cell shader

and then heres the one that crashed people

[green cave]

whatever the issue is your cell variable is probably being compiled out

i honestly dont know right now

i see its used in both versions so i genuinely have no clue

[obtuse brook]

its fine i already replaced both of these with worse looking shaders but i wish i understood shaders lol

[green cave]

wdym you dont understand them

these all use techniques i have never even thought of for the things i do bro

[obtuse brook]

half the time when i get a shader it works for ONLY me and crashes other people and i end up shipping that assuming it works then people come in crashing

[green cave]

well all their code looks pretty good so i just mean the fact that youre actually doing good math not the uncrashability of them

[obtuse brook]

like obvious downgrade on the 2nd here imo cause i couldn't figure out the problem with shockwaved

[fervent musk]

oh yea, I think that's because of a typo. The code has the mult returned as Xmult instead of xmult in vanilla_jokers.lua iirc. But never really tested that, kinda weird it's in that file instead of picubed_jokers.lua.
Also Bunco crashes when trying to index the blind pack because of some weird interaction that makes it not load, so I removed all the code related to blind packs from Bunco for using it with this mod since there are a ton of crashes in shop otherwise.

[trail turtle]

yeah the typo was the cause of xmult not scoring, whoopsies! (this has been fixed as of 1.0.1~BETA)
the joker isn't in picubed_jokers.lua since that file gets loaded as long as my other mod "pi_cubed's Jokers" isn't loaded, as that mod basically adds the stuff in there anyways. i thought that it was overkill to put chaos theory in its own file for 'original' jokers, especially since i didn't create the card art and name.

does the bunco crash problem still occur on version 1.0.1e~BETA? i've made a few patches for commenting out bunco stuff (mainly related to editions), and i haven't encountered such issues, yet.

[fervent musk]

I'll give it a try, was able to reproduce it pretty consistently before commenting out stuff myself so might be quick

ok got the crash without rebalanced loaded lmao, so prolly related to something else entirely

[winter apex]

after playing this on gold stake a couple time i will say i'm in love with this mod! this fixes so many fundamental issues with balatro like the scaling and the economy just by switching the hands and discards, also i appreciate the minimalist design in the balance changes, doing only what's needed to fit the new flow of the game, keeping the design space open.

overall this is my new favorite way to play balatro :)
the only changes i would ever want to see is to nerf the new planet scaling, it can quickly take over games and allow a build of mostly just Xmult jokers.

[winter apex]

one of my favorite runs

[winter apex]

hell yeah

[winter apex]

i cry, it was gonna be a straight build but i couldn't get a compatible Xmult joker 😂

[untold whale]

if I might ask, how come Baron is uncommon?

[trail turtle]

it was one of the ideas brought up in FocusSh0ck's video, here's a timed link where he gives his explanation of it
https://youtu.be/8lli4u6jKCg?t=1609&si=Pgc5K8ZUL_sf4x8z

[opaque fox]

Do I need to use the other 2 modpacks?

[trail turtle]

nah, they're entirely optional

[opaque fox]

thank you

[opaque fox]

can you buff some of the weakest deck building and specialized joker too? like 8 ball, gold ticket and the glass break joker

[quaint surge]

What do you think about the idea of swapping Hieroglyph and Petroglyph's abilities with eachother? Going down to 2 hands first feels pretty brutal with how the mod changes Hands/Discards.

[quaint surge]

Also, I really love the changes to Blue/Gold Stake, you did a great job putting it together 😎 👍

[quaint surge]

Hey is the Orbital tag not working? Not sure why but I took it and it didn't activate, just kinda stayed in my tags area. I don't run a lot of mods so just checking.

[trail turtle]

oh, wack. i'll make an update soon that should fix that, and also add in your heirogpyph/petroglyph suggestion

[quaint surge]

Thank you bro 😎 again, it's possible it's on my end but who knows 🤔

[untold whale]

I'm hesitant about the blue seal nerf; what keeps just outright spamming blue seals from being the absolute dominant strategy was the fact that blue seals have a limit to how many times they could trigger before your hand was full. making every card a blue seal so you can play a high card or pair and maximize blue seal value only does so much good when you can only get 2, maybe 3 planet cards total. so playing higher card hands is not a bad idea when you can potentially get more value from the same 2 blue seal cards

but if the RNG to generate blue seal cards effectively removes that limit from how much average value having additional blue seal cards generates, why wouldn't you just play pairs so you could get more blue seals in hand and therefore more chances for at least one of them to generate a card? it makes using blue seals with bigger hands far more inconsistent while incentivizing the strat of spamming blue seal cards with pairs and high cards even more

[trail turtle]

Yeah, being against the implemented blue seal nerf is totally valid. I admit it was one of the changes I wanted to put more time into thinking of an idea for (see also: Scholar, Stone Cards), but I wanted to get the mod out as soon as possible to show off all of my other ideas.

Thank you for being very in-depth for your explanation! It's given me an idea for a possible rework: let's say the odds start at 0 in 5 for a Blue seal to activate, but the odds increase by 1 per scoring card in the previous played hand (so a High Card has only a 1 in 5 chance to proc, and a Full House has a guaranteed chance to proc). This lets strong hands still get levels reliably even with few cards held in hand, and also more Splash synergies which is fun. These odds might be too high for hands that scale well (eg. Straights) or are disproportionately easy to make despite scoring a lot of cards (Two Pair), but also maybe too low for hands like 3oak and 4oak? Lots of tweaks are in order, but I think it's better than before. One major-ish concern I do have is that the description may become fairly wordy.

[untold whale]

for transparency, I'm borrowing the explanation from this comment in Balatro University's pair problem video https://youtube.com/watch?v=pA_DiPpJkX8&lc=UgwMnmIer-0b9bkATpZ4AaABAg

I'm personally curious about their suggested solution of simply having whatever hand you play be +2 levels higher while thats in hand, as it's bugged me how infrequently the ability to pivot to another hand type is thanks to planet cards, and that blue seal idea would help with that rather than further hindering it like the vanilla iteration

[quaint surge]

Oh that's an amazing idea! Makes stone cards more useful too.

[trail turtle]

oh my god this does buff stone cards, awesome

[quaint surge]

Might be a little tricky to explain how the seal works in the seal's text description box without it being a giant wall of text but I think you could do it. I'm assuming the odds would be affected by pseudo as well? So a single High Card would be a 2 in 5 chance with Oops! All Sixes?

[quaint surge]

That's a great idea too honestly.

[trail turtle]

I think I'll definitely add this as an option when I get around to adding a mod config

[trail turtle]

https://github.com/pi-cubed-cat/Vanilla-ReBalanced
okay update time! (1.0.3)

• hieroglyph and petroglyph swapped
• blue seal rework ^2 (odds increase on scoring cards)
• buffed the chariot
• fixed orbital tag to be able to activate

[quaint surge]

🔥 update

[quaint surge]

I'm curious, do you plan on adjusting Steel Joker with the new Update's buff to the Chariot or do you like where they're both at? 🤔

[trail turtle]

I think i'll keep steel joker as is for now

[jolly slate]

When using a planet card from the consumable area, only level up 1 level. Is that intended?

[trail turtle]

that is intended

[quaint surge]

Looks like the game crashes whenever you play a debuffed card on a boss round with Matador. Can you check to see if that's on this mod's end?

Also the new changes to blue seal feels pretty good. Makes Stone cards so much more useful like we talked about. Also Splash Joker 😎

[trail turtle]

ough that's definitely on the mod's end, i'll make a patch soonish

[silver lance]

Android or steam?

[quaint surge]

Ok cool, looking forward to it 😎

[trail turtle]

okay matador's been fixed !

[jolly slate]

Lucky 7 transform the cards on lucky cards

[trail turtle]

i'll look into this, this is not intended

[winged geode]

My suggestion for Seance: If played hand contains a Flush but played poker hand is not a Flush, create a random Spectral card

[untold whale]

would be curious to hear from people who have played with new Hieroglyph/Petroglyph and the 3:4 hand-discard ratio: wouldn't Hieroglyph end up feeling nearly free with only losing a discard, while Petroglyph would feel crushingly bad with hands being fewer and more rewarding each?

cause in vanilla, the dynamic is that losing a hand is impactful enough that you don't want to take Hieroglyph without a necessary reason to, but if you have means of scaling or really need to ward death off then it can be quite nice. and if you happen to find Petroglyph after already finding Hieroglyph (rare in Ante 8 runs as a tier 2 voucher), it's pretty satisfying to just grab as an easy pick because losing 1 discard is much less significant than losing 1 hand in the types of runs Hieroglyph shines in

(I'm still working on C++ in vanilla so haven't tried this mod yet, but I've been curious and keeping an eye on it)

[trail turtle]

yeah that's a good point! the mod is based around encouraging larger hand builds, so losing a hand - in theory - should be less impactful than losing a discard

[untold whale]

maybe instead of swapping Hieroglyph and Petroglyph, Hieroglyph could be changed to -1 hand size?

you'd still notice the impact of losing out on a hand size but it isn't as bad as losing out on a whole hand

[trail turtle]

yeah i'll definitely consider that

[untold whale]

also, what is the utility in purchasing negative planet cards from the shop with Planet Tycoon?

my first thought would be Observatory, but you'd still only be able to carry a single Negative copy; after that, you wouldn't be able to find more in the shop aside from with Stuntman (lol)

if the main utility of purchasing Negative planet cards is just to block planet cards you don't want from appering, it feels rather counter-intuitive and rubs against a core tenet of Balatro's design where the usecase of each thing you find is immediately apparent

[trail turtle]

main utility is observatory + reworked telescope, the latter pretty much acts as a mini showman for only your most played poker hand's planet card, and also planet blocking (and gift vard value!1!!!)

i definitely agree that the planet blocking is unintuitive, and otherwise adding negative planet cards to shop is pretty niche

[untold whale]

oh, I missed the Telescope change. my bad

although I still have questions about that effect standalone; it's a neat quality of life change for Observatory, but as its own voucher you need to get beforehand...

wouldn't it not serve much purpose? without Observatory, there's no real reason for you not to just pop your preferred Planet card the moment you get it (outside of situational Fool manipulation)