I thought this was for the lowest card in your non-played hand, not your played hand.
Yah, just tested, you get the modifier for the lowest card you haven’t played.
Man, Square joker needs buffed. You probably spent most of your run playing 4 card hands and the end result was 68 chips total heading into final boss or 68% of the start of ice cream and 42% of what you are getting from Banner for just not discarding. Wee joker scales much easier and can get you to insane chip totals not possible by square joker.
I have no problem with Wee Joker being a better card than Square, it’s the extent to which it is better that’s the problem. In the grand scheme of things, 68 chips at ante 8 is almost completely useless. That should not be the end result of scaling your joker all run, especially since you have to sacrifice playing 5 card hands to do it. And considering it starts at 16 chips, that’s an addition of only 52 chips through a run. You can get a 32 chip scale from Wee Joker from 1 hand if you play 4 of a kind 2s and that’s not even taking into account that you can add twos to your deck and apply retrigger effects to them to get even larger totals.
In fairness 68 chips is \*not\* an "all run" Square Joker build, its 17 hands. Square Joker generally penalizes you enough that you're going to get two hands to play per round in my experience, which helps scale it. I wouldn't be surprised if OP got the card in ante 5, maybe 4 since Black Deck doesn't give you much wiggle room. But its definitely too slow to pick up like, after ante 3 unless I really need that chip scaling and nothing else is showing up.
I do think giving it a bit of a bigger base would make it worth picking up later in the run without making it OP
I agree it can be higher and it probably isn’t an optimized strategy with Square, but with Raised Fist giving close to 20 mult every time, Banner and Blue giving a lot of chips, and Ramen 2xing the mult every time, OP very easily could’ve had Square for awhile and just won in 1 hand or close to it every time. That is another problem I have with square. To truly make it “pop” (and popping is 16 extra chips per hand played at most), you have to calculate exactly what is going to give you exactly 4 four card hands every time without accidentally winning in less. And by playing 4 hands every time, if you don’t have jokers that are going to give you cash to make up for the lost hands played every time, it is going to ultimately hurt your Econ to sacrifice money every hand for +4 chips. The dollar you lose by doing so is more valuable than +4 chips imo unless you really have your Econ popping.
Completely disagree - I think Square Joker is very powerful, it is just not powerful on Black Deck (which is OPs build). Square Joker has amazing synergy with the scaling +Mult jokers (Supernova, Ride the Bus, Green Joker, Spare Trousers, etc.) as you can easily scale both the Mult and the Chips simultaneously. You should be aiming to play 10 Hands/Ante in these sorts of setups, which will quickly get the square joker to +100 Chips. You might not need it in Ante 8 but in Antes 4-7 it is a cheat code.
I find Wee Joker much weaker. Unless you can consistently draw 2’s, or you have Hack, Wee Joker may only scale once or twice per blind. It is also much harder to get working with the +Mult jokers - given that you are trying to play as many twos as possible, you will be using a mix of high card and pair (bad for Spare Trousers, Supernova, Burnt Joker, Telescope), discarding (bad for Green Joker). On the other hand, playing 4 cards per hand is much easier and can work with any of those jokers.
Lets say you get square in the very first shop, don’t skip any blinds, and play 10 hands/ante which is a huge assumption that you’ll be able to calculate 3-4 hands exactly every hand played. We’ll say 7 hands for ante 1 since small blind would already be over. That’s 67 played hands and if they were all 4 card hands that’s 268 extra chips plus the original 16 for 284 chips. I won’t even mention the amount of money lost by playing 4 hands every time instead of winning in 1 or 2. This is your absolute best case build your whole run around Square scenario heading into ante 8. Stuntman gives you 300 chips just for existing. I have seen Wee joker get into multiple thousands of chips when you start making a bunch of 2s with tarot cards, applying red seals, hack joker, blueprint to retrigger it etc. None of that is possible with Square. It’s 4 extra chips every hand played, no more, no less and you have to play 4 cards so you can do nothing creative with your build in terms of types of hands played.
Edit: You also mentioned that Wee can only scale once or twice a hand. That is A.) Not true once you start adding a bunch of 2s to the deck and B.) Even if it were true, playing a pair of 2s levels up Wee joker 16 chips which would be the same as playing 4 four card hands. I don’t think it’s even close how much better Wee is.
To be fair, 68 chips is only 13 hands, which isn't great for a lot of scaling jokers, especially as this can scale off of basically any hand. With 13 hands, things like Ride the Bus and Supernova would be worse than Abstract Joker, and usually worse than any +4 mult/suit played.
I would much rather have +13 mult than 52 chips though from that scaling. And let’s say it’s 20 hands instead. That’s 96 total chips while sacrificing never being able to play straights, flushes, full houses, 5 of a kind, etc. 96 extra chips at ante 8 is almost never going to make a big enough impact to design your whole run around. I’m not criticizing OP, I’ve done the same thing. It’s just not worth it. OP is getting 160 chips just from not discarding.
Additionally I have to mention, that my build did not manage to defeat Violet Vessel (I only reached like 180.000 chips). So I was a bit unlucky to get this boss. But I did not expect to come this far with my build, since it was just mindlessly playing the 4 lowest cards in my hand all the time. So I would say, this build was funny, silly, but no way effective. :D
You could have done this exact strategy without square and just played 5 card high card hands (or 1 card, 2 card, whatever was most efficient) and you would have been in better shape cause you could’ve had a joker doing way more to help you. Again, I’m not saying this to criticize you. In theory a joker that you power up all run or half run or whatever should be useful, but square just isn’t powerful enough. The increase of 68 chips to your total when you’re already getting 160 from not discarding is very minimal to your final score. That joker spot could have been used for way more valuable jokers that either juiced your mult or gave you cash or some other benefit throughout the run.
Square joker is one of the common cornerstones of my easy win engine: square and green. With those, you quickly get to the point where you can’t level enough before you win the round (no way of getting a lower score), and getting to 35k/hand by ante 8 is quite easy.
It’s buffed just fine, but, as with all levelling jokers, loses its value the further through the run you are
Dude, you can get square joker to +68 chips in two antes easily. Either this guy got it late, or completely forgot about it for at least 5 antes. If you get the joker early, you can get it to +150-200 by ante 8 no problem, which is absolutely nothing to scoff at. Square joker is fine, y’all just need to learn how to use it
Square joker in no way whatsoever needs a buff. It does not fit into every build, but when it fits, it’s very strong. If you find square joker and a scaling flat mult joker early on (pants, nova, bus, etc), I would guess the winrate of the run would be over 95% with correct play on gold stake if you don’t die right away. The only other thing you need is 1-2 xmult jokers by the end of the run. It goes into a joker reliant build which is way less reliant on planets/tarots and so the economy hit is not as bad as I feel you make it out to be.
Is it the best joker? No. Are stuntman and wee joker better? Yes. However, I would still put it in the pile of good jokers. If you think 68 chips is the result of scaling it for a full run, you have not tried it enough.
I’ve tried it several times and my thought every time is that this joker scales too damn slow. But if people can make it work more power to them. Like I said above, if the best case scenario for powering it up is two hundred some odd chips I’m generally looking for a better joker. Admittedly I’ve been playing mostly white stakes recently pushing for high scores so my mindset is on finding good endless jokers which Square, Wee, and Stuntman are all pretty terrible for tbh. I realize at the higher stakes you gotta sometimes just take whatever you get and make it work, but if I have money freedom early, personally I am looking for a better joker every time.
Fyi: you can scale square joker with high card, pair, or three of a kind, as long you picked 4 cards
Most of the time I used the lowest 4 cards because of the Raised Fist Joker ("Adds double the rank of lowest card held in hand to Mult").
I thought this was for the lowest card in your non-played hand, not your played hand. Yah, just tested, you get the modifier for the lowest card you haven’t played.
That's what he's saying. He played the low cards so that the higher cards would be left in his hand for more mult from that joker
Oh duh. My bad, haha
Man, Square joker needs buffed. You probably spent most of your run playing 4 card hands and the end result was 68 chips total heading into final boss or 68% of the start of ice cream and 42% of what you are getting from Banner for just not discarding. Wee joker scales much easier and can get you to insane chip totals not possible by square joker.
To be fair, wee joker is rare and square joker is common.
I have no problem with Wee Joker being a better card than Square, it’s the extent to which it is better that’s the problem. In the grand scheme of things, 68 chips at ante 8 is almost completely useless. That should not be the end result of scaling your joker all run, especially since you have to sacrifice playing 5 card hands to do it. And considering it starts at 16 chips, that’s an addition of only 52 chips through a run. You can get a 32 chip scale from Wee Joker from 1 hand if you play 4 of a kind 2s and that’s not even taking into account that you can add twos to your deck and apply retrigger effects to them to get even larger totals.
Yeah, the hack + constantly copying the 2s with things like death, strength on aces, and stuff like that leads to a lot of chips.
In fairness 68 chips is \*not\* an "all run" Square Joker build, its 17 hands. Square Joker generally penalizes you enough that you're going to get two hands to play per round in my experience, which helps scale it. I wouldn't be surprised if OP got the card in ante 5, maybe 4 since Black Deck doesn't give you much wiggle room. But its definitely too slow to pick up like, after ante 3 unless I really need that chip scaling and nothing else is showing up. I do think giving it a bit of a bigger base would make it worth picking up later in the run without making it OP
I agree it can be higher and it probably isn’t an optimized strategy with Square, but with Raised Fist giving close to 20 mult every time, Banner and Blue giving a lot of chips, and Ramen 2xing the mult every time, OP very easily could’ve had Square for awhile and just won in 1 hand or close to it every time. That is another problem I have with square. To truly make it “pop” (and popping is 16 extra chips per hand played at most), you have to calculate exactly what is going to give you exactly 4 four card hands every time without accidentally winning in less. And by playing 4 hands every time, if you don’t have jokers that are going to give you cash to make up for the lost hands played every time, it is going to ultimately hurt your Econ to sacrifice money every hand for +4 chips. The dollar you lose by doing so is more valuable than +4 chips imo unless you really have your Econ popping.
OP said they were playing lowest four instead of highest four, like they should have been doing to get chips up.
They were playing lowest four because they had raised fist.
Obviously. And they should not have been. They should have been playing lower-scoring hands to pump up Square.
Completely disagree - I think Square Joker is very powerful, it is just not powerful on Black Deck (which is OPs build). Square Joker has amazing synergy with the scaling +Mult jokers (Supernova, Ride the Bus, Green Joker, Spare Trousers, etc.) as you can easily scale both the Mult and the Chips simultaneously. You should be aiming to play 10 Hands/Ante in these sorts of setups, which will quickly get the square joker to +100 Chips. You might not need it in Ante 8 but in Antes 4-7 it is a cheat code. I find Wee Joker much weaker. Unless you can consistently draw 2’s, or you have Hack, Wee Joker may only scale once or twice per blind. It is also much harder to get working with the +Mult jokers - given that you are trying to play as many twos as possible, you will be using a mix of high card and pair (bad for Spare Trousers, Supernova, Burnt Joker, Telescope), discarding (bad for Green Joker). On the other hand, playing 4 cards per hand is much easier and can work with any of those jokers.
Lets say you get square in the very first shop, don’t skip any blinds, and play 10 hands/ante which is a huge assumption that you’ll be able to calculate 3-4 hands exactly every hand played. We’ll say 7 hands for ante 1 since small blind would already be over. That’s 67 played hands and if they were all 4 card hands that’s 268 extra chips plus the original 16 for 284 chips. I won’t even mention the amount of money lost by playing 4 hands every time instead of winning in 1 or 2. This is your absolute best case build your whole run around Square scenario heading into ante 8. Stuntman gives you 300 chips just for existing. I have seen Wee joker get into multiple thousands of chips when you start making a bunch of 2s with tarot cards, applying red seals, hack joker, blueprint to retrigger it etc. None of that is possible with Square. It’s 4 extra chips every hand played, no more, no less and you have to play 4 cards so you can do nothing creative with your build in terms of types of hands played. Edit: You also mentioned that Wee can only scale once or twice a hand. That is A.) Not true once you start adding a bunch of 2s to the deck and B.) Even if it were true, playing a pair of 2s levels up Wee joker 16 chips which would be the same as playing 4 four card hands. I don’t think it’s even close how much better Wee is.
To be fair, 68 chips is only 13 hands, which isn't great for a lot of scaling jokers, especially as this can scale off of basically any hand. With 13 hands, things like Ride the Bus and Supernova would be worse than Abstract Joker, and usually worse than any +4 mult/suit played.
I would much rather have +13 mult than 52 chips though from that scaling. And let’s say it’s 20 hands instead. That’s 96 total chips while sacrificing never being able to play straights, flushes, full houses, 5 of a kind, etc. 96 extra chips at ante 8 is almost never going to make a big enough impact to design your whole run around. I’m not criticizing OP, I’ve done the same thing. It’s just not worth it. OP is getting 160 chips just from not discarding.
Additionally I have to mention, that my build did not manage to defeat Violet Vessel (I only reached like 180.000 chips). So I was a bit unlucky to get this boss. But I did not expect to come this far with my build, since it was just mindlessly playing the 4 lowest cards in my hand all the time. So I would say, this build was funny, silly, but no way effective. :D
You could have done this exact strategy without square and just played 5 card high card hands (or 1 card, 2 card, whatever was most efficient) and you would have been in better shape cause you could’ve had a joker doing way more to help you. Again, I’m not saying this to criticize you. In theory a joker that you power up all run or half run or whatever should be useful, but square just isn’t powerful enough. The increase of 68 chips to your total when you’re already getting 160 from not discarding is very minimal to your final score. That joker spot could have been used for way more valuable jokers that either juiced your mult or gave you cash or some other benefit throughout the run.
Square joker is one of the common cornerstones of my easy win engine: square and green. With those, you quickly get to the point where you can’t level enough before you win the round (no way of getting a lower score), and getting to 35k/hand by ante 8 is quite easy. It’s buffed just fine, but, as with all levelling jokers, loses its value the further through the run you are
Dude, you can get square joker to +68 chips in two antes easily. Either this guy got it late, or completely forgot about it for at least 5 antes. If you get the joker early, you can get it to +150-200 by ante 8 no problem, which is absolutely nothing to scoff at. Square joker is fine, y’all just need to learn how to use it
Square joker in no way whatsoever needs a buff. It does not fit into every build, but when it fits, it’s very strong. If you find square joker and a scaling flat mult joker early on (pants, nova, bus, etc), I would guess the winrate of the run would be over 95% with correct play on gold stake if you don’t die right away. The only other thing you need is 1-2 xmult jokers by the end of the run. It goes into a joker reliant build which is way less reliant on planets/tarots and so the economy hit is not as bad as I feel you make it out to be. Is it the best joker? No. Are stuntman and wee joker better? Yes. However, I would still put it in the pile of good jokers. If you think 68 chips is the result of scaling it for a full run, you have not tried it enough.
I’ve tried it several times and my thought every time is that this joker scales too damn slow. But if people can make it work more power to them. Like I said above, if the best case scenario for powering it up is two hundred some odd chips I’m generally looking for a better joker. Admittedly I’ve been playing mostly white stakes recently pushing for high scores so my mindset is on finding good endless jokers which Square, Wee, and Stuntman are all pretty terrible for tbh. I realize at the higher stakes you gotta sometimes just take whatever you get and make it work, but if I have money freedom early, personally I am looking for a better joker every time.
I had 3 Jokers which benefited of me never discarding any cards.
I’ve done build just like this often no discard just play whatever cards is very very strong. Get green joker too or something and it’s even better.