Summary
- Balatro players should focus on one or two planets per run and make use of the Telescope or Nebula deck for the best results.
- Saturn provides strong hands with many Jokers, allowing gamers to achieve high scoring runs with increased Chips.
- Three of a Kind with Venus offers more chances to play enhanced cards and draw new ones for better hands.
Ranking the best planet cards in the roguelike card game, Balatro, pretty much means ranking the best hands to focus on in any given run. It goes without saying that the actual value of those cards depends on the rest of the run, deck composition, which Jokers are present, and the deck that the player has selected.
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It’s best to focus on just one or two planets during an entire run. For heavily planet-focused runs, the Telescope voucher or the Nebula deck are highly encouraged. Either of those will make sure that Celestial packs, the easiest way to gather planets, contain the most useful boosts possible (the most played hand during that run).
7 Saturn
Levels Up Straight
- +2 Mult
- +30 Chips
Straight might be the best hand to level up in Balatro, not because it’s particularly common or because Saturn is a great boost planet, but because of the many, many Jokers that increase the likelihood and usefulness of this hand.
One could base an entire run on the Shortcut Joker, plenty of Saturn planets, and removing the smallest ranks in the deck to make each Straight score more points. Another card that works well with Saturn is Runner Joker, which always gives a number of Chips equal to the number of Straights played in the run multiplied by 10.
6 Venus
Levels Up Three of a Kind
- +2 Mult
- +20 Chips
Three of a Kind is, by the standards of regular poker, extremely common. It has a chance of about 2% to appear on the first draw of a standard 52-card deck. Everything bigger has less than a 1% chance, and while a Pair is more likely (about 4.7%), it is much less valuable and levels up more slowly.
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Playing three cards instead of two also means more chances to play an enhanced card, more chips overall, and, most importantly, drawing one more new card to build a new hand on the next turn. Three of a Kind is also the best hand for Half Joker while still triggering abilities that require playing pairs.
5 Jupiter
Levels Up Flush
- +2 Mult
- +15 Chips
Jupiter isn’t the greatest card in the game, but Flush (the hand buffed by Jupiter) is decently easy to draw while scaling at a moderate pace. Focusing on Flush is rarely the best option in any given run, and one could argue that Three of a Kind is a plain better choice due to the higher chance to draw and better scaling.
Still, building a deck that focuses on Flush is by far the easiest option, as it only requires turning all the cards into a single color. In a deck like this, Flush and Jupiter could bring even a mediocre run all the way to the end game, at least on the lowest difficulty.
4 Uranus
Levels Up Two Pair
- +1 Mult
- +20 Chips
At first blush, surrounded by cards that buff much better hands, Uranus looks like a poor choice for a planet. But the Two Pair hand buffed by the Uranus has a secret — all effects triggered by a single Pair also become activated when the player puts down a Two Pair.
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Effects like Sly and Jolly Joker, which buff Mult and Chips, respectively, are activated by Pair, Two Pair, and Three of a Kind. If anything, the problem with Uranus/Two Pair is the lack of great Jokers to play with it. Even Three of a Kind, a stronger and more likely hand, can use the Half Joker for an easy +20 Mult.
3 Mercury
Levels Up Pair
- +1 Mult
- +15 Chips
Mercury isn’t very good on its own, but it’s near-essential for any run focused on Three of a Kind or Two Pair. Not only does Pair allow for scoring some points even when those rare hands aren’t available, but by playing other cards next to that two-card hand, players can functionally discard while still racking some points.
There’s another reason why Pair, Three of a Kind, and Two Pair are such a great combo. Most Jollies that apply to Pair are also triggered by Two Pair and Three of a Kind, as their only requirement is that two cards of the same rank are present in the hand played.
2 Mars
Levels Up Four of a Kind
- +3 Mult
- +30 Chips
Mars is interesting but ultimately not worth the risk. With a little luck and some deck manipulation, it’s not too hard to play a Four of a Kind. The problem is that the same luck and the same deck manipulation bring the player to finding lots of Three of a Kinds first.
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Venus, which buffs Three of a Kind, isn’t quite as strong as Mars. But Three of a Kinds are so much more common, especially when the run has just started, that focusing on the smaller hand first is almost a given. By that point, bringing Four of a Kind to the same level as its smaller friend requires so many Mars cards to make the power-up pointless.
1 Neptune
Levels Up Straight Flush
- +4 Mult
- +40 Chips
Neptune is in a worse situation than even Four of a Kind. This planet is only useful in runs where Flush or Straight (and ideally both) are very common. The problem with Neptune is that if it is ever viable, it’s in runs where the non-combined versions of this hand are already buffed. A player with a very powerful Flush or Straight is almost certainly better off not playing a Straight Flush intentionally.
Still, Neptune levels up Straight Flush much faster than Jupiter and Saturn do Flush and Straight, respectively. Runs focused on Jupiter, in particular, could benefit by getting some Neptune cards since the Flush card gives only 2 Mult and 15 Chips per level, against Neptune’s 4 Mult and 40 Chips.
Balatro is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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