Jimbo begs for a rework

[Didin]

Balatro Machine — the most absurdly powerful structure in Don't Starve Together. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of this game (I even own a legit copy on Steam). I took a break from DST for a while, and in the meantime, I was busy buying jokers and raising the ante. Honestly, Balatro is seriously addictive. I logged into Don't Starve, collected my gifts, and rushed into my world to find that one-armed bandit. After playing a few rounds, here are my thoughts:

• In fact, you can choose absolutely any joker if you constantly use the exit button

• The rewards feel way too overpowered for a 30-second minigame.

• The game can start even if you’re being chased by a horde of hungry hounds or nightmares. It’s not annoying, just weird — but then again, it’s Jimbo, who lives for epic spectacles.

• No cooldown means you can spam it endlessly until you drop.

▎Now about the rewards

They’re way too broken for just a minute of playtime. Take bananas for example — a food that normally only becomes abundant by the second in-game year, but now we’re getting them in bulk from the first day. And we’re not even risking anything since the enemies Jimbo sends after us turn into a picnic for Webber and Wigfrid. Seriously, what’s two hounds and a spider gonna do to me?

I think this machine needs a rework. Here’s what I’d suggest:

• Replace and buff the enemies to make farming them less trivial. Hounds could be swapped with spiky ones from the theater, spiders upgraded to cave spiders from the Labyrinth, and bees turned into Grumbles.

• Change bananas to something else. I don’t want them to lose their value.

• Add a daily play limit or make it cost rare tokens and offer a selection of jokers that refresh once per day to prevent abuse via the exit button.

Overall, I enjoyed this little crossover, but it’d be even better if it got a rework.

[Grinek]

Omg finally somebody who understands but i think youre being too harsh on the rewards 

[aidancode]

I'd just put it on an island. I think that addresses a lot of things with one move. It's not really overpowered unless you're a beginner since the resources it gives are generally not resources that needed another tap anyways. Putting it on an island means it effectively just has a chance of being relevant to your playthrough, which I think is fine. A chance for a reasonably strong structure, a chance for not getting that until it's irrelevant.

[-Nick-]

1 hour ago, Didin said:

Hounds could be swapped with spiky ones from the theater

Thats a downgrade actually lol. Rose bush hounds have 50 health and only deal 10 damage.

[lowercase skye]

Jimbo would be very overpowered if you could just interact with him once and get hours worth of rewards, but in reality he's a structure that you have to be sitting there interacting with and strategizing around while wasting time that could be spent doing anything else. Sure, you can get easy access to bananas, but you have to sit there doing nothing for upwards of four days to get a good amount of them (it once took me an entire spring to get 1 stack), which is more than enough time to have started sailing the ocean and found the Moon Quay for consistent banana bushes. And it's not like you exclusively get bananas: sometimes all that wasted time is rewarded with 1 grass and 1 twig, or 3 hounds that you have to waste even more time safely fighting, and if you do TOO good then you're just getting banana pops (or gold), rather than the bananas themselves!

I think this is a non issue. If you really want the bananas, you are far better off properly exploring the map and getting a consistent source of them at the Moon Quay. Choosing to use the unreliable time-wasting mainland source of them is an entirely fair trade-off since you aren't actually exploring the map or progressing or playing the game at all during the time that minigame window is open.

[Wawchik]

PolarLotus posted a video where he played a nothing world only with Jimbo, he almost reached winter and at the end had like 60~ bananas, so I wouldn't call it that op

[Mike23Ua]

Seriously.. I just have to be the jerk and ask what game are y’all even playing anymore? DST hasn’t been “hard” or “uncompromising” in a long long looooonnnggg time.

And no I absolutely will not count optional raid bosses shoved away in an obscure corner as part of that difficulty.

Instead I’m looking at the Easy to Get stuff, things like Free Useful items from performing on Charlie’s Stage to get free precrafted Miners Hats & Umbrellas.

You can even take a trip Day 1 out to Moon Quay (provided you can find it which is now easier to do with landmarks) with just a grass raft and a driftwood oar and bring no items with you Rob the monkeys of their bananas while they sleep at night carry them back to your base and have bananas for the rest of all eternity.

Jimbo’s Poker machine isn’t as broken as you think it is… and limiting how many times you can play would make the mini-game more annoying.

[Jakepeng99]

Make it cost a little hunger to play, and make the enemies spawned from failing increase in strength the more you keep playing over and over without leaving.

[FillerText]

You aren't even talking about reworking them. You just want to nerf a random structure most people either don't care about, or just consider to be a fun minigame. The loot doesn't even come close to just killing some weak 5000 hp eye for a practically infinite helmet, and it doesn't destroy the game. It's just a fun kinda helpful thing to attract new players.

Besides, there is already seriously powerful stuff like bee boxes, and farms anyway. If you base near the swamp/have Monkeytails you just get constant supply of poultices, Honey ham/nuggets, and taffy. You can also base in decidious/swamp again(it's filled with ponds) to just infinitely farm tomatoes, and potatoes while only needing to walk for 7 seconds towards a pond for refills. Then you either use them for healing, or veggie stingers. You can also easily do both if you choose to base in the swamp.

[Cheggf]

The structure isn't overpowered. It gives a bunch of free resources for only a short time playing it, which is a little weird, but it isn't an overpowered amount. I feel like the bananas are the worst reward it offers, you get so few of them. The only thing I'd change with the machine is introduce sanity penalties for using it like Shipwrecked has. I want it mostly because it's a funny joke about gambling addiction, but it would also make it seem less weird than just spitting out resources. Shipwrecked's slot machine is a bit harsh with its sanity penalty, though (which makes sense since its rewards are so much better). Maybe instead of costing 5-40 sanity per use depending on how many times you've ever used it with it eventually permanently capping at 40 with no way to bring it back down, it took 5 sanity to use it with each use increasing it by 3 to a max of 15, and if you go a few days without using it the penalty resets back to 5.

This would also make it easier to actually get to play the game on a public server. Every time I've been on a Klei official someone has been permanently glued to the machine literally 100% of the time. I have only ever been able to play it by stealing the spot of someone else who was already playing. If they were slowly losing sanity from doing it they'd eventually need to give someone else a turn.

[Malfario]

7 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Make it cost a little hunger to play, and make the enemies spawned from failing increase in strength the more you keep playing over and over without leaving.

Why? its not the best way to obtain any resource, its not practical to get anything, the time you spent playing it can be used in anything else and you will get a better profit. Making it cost hunger will just make a fun silly thing annoying to use, its already unpractical to farm bananas with it, its unpractical to get any other resources it can give you, the only apeal of it its the cards the record and the fun of the game itself.

[Mike23Ua]

Maybe I just have bad luck at getting good hands, but every attempt I try on the machine ends up with Spiders or Bees, or maybe a twig and a grass.

Im playing as Walter By the Way so yeah… Bees, why did it have to be free bees?! 

[kayla137]

No.

[Swiyss]

8 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Maybe I just have bad luck at getting good hands, but every attempt I try on the machine ends up with Spiders or Bees, or maybe a twig and a grass.

Im playing as Walter By the Way so yeah… Bees, why did it have to be free bees?! 

walter is op, how are you getting bees with him?

oh my bad, I thought you were talking about the joker.

[Walrusst]

11 hours ago, Cheggf said:

This would also make it easier to actually get to play the game on a public server. Every time I've been on a Klei official someone has been permanently glued to the machine literally 100% of the time. I have only ever been able to play it by stealing the spot of someone else who was already playing. If they were slowly losing sanity from doing it they'd eventually need to give someone else a turn.

Part of this is going to be novelty.

Still people who get good at getting low/middling scores I will eventually have to praise just for relieving the world slightly of the grass shortages and player vulture syndrome....
I'm starting to chill on jimbo and I'm willing to wait and see if I actually need to be worried or not (I haven't played a lot lately so...)

[hyoton123]

This kind of makes me wonder what is the strongest structure in DST.

[Wawchik]

7 minutes ago, hyoton123 said:

This kind of makes me wonder what is the strongest structure in DST.

Obviously the punching bag, it has infinite health

[Cheggf]

7 minutes ago, hyoton123 said:

This kind of makes me wonder what is the strongest structure in DST.

APSS

[Balter]

Yeah “We should make Balatro less rewarding and fun so people won’t play it as much”

If I was Klei I would never do this as it would kill my sponsorship and the small amount of people who actually play it would be even less inclined to play it.

[Walrusst]

If anything I'd just support moving this to the caves because having to go to the caves is a natural cost for most characters.

If it was in one of the mushtree forests it would be interesting, not out of place as an infinite light source, and also not that far from cave entrances usually.
So you could find him consistently and fast, just being underground costs you something, and its large rewards make sense.

This also prevents the random cards from becoming floor trash that clutters the overworld, which helps keep the overworld shard lag down in case someone chooses to gamble for the entirety of autumn for some reason.

[lowercase skye]

9 hours ago, Walrusst said:

This also prevents the random cards from becoming floor trash that clutters the overworld, which helps keep the overworld shard lag down in case someone chooses to gamble for the entirety of autumn for some reason.

The playing cards can be one singular item, you're naturally going to stack them together as you obtain them which means they're just 1 item, which is definitely not causing any lag at all. Unless there are thousands of items all dropped on the ground in one area with a player standing there loading them, dropped items are not going to cause any noticeable lag at all, ever.

[Walrusst]

41 minutes ago, lowercase skye said:

The playing cards can be one singular item, you're naturally going to stack them together as you obtain them which means they're just 1 item, which is definitely not causing any lag at all. Unless there are thousands of items all dropped on the ground in one area with a player standing there loading them, dropped items are not going to cause any noticeable lag at all, ever.

I usually end up seeing someone on their lonesome having been spawning them for hours having not bothered to stack them at all standing there loading them in an area.

I've played a bit more now since I made my last post and that is positively what I was seeing now.

[Primalflower]

18 hours ago, Walrusst said:

I usually end up seeing someone on their lonesome having been spawning them for hours having not bothered to stack them at all standing there loading them in an area.

I've played a bit more now since I made my last post and that is positively what I was seeing now.

in fairness, the mechanic is very new. people dont know how it works, word of mouth hasnt really travelled yet. I feel like this is the sort of thing that will become less and less of a frequent occurance as time marches forward

[Mike23Ua]

19 hours ago, Walrusst said:

I usually end up seeing someone on their lonesome having been spawning them for hours having not bothered to stack them at all standing there loading them in an area.

I've played a bit more now since I made my last post and that is positively what I was seeing now.

Well yeah.. obviously, that’s exactly what I’m doing too… it’s easier to see what cards you have and don’t have if they can all be layed out neatly (Klei should’ve just programmed the games many tables it has to have actual animations for cards placed on them)

Cause right now, I’m just throwing them down on the ground one by one.

For anyone who may be Unaware of how a full deck of cards works, you need 1-10, J, Q, K, A

and you need them in Hearts, Spades, Clovers, & Diamonds. So in total you should have: 4 of each card.

A classic round of Solitaire is unplayable without the full deck.

[ShadowDuelist]

On 4/14/2025 at 2:09 PM, Walrusst said:

This also prevents the random cards from becoming floor trash that clutters the overworld, which helps keep the overworld shard lag down in case someone chooses to gamble for the entirety of autumn for some reason.

I still think the cards should burn with a regular torch or environment fire, and not just in a scaled furnace as they do now. I mean, I know DST is not known for realism, but really, it's just cards, why aren't those flammable?

As for OP's topic, I think that the Jimbo mini game is just a big time waster, specially in the early game.

My first impression when I started gambling and getting a lot of bananas was "wow this is amazing, needs a nerf" but tbh I tried to repeat that consistently in the early game and just felt that I ended up reaching half autumn or almost winter for just a bunch of spoiling bananas and some gold. All of which I could have gotten by going to the ruins, while also getting a lot more valuable stuff and getting more important things done.

If it's gonna be nerfed I'd probably make it so it costs 1 gold nugget for 5 or 10 games, or something like that, as proper "gambling". Other than that, as they mentioned above placing it on an island and keeping it free sounds good as well.