Seed

The seed of a run is an alphanumeric string that determines the random elements of a run, such as what Jokers appear in each Shop. All random elements are determined by the seed, as each seed has a fixed "string" that determines if every listed probability can hit, like that of Space Joker, Bloodstone, The Wheel of Fortune and Lucky Cards. When starting a run with a random seed, the seed is hidden until the run is won or lost.

When starting a new run, there's a Seeded Run checkbox next to the large Play button. It's turned off by default, resulting in a random seed being chosen when the run is begun. If the checkbox is ticked then a field will appear to enter a seed. When playing a seeded run, achievements and unlocks cannot be obtained, as most would be trivialized by choosing a favorable seed. Statistics such as number of times a consumable has been used and high scores like Best Hand/Highest Ante do still get updated. It's not possible to start a seeded run on Challenge Decks, but seed generated by each challenge run can still be used on normal decks.

Many of the random elements in Balatro, such as what cards appear in the Shop, are determined through "queues" of cards predetermined by the seed. Thus if one skips a Shop the next Shop will have the same cards the previous Shop would have had. Game elements determined by queues include cards in the Shop, Vouchers, skip tags, Booster Packs and their contents, cards drawn during antes, and Boss Blinds.

Format

A seed can consist of 0-8 uppercase alphanumeric characters. Manual input seeds cannot contain the character 0, as it gets replaced by O when entered. Automatically generated seeds cannot contain either the characters O or 0.

The player can manually input any length of seed between 0 (empty) and 8 characters using the Seeded Run checkbox when starting a new run. This makes the total number of valid seeds be∑k=0835k≈ 2.3 × 10¹² (or 2.3 trillion).

Seed generation

When generated automatically, a seed will always consist of 8 characters, and cannot contain O or 0. It is generated based on the cursor's positioning (X and Y coordinates), and either the amount of time that has passed since the last run or how long the game has been open.

The probability of different letters and numbers appearing in generated seeds is actually not equal[1]:

total probability probability per number/letter
numbers 1-9 30% 30% ÷ 9 ≈ 3.33%
letters A-N 70% 70% × 55% = 38.5% 38.5% ÷ 14 ≈ 2.75%
letters P-Z 70% × 45% = 31.5% 31.5% ÷ 11 ≈ 2.86%

Any number or letter (other than O and 0) can appear at any position in seed generation, so the total number of generated seeds is 34⁸ ≈ 1.8 × 10¹² (or 1.8 trillion).

On Gold Stake, the seed is generated in such a way that the first The Soul card will give a Legendary Joker without a Gold Sticker, to help with the Completionist++ achievement.

Notable seeds

  • If you use the seed "7LB2WVPK" with the Erratic Deck, you will get a deck made purely of 10 of Spades. This can be taken one step further with the seed "XEQH7CP9", which as well as having only 10 of Spades also has exclusively holographic jokers in the shop or in packs up until Ante 10. (This is an RNG bug, not a true random deck; the probability of randomly generating 52 of the same card without such a bug is 1 in 3.282e87, while there are only 2.318e12 valid seeds, so it is almost certain that no seed does so naturally.)

References

  1. ↑ Information taken from the desktop version 1.0.1o source code, function random_string at functions/misc_functions.lua:270
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