SpeedTweaks (WIP)

A little Balatro mod I made with AI that makes very long scoring calculations finish much faster without changing the final score. (Well atleast it shouldn't)

It skips scoring work the engine performs but which cannot possibly produce an effect on the game. The score, the jokers, the RNG and the game state are identical — only wasted checks the engine does disappear.

Built and tested against a run (Cryptid) making 354 million scoring calls in a single hand.

Result

	Before	After
Card:calculate_joker calls	354,512,994	121,425,742
Hand time	~1344 s (22.4 min)	460 s (7.7 min)
Speedup	—	2.9×

Measured on a 99-card hand holding 44 jokers, 108 consumables and 42 vouchers. calculate_joker_skip_ratio was 65.7 %, and 1 / (1 − 0.657) = 2.9× matches the observed time exactly.

The gain scales with how many consumables and vouchers you hold, because those are the cards that get evaluated on every scoring pass without being able to act.

Why the skipped checks are provably free

Steamodded rewrites Card:calculate_joker into this dispatch:

local obj = self.config.center
if self.ability.set ~= "Enhanced" and obj.calculate        then ... end
if context.scaling_card   and obj.calc_scaling             then ... end
if context.resetting_card and obj.calc_resetting           then ... end
if self.ability.set == "Joker" then ... vanilla chain ... end

The only set-gated branch is "Joker". So a card with no calculate / calc_scaling / calc_resetting handler that is not a Joker must return nil — in every context, for every mod set.

Meanwhile SMODS.calculate_card_areas('jokers') walks G.jokers and G.consumeables and G.vouchers on every scoring pass. A hand holding 108 tarots therefore pays for 108 do-nothing evaluations per pass, each one walking Steamodded's context stack, Cryptid's wrapper, Amulet's coroutine bookkeeping and the vanilla chain, to reach nil.

SpeedTweaks returns that nil immediately.

What it does

1. Inert-card fast path on Card:calculate_joker. Returns nil for provably inert cards before any wrapper runs.
2. Calculation slices. If Amulet/Talisman is present, its coroutine yield interval is raised from 0.03 s to 0.12 s. With animations disabled the extra frame trips are pure loss.

Install

Thunderstore / r2modman: click Install with Mod Manager. Lovely and Steamodded are pulled in automatically as dependencies.

Manual install: download the zip and extract it so you have:

Mods/SpeedTweaks/main.lua

Mods/SpeedTweaks/smods.json

Platform	Path
Windows	%APPDATA%\Balatro\Mods\SpeedTweaks\
Linux/Proton	.../compatdata/2379780/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/Roaming/Balatro/Mods/SpeedTweaks/
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/Balatro/Mods/SpeedTweaks/

Mods live in the save directory, not the game install directory. The folder must contain both main.lua and smods.json

Output

After each hand it writes speedtweaks.txt next to profile.jkr:

[SpeedTweaks] hand finished
slice=0.12  yield_every=1000
calculate_joker_skipped=233087252
calculate_joker_run=121425742
calculate_joker_skip_ratio=65.7%
Amulet_last_calcs=121387308
Amulet_last_time=460.44s
reps_scored_cards=99
reps_max_per_card=913
reps_avg_per_card=272

Note Amulet_last_calcs reads lower than before. That is the skipped calls, not a smaller score.

Compatibility

Mod	Status
Steamodded	Required
Amulet / Talisman	Works; slice tuning active. Its wrapper is bypassed only for provably-inert cards.
Cryptid	Works. Instance-level calculate_joker overrides (Cryptid exotics) are detected via rawget and never skipped.
HandyBalatro	Compatible (does not touch Card:calculate_joker).
CardSleeves, TwoRowJokers	Compatible (no references to the function).
JokerDisplay	Compatible (display only).
Mods that add calculate to consumables/vouchers	Respected — such cards are never skipped.
Mods that replace Card:calculate_joker outright without chaining	Fast path is bypassed; no effect, no harm.

Will update this list on user feedback.

Safety rails:

• Disabled entirely if Steamodded is absent, because stock Balatro has a set == "Planet" branch (Observatory) and the inertness proof would not hold.
• Only returns nil, which is exactly what the engine's dispatch would produce. It never fabricates an effect table, so no return-shape assumptions are made.

Toggles

At the top of main.lua:

local ENABLE_INERT_SKIP = true   -- the optimisation
local SLICE_SECONDS     = 0.12   -- Amulet slice length

It is very much an WIP, still some optimisations to be made. For bugs/problems, open an issue at https://github.com/kians322315/SpeedTweaks-Balatro and I will try to get it sorted. No guarantees though.

DISCLAIMER: THIS MOD WAS MADE ALMOST COMPLETELY WITH AI, USE AT YOUR DISCRETION

Licence

MIT.