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Recently, I came across an announcement on Twitter/X for a new mod that adds new Jokers into Balatro, which stunned me. I never really thought about modding Balatro due to how great the base game is, but what started as an idle curiosity has developed into a full-blown spiral of adding mods, and there are some really cool ones here. It was a little bit of a process to get going, though, so I wanted to create a guide on how to mod Balatro on the Deck, and here we are:
How To Mod Balatro On The Steam Deck
To get started, you are going to need a purchased copy of Balatro on Steam and you will have to be in Desktop Mode on the Deck. This will also be focusing on mods that require the Lovely framework and Steamodded that adds in new content and doesn't replace the Balatro.exe file.
You can find some mods to get from Nexusmods or download the Cosmos mod or you can check out the Card Sleeves mod and other great mods that go along with it towards the bottom of the page.
Step 1:
Go to Firefox (or whatever your preferred web browser is) and go to the Lovely Injector GitHub. Download the latest Windows release.
Step 2:
Go to your Balatro install directory by heading over to Steam and right-clicking on Balatro and clicking on "Browse Game Files." This will open up a new window where all the files for Balatro are installed.
Step 3:
Move the version.dll from the Lovely Injector download and put it in the install directory of Balatro.
Step 4:
Next, we need the Steamodded mod. Download the latest version of the mod from this link.
Step 5:
Now, we have to go to Balatro's save directory and create the Mods folder. To do this, go into the Dolphin file browser and put this in the address bar:
/home/deck/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/2379780/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/Roaming/Balatro
Step 6:
Once here, go ahead and right click anywhere in the blank area and create a new folder. Make sure to name it "Mods" and then click on save.
Step 7:
Once the folder is created, go into it. This is where you are going to put all of your mods you download, including Steamodded. Go ahead and put Steamodded and any other mods you have into this folder. Make sure that any mods you put in here are contained in a single folder each.
Go ahead and put Steamodded and any other mods you have into this folder. Make sure that any mods you put in here are contained in a single folder each.
Step 8:
We are almost done, we just have to make 1 more change. Go to Balatro in your Steam library and head to the preferences. Scroll down and put this into the launch option text box:
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="version=n,b" %command%
And that's it! It should launch Balatro in the mod and you will have all of your new Jokers, decks, card sleeves, whatever you added. It feels like a refreshing way to experience the game, and I am having a blast playing around with the new jokers and seeing how they interact with my cards. I especially love the Pokemon mod, and it's really cool seeing how energy interacts with the specific elemental Pokemon I have in my top row.
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