You’ve probably spent forty hours chasing a Gold Stake win only to realize that, as brilliant as LocalThunk’s poker roguelike is, you want more. More Jokers. More weird decks. Maybe even a way to make the UI look like a fever dream from 1998. It’s a common itch. Everyone gets it eventually. The good news is that the community has basically cracked the code on how to mod Balatro in a way that’s surprisingly stable, provided you don't just start dragging and dropping files randomly into your Steam folders.
Most people assume it’s a nightmare because the game is built in LOVE (Lua). It’s not. Honestly, it’s one of the more accessible indie games to tinker with once you get over the initial hurdle of setting up a loader. You aren't editing hex code or doing anything particularly scary. You're mostly just giving the game a "brain" that knows how to read new instructions.
The Lovely Loader is your best friend
If you try to mod this game manually by injecting code into the executable, you're going to have a bad time. Period. The standard for the community right now is something called Lovely. Think of it as the framework that allows different mods to talk to the game's engine without fighting each other.
Without Lovely, you’re basically trying to rewrite the game’s DNA every time you want to add a single Joker. With it? You're just handing the game a sticky note with new rules. To get it running, you’ll usually find yourself on GitHub looking for the latest release of the lovely-injector. You drop a couple of files into your game directory—usually where the Balatro.exe lives—and that’s basically the "hard" part done. It’s a bit of a "set it and forget it" situation.
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I've seen people try to use older injectors or manual zip overrides, but those are relics now. They break every time the game gets a tiny patch. Stick to the current community standard. It saves you from the "why is my screen black?" panic that usually follows a botched installation.
Steam Deck users have it slightly different
Don't panic. You can still do this on your Deck. It’s actually one of the best ways to play modded Balatro because of the pick-up-and-play nature of the handheld. The process involves jumping into Desktop Mode and setting a specific launch option in Steam.
Basically, you need to tell Steam to use the lovely.dll as a bridge. You’ll go into the game properties and add WINEDLLOVERRIDES="lovely=n,b" %command% to the launch options. If you forget this, the Deck will just ignore your mods and boot the vanilla game like nothing happened. It’s a common point of frustration. You spend twenty minutes setting up folders, boot the game, and... nothing. It’s almost always the launch options.
Where to actually find the good stuff
So, where do you go? Most of the action is on GitHub or the official Balatro Discord. Nexus Mods has some stuff, but for the real "game-breakingly fun" content, the Discord’s #modding-announcements channel is the gold mine.
You’ll see things like:
- Bunny's Mod Pack: Adds a ton of flavor and balance tweaks.
- Cryptid: If you want things to get absolutely chaotic and nonsensical.
- BetterUI: For those of us who need more data on the screen to feel alive.
The "Cryptid" mod is a perfect example of what the community can do. It adds "Exotic" Jokers and strange consumables that feel like they belong in the game but also push the math to its absolute limit. It’s not for everyone, especially if you prefer the tight balance of the base game, but for a "power fantasy" run, it's unbeatable.
Dealing with the "Incompatible" error
Modding isn't perfect. Sometimes you'll load up a cool-sounding mod and the game will just scream at you. Usually, this happens because two mods are trying to change the same function in the Lua code.
If you’re running ten different mods at once, expect some friction. The "Steamodded" framework is another name you'll see a lot. It works alongside Lovely to help manage these conflicts. If a mod says it requires Steamodded, don't ignore that. It’s not a suggestion. It’s the difference between a functional game and a crash-to-desktop loop.
One thing that confuses people is the save data. Modding Balatro generally won't wipe your progress, but it’s always smart to back up your AppData/Roaming/Balatro folder. I’ve seen some experimental mods accidentally corrupt a save state because they saved a "Modded Joker" into the run history that the vanilla game didn't recognize when the mod was turned off.
Why you might want to wait on certain mods
LocalThunk is still updating the game. This is the big catch. Whenever a major official patch drops—like the one that reworked the difficulty stakes—almost every mod breaks. It’s just the nature of the beast.
If you are the type of person who hates troubleshooting, maybe wait until the game’s development cycle slows down. But if you’re bored and want to see what happens when you have a Joker that gives $10^{100}$ Mult, then diving into how to mod Balatro right now is worth the ten minutes of setup.
Actually, the "math" mods are some of the most impressive. There are mods that replace the game's standard number handling with "BigNum" libraries. This allows the game to calculate scores that are physically impossible for the base game to display. We're talking scientific notation that fills the entire screen. It’s ridiculous. It’s glorious.
Actionable Steps for a Clean Install
- Backup your save: Go to
%AppData%/Balatroand copy that folder somewhere safe. Do it now. - Download the Lovely Injector: Grab the latest
dwmapi.dll(which is usually how Lovely injects itself) from the official GitHub repository. - Create a Mods folder: Inside your Balatro game directory, you'll usually need a folder simply named
Mods. - Start small: Don't install 50 mods at once. Start with one, like a simple Joker pack, to verify the injector is working.
- Check the logs: If the game crashes, look for a
lovely.logfile in the game folder. It usually tells you exactly which line of code caused the meltdown.
Modding is ultimately about personalizing the experience. Whether you want a more "fair" version of the game or a total descent into mathematical madness, the tools are there. Just keep your files organized and keep an eye on those Discord updates.