For beginners looking for some advice, Like with most roguelikes there's a good Three Step Rule I have for making it through the game, 3 phases on how to play the game.
Phase 1: Scouting
You always start here, this is where you get through the relatively easy first fights and grab anything that looks good and helpful from shops, try to go for general good effects, nothing hyper specific at the moment, just build up your early strength with good jokers and good cards and see what the game presents at you for this stage of the game
Phase 2: Building
So you've survived the early game and got a fairly decent deck, maybe you have a pretty strong synergy in play at this. The game is starting to ramp in difficulty now so at this point you want to build upon your decks strengths, got some Straight Jokers? Buy some more straight focused jokers and add cards that'll make getting straights easier. Have a Joker that wants diamonds, get more Diamond Jokers and Tarots that lets you get more diamonds. You may have an early cumulative card that's been gradually building up to, so support that as well. Identify what will work for your deck and buy them to strengthen it (Also don't make any purchases that will screw over your deck at this stage as well, as it will have knock on effects later on) When you transition to this phase is going to vary per game, you may have the awesome joker to build for early, you maybe a fair bit in and not found anything to build around yet, you will get better at identifying when to start Phase 2 the more you play the game over time
Phase 3: Surviving
So this is when the game starts throwing it's hardest challenges at you, at this point, you buy stuff just to try and make it to the end at this phase. At this stage your deck is hopefully pretty good, but you can't be picky with what you are given now, even if it's real small benefit to your deck, if there's a Real bad boss blind coming up, then you spend your resources to beat it, don't die sitting on $50 dollars if you aren't doing a money build, that's $50 you could have spent beating this upcoming challenge that just ended you. When this phase happens also varies per run, but it will happen and you need to identify when this happens and respond accordingly.
So, three phases. Scout early on what tools the game is giving you this run. Build upon those early tools the game has given you into a strong deck. Then when the hard challenges appear, do all you can to survive.
