Canio is one of the five Legendary Jokers. It provides Multiplicative Mult to all played hands, starting at X1 Mult and gaining X1 Mult whenever a face card is destroyed. Legendary Jokers can only be obtained from The Soul Spectral Card, which has a 0.3% (1 in ~333) chance to replace an individual card in Spectral and Arcana Booster Packs.
Canio is one of the best Multiplicative Mult cards in the game, and arguably the strongest one capable of scaling. A single copy of The Hanged Man can boost Canio to X3 Mult, and a synergistic strategy fully utilizing relevant Jokers and consumables can easily boost it to X10 Mult or higher.
Synergies[]
Canio provides Multiplicative Mult to all played hands once at least 1 face card has been destroyed while it is held. This means, if it is obtained, it is probably worthwhile to try and incorporate it into one's strategy. However, if the current build is dependent on face cards to operate, Canio could potentially endanger the run's safety, by tempting the player into taking away reliable scoring opportunities.
Decks[]
Any Deck, minus the 
Abandoned Deck due to its complete lack of face cards, has the potential to benefit from Canio. A large number of them have bonuses that make it inherently easier to gain access to desirable Tarot Cards, either by giving an economy boost or effects that increase the volume of Tarot Cards, which is an important consideration if the goal in a run is to find and optimize Canio.
- The
Ghost Deck gives easier access to the typically elusive Spectral Cards by allowing them to appear in the shop; among them, 4 can destroy playing cards (Familiar, Grim, Incantation, and Immolate), and of this quartet, Familiar is by far the chase card, as it simultaneously destroys a card and adds more face cards to be destroyed by other means later (though it is also worth mentioning that Immolate destroys a large number of cards at once, making it more reliable, on top of the money boost it gives being imperative early on). Ouija is also able to convert a large number of cards into face cards at once (3/13, or ~23.1% chance). Due to the inherent randomness of these cards, however, they also have the potential to decrease the overall quality of your deck while providing at worst crippling detriments, so you should only try this if you're feeling particularly lucky. - An Erratic Deck seed containing high numbers of face cards will allow this Joker to reach a much higher ceiling much easier.
Poker Hands[]
Any hand can benefit from Canio once it starts scaling, as it provides a strong XMult base. Since face cards must be sacrificed to scale Canio, players may want to keep 1 or 2 Chip Jokers to compensate for numbered cards' inadequacies in that regard.
Jokers[]
- Pareidolia: Since it will make every playing card count as a face card, these two have a natural synergy with each other. Canio will gain X1 Mult when any playing card is destroyed, allowing the player to keep naturally higher-scoring Kings, Queens, and Jacks, and destroy ranks with less overall utility such as 7s and 6s instead.
- Trading Card: A Joker that lets you use the first discard to destroy a face card, boosting Canio by X1 Mult potentially every single Blind.
- Erosion: An Additive Mult Joker that scales remarkably fast as the number of cards in your full deck drops below the starting amount. It and this Joker work very well with each other; for example, if all face cards are removed from one of the typically-arranged decks while both Jokers are held, Erosion will have +48 Mult, and Canio a staggering X13 Mult.
- Glass Joker: It and this Joker synergize exceptionally well in a Glass Card-centric strategy. Whenever a Glass face card is destroyed, both will scale simultaneously. Due to a bug, Glass Joker currently does not scale when Glass Cards are destroyed by Spectral Cards, so try to play into Oops! All 6s or The Hanged Man when combining the two.
Consumables[]
Any mechanism that destroys a face card will boost Canio. This includes Glass Cards. As such, the following consumables are useful for boosting Canio:
- The Hanged Man can be used to easily destroy face cards.
- Justice can enhance face cards into Glass Cards, giving them a chance to destroy themselves after scoring.
- Death, The Tower, and Strength do not trigger this Joker, as a face card becoming a different type of card does not count as destroying it.
- Familiar serves dual purpose in a strategy involving this Joker, as it both destroys a random card and adds additional face cards to the deck.
- Grim and Incantation both destroy a random card.
- Immolate destroys 5 random cards in hand, while also giving an immediate burst of money that can be spent to further enhance the quality of your deck.
Trivia[]
- Canio is a reference to "Pagliacci", an Italian opera by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The opera tells the tale of Canio, an actor and the leader of a theatrical company who murders his wife Nedda and her lover Silvio on stage during a performance. The destruction of face cards (which feature people on them) to increase Canio's power is likely in reference to these murders.
- This Joker is animated, with Canio himself hovering just above the silver card face. Only the other Legendary Jokers and Hologram share this trait.
- The other legendary Jokers are Chicot, Perkeo, Triboulet, and Yorick.
- In some early versions and in the game's code, the card was/is misspelled as 'Caino'.
In other languages[]
| Language | Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Chinese (Simplified) | 卡尼奥 | |
| Chinese (Traditional) | 白臉小丑 | |
| Dutch | Canio | |
| French | Caino | |
| German | Canio | |
| Indonesian | Canio | |
| Italian | Canio | |
| Japanese | カイーノ | |
| Korean | 카니오 | |
| Polish | Caino | |
| Portuguese (Brazilian) | Caino | |
| Russian | Канио | |
| Spanish (Spain) | Canio | |
| Spanish (Latin America) | Canio |
