games

At first i hated them but perishables aren't too bad really. Your early jonkers are just there to get you through the first two antes with as few hands as possible(for the extra dollar per hand) while you get up to $25(the highest interest without vouchers) so you can start rolling for economy jokers and deck fixing and such. They retain their value when disabled so you can still get pirate or abstract value on them, or you can sell them(especially if you get an early gift card. They then function as an econ joker after being disabled since they count toward temperance.)

I think the biggest difficulty spike is the -1 discard. It makes big hands less fun, makes getting through early rounds in one hand harder since that's when you need those big hands, which slows down your economy which slows down your growth which makes winning in one hand harder etc and so forth.