You're definitely early enough that you've got a lot more to learn. Your runs will get much faster as you learn the game better (and feel comfortable turning up the game speed in settings).
Some tips for dealing with hard boss blinds:
- you can see the next boss blind starting from the previous boss's shop, this means you have up to three shops to adjust for it.
- boss blinds are designed to punish different strategies so the more you focus your deck on a single strategy, the more likely it is you'll run into a hard counter. That doesn't mean you shouldn't focus on a single strategy, but if you do, you need to try to prioritize getting a voucher or joker that lets you reroll boss blinds that counter you or have a way to work around it.
- The Needle (play only one hand) punishes relying on lots of low value hands. If you see it upcoming, drop +hands jokers for +hand size or +discards and try to level up your best hand or one with good scaling like Straight.
- The Wall (extra large blind) is supposed to punish saving up money without committing to a strategy by playing a deck that can barely get by, but it often just ends runs where you failed to get the pieces you need. When you see it upcoming, you need to make sure you're committed to a decent strategy ASAP.
General tips:
- interest is important, try not to spend all your money for optimal income unless you need to.
- if you have jokers that gain stats when you play certain cards/hands (eg. Spare Trousers) and can easily clear a blind, consider playing some suboptimal hands to build them up more.
- early game you want to focus +mult because your chips will typically be higer than mult due to the value of cards. Late game when your hands are leveled up, *mult and +chips become more important than +mult.