Stasis

Stasis is the name given to any strategy which involves purposefully extending the duration of combat, usually for the purpose of MP gain, without sacrificing one's stat-gain and/or item-drop familiar. Changes in Jabañero Saucesphere make this strategy unviable, and this article is being retained for historical purposes.

Stasis specifically refers to a family of strategies that used Jabañero Saucesphere. This form of stasis was eliminated with the arrival of NS13, which changed the effects of Saucespheres entirely. While on one hand Jick admired the ingenuity of those who developed stasis, he also at various times referred to it as a "degenerate strategy."

Stasis was similar to "starfishing" (see Star Starfish Trick), a tactic in which a player waits for their Star Starfish to attack in combat, thus restoring their MP. Others have used an NPZR to gain meat, HP and/or MP. Starfishing is still possible, while Jabañero Saucesphere stasis is not.

Jabañero Saucesphere stasis

Now defunct, Jabañero Saucesphere stasis was a frequently-discussed and controversial strategy. This strategy was largely employed by Hardcore players, and especially speed ascenders. This is because advanced Jabañero stasis provided the MP to maintain a heavy skill load, allowed for Meat to be put to uses other than simply restoring MP, and allowed players to sustain adventuring with higher Monster Level.

The entire basis of the strategy was the skill Jabañero Saucesphere, which used to replenish a range of 1 to 5 MP upon a successful strike by an opponent. In addition, the opponent received damage equal to MP gained. This offered what amounted to a conversion of monster HP to player MP.

The efficiency of stasis depended on the following methods:

• Maximize enemy HP and ensure the enemy takes as much damage as possible from the saucesphere alone. Therefore, limit or prevent any other damage being done to the enemy.
• However, ensure that the enemy can be killed before exceeding the thirty round limit in each combat.
• Ensure that the player is consistently hit by the enemy, but minimize the damage being done to the player.
• Utilize skills and restore HP efficiently.

There was no single way to perform stasis; much depended upon the player's preferred tactics and available skills. Listed below are a variety of techniques that some players found useful to stasis.

Stat control

Because stasis relied on the player taking damage from an opponent, the most obvious strategy was to set the player's Moxie lower than the monster's attack level by a certain margin. That way, the damage the monster was able to deal was restricted, while still allowing the monster to strike consistently. Having player Moxie too close to monster attack resulted in a situation in which the player was not hit often enough for the saucesphere to deal lethal damage before the round limit is reached. Tight control of moxie versus monster level and a good understanding of the Game Mechanics was a necessity to optimize MP gained while still getting stat points.

In the "Hero stasis" strategy, players used the Hero of the Half-Shell skill. With this skill and a shield, Muscle instead of Moxie is used to determine the player's damage taken, but Moxie is still used to determine whether the player can be hit. Thus, the player would raise Muscle while lowering Moxie to maximize the number of times monsters hit while minimizing the damage inflicted by each hit. This strategy was highly effective, especially for Muscle classes. See below for more details.

Limiting player attacks

For the saucesphere to grant maximum MP, the player had to avoid reducing the monster's HP through normal attacks. One method of limiting attacks was to swing a melee weapon while keeping muscle sufficiently lower than the monster's defense rating. The same tactic can be used with a ranged weapon and low moxie. For other possible methods, see the Star Starfish Trick article.

If it became impossible for the saucesphere to kill the monster before the thirty round limit is exceeded, the player could deliver the coup de grâce using an attack which always hits such as a spell or LTSynergy strike.

Healing and maximum HP

Because the strategy involved being hit, healing was required both in and out of battle. As such, it became important to heal efficiently.

See the Cost Analysis of Restoring HP and MP for specific numbers.

Jalapeño Saucesphere was also employed in cases where a player would otherwise take too much damage from monsters. Jalapeño Saucesphere has also since been changed.

Maximum MP

When Stasising, players often could restore more MP than his or her maximum in a single adventure. Because of this, skills which increased Mysticality or maximum MP were often employed. The Magical Mojomuscular Melody and Wisdom of the Elder Tortoises were the primary of these.

Damage reduction

All players benefit from a reduction in damage taken. There are three main ways to reduce damage: Damage Reduction, Elemental Resistance, and Damage Absorption.

Damage reduction offers the most obvious results of these. Damage reduction, which removes a flat amount of damage from a monster's strike, is achieved largely through the Skin of the Leatherback skill and through shields equipped in a player's off-hand. It was rare to see a player employing Stasis without a shield equipped.

Elemental resistance was also an important part of damage reduction. Elemental resistance, though only viable against elemental attacks, offered a relatively easy to achieve percent reduction in damage. As a result, high resistance made areas which contained only elemental monsters (The Friar's Gate, the Hippy Camp, the Cyrpt, and yes, the Icy Peak) veritable MP mines.

Damage absorption, though useful against all monsters, becomes more noticeable in great quantities. Hat, shirt and pants power is added directly to damage absorption. Intrinsic skills Hide of the Otter and Hide of the Walrus grant 20 and 40 damage absorption, respectively. Astral Shell and Ghostly Shell both offer 80. Tao of the Terrapin doubles the effective power of both hat and pants. The sum of these, though less effective individually, can reduce damage taken significantly. (See Damage Absorption for the formula.)

Monster level

Stasis benefited from an increase in Monster Level. Monster level would increase the amount of HP possible to convert to MP, increased stat gains from monsters, and would allow Stasis against monsters which might otherwise have been too weak to battle properly.

Once in battle, players could reduce monster level to reduce damage being dealt to them. However, after the change to the Entangling Noodles skill, there was no readily-available skill to reduce a monster's attack power without also reducing its level. Further, reduction in monster attack level would, if done incorrectly, destroy any chance of gaining MP during the battle by dropping the monster's chance of hitting to near-zero levels.

Skill cost reduction

As Stasis benefited from extreme efficiency, items which reduced MP cost increased its effectiveness. Cost reduction was particularly useful to those who used low-cost skills, such as Saucy Salve. Mysticality signs were sometimes employed by Stasisers for, among other reasons, access to the baconstone earring (formerly the baconstone bracelet).

High level stasis

Though most players chose to abandon Stasis between levels seven and eight for LTSynergy, extremely high level Stasis was also possible up through and including The Hole in the Sky. Doing so required some advanced skills such as Tao of the Terrapin and Hero of the Half-Shell.

Hero stasis

The introduction (and "fixing") of the skill Hero of the Half-Shell allowed an extremely powerful and efficient form of stasis which was often called "Hero stasis". Obviously, it required a shield to be equipped. Doing so triggered the Hero skill, which meant that while monsters use your Moxie to determine whether they hit you, they used your Muscle to determine how much they hurt you. So, by raising your Muscle much higher than your Moxie, you could ensure that you are hit nearly every round (fumbles will always miss), for minimal damage. A difference of even 10 points between Muscle and Moxie could be extremely noticeable when employing this technique.

Reducing moxie was also a common strategy in the late game when back farming. Wearing a Furry Suit could ensure the player was always hit but for the minimum amount of damage.

With Muscle raised very high, there was some danger of accidentally hitting a monster when equipping a melee weapon; therefore, many players chose to equip a ranged weapon (such as a disco ball or a lead yo-yo) in order to ensure missing.

Familiar choice

It is a common misconception that players who used stasis chose familiars such as the Star Starfish, Mosquito, Cocoabo, and Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot; some players also use these familiars without Jabañero Saucesphere in a similar fashion and call it "stasis". In fact, that refers to Star Starfish Trick-style play, which is still possible today. Jabañero Saucesphere stasis allowed the use of any familiar, which made it extremely powerful.

For advanced stasis players a Pygmy Bugbear Shaman became a viable primary familiar. Players employing a very efficient stasis skillset would often have extra MP, even after buffing themselves to absurd levels. In that case, a Pygmy Bugbear Shaman became the best option in spite of its high MP-upkeep.

Greasemonkey scripts

Players using the Firefox browser often employed Greasemonkey scripts to assist with some of the tedious parts of stasis. In particular, counting the number of rounds of combat to ensure you finish off the monster within 30 rounds could be annoying to do manually. The primary script used in stasis was Naltrexone's MonsterStats. This one counts the rounds of combat, as well as displaying the (estimated) monster HP, chance of dodging, and so on.

Notes

• Jick disliked this strategy and eventually eliminated it from the game. He considered it an abuse of the knowledge of the combat round limit and thought it unbalanced the game by giving players a far larger supply of MP than was ever intended. Extending combat to the limit also resulted in an increased strain on the servers, though it is doubtful that stasis was ever a major contributor to lag.

References

• Stasis (or "Stasis Sphere") was the name of a strategy employed by many Magic: The Gathering players, which used a mostly blue deck that controlled the rate at which your opponent could access his resources.
• Thorns refers to the Diablo II Paladin skill, which damages all opponents who attack you.