[Guide] Krythan's Reverse Stale Washing Guide

> Using Stale MP Washing to gain a little more MP before enrolling in the HP Challenges

When a character enrolls in the HP Challenges, their "Base HP is permanently increased". It doesn't matter what your HP value is before enrolling in the challenges. Since the amount of HP you have before enrolling would no longer matter, why don't we first convert any excess HP you might have had into a little bit of extra MP?

I call this Reverse Stale Washing.

Technically, it's a form of "Stale Washing" or "Stale MP Washing", but as this technique is considerably more niche, I wish to avoid confusion with other types of washing.

Requirements:

1. Any non-mage character that is going to enroll in the challenges.
   
2. Enough NX for AP Resets
   
3. Patience, and a a desire for over-optimization

The Process:

1. Put a single point into your HP.
2. Use an AP Reset to -HP to +MP
   
3. Repeat step #2 until you can no longer take a point out of HP.
4. Finally, reset that single point from MP into your primary stat.
5. And enroll in the HP Challenges!

Tip: The later you wait to enroll in the HP Challenges, the more levels you'll have to gain HP, this the more MP you'll be able to create.

The Explanation

The Benefits

Having a higher MP value means that...

• You'll have to buy (marginally) fewer pots.
• You'll be able to attack for longer without potting
  
• You'll be less likely to encounter the scenario in Horntail where you're both Mana Drained and Seduced, but don't have the MP to cast Hero's Will.

The Formulas

Here are the Minimum HP Formulas for beginners, and classes of 2nd job and onward. This table also shows how much HP is lost, and MP is gained for each Reverse Stale Wash.

Class	-HP	+MP	Minimum HP
Beginner	-10	+6	(12 * level) + 50
Warrior, Fighter	-54	+2	(24 * level) + 472
Warrior, Page	-54	+2	(24 * level) + 172
Warrior, Spearman	-54	+2	(24 * level) + 172
Bowman	-20 (?)	+10	(20 * level) + 378
Thief	-20	+10	(20 * level) + 378
Pirate (Buccaneer)	-42	+14	(22 * level) + 380
Pirate (Corsair)	-42 (?)	+14	(22 * level) + 380
Mage	N/A	N/A	Not Recommended

Further testing required to confirm the accuracy of these numbers.

Who Benefits the Most?

Albeit, this is a pretty niche trick. This process not be worth the effort or NX for the majority of players. However, there are a few cases where this is worth consideration.

• Players that already started to wash, but are choosing to opt-out of washing in favor of the HP Challenges. These characters will already have an inflated HP or MP pool, allowing them to gain a decent amount of Bonus MP.
• Classes that benefit (more than others) from having a larger MP pool. Most notably, Corsairs and Bow Masters both benefit greatly from more MP, allowing them to continuously attack for longer before re-potting.
• Classes such as the Warriors that naturally gain very little MP every level. Even a small amount of gained MP may feel noticeable.

Already at 30k HP!?

One additional application of this strategy is for characters who are at 30k HP, and/or their gear pushes them to 30k HP. In this case, since any Level Up gains are going to best lost, you could Reverse Stale Wash some of your HP to MP, such that you can still benefit from the Level Up HP gains, and gain a marginal amount of MP.

Source: Nise's HP Washing Formulas

Thanks to Subterlabor for exploring this concept with me!

Disclaimer: I haven't personally done this, so I don't know if it will work.

 

June 26th, 2024 - Added a table to the original post to show the Minimum HP formulas for each class, as well as the amount of HP lost and MP gained for reach Reverse Stale Wash. These formulas were taken from Nise's famous post, but they need further testing just to ensure they're accurate.

 

You certainly could. Though at that point, if you're putting in the effort, you might as well properly wash the character. The most likely use case for this Reverse Stale Wash strategy is for characters that were planning to wash to a lower threshold than the HP Challenges would provide. For example, there's a lot of archers/thieves that were working on a 10k wash plan... then the challenges were announced. Since they'll be able to get more HP from the challenges, it was silly to continue their current wash plan. However, these characters will be able to salvage at least something from the gains they've made so far in the form of a decent surplus of MP.

 

In order to enroll in the HP challenges, "The base HP/MP increase prize can only be redeemed if... The player has no AP invested in their HP/MP pool...". So that 1 point you put into the HP/MP pool must be removed in the end.

Once you no longer have at least 1 point in HP/MP pool, you won't be able to remove any more points. The concept of "infinitely resetting points" is a mechanic that's exclusive to directly moving stale ability points between HP and MP because they "share the same pool". Read more about this concept in this mage guide or this night lord guide.

 

As always, beegoratto is spot on!

 

Subtle flex Nice stacked bar of HP for a Night Lord! Thank you for testing this!

Lynch Thank you!!! I've updated the table accordingly.

I need to go through and test this on a mule of each class. I have the suspicion that a few of the other numbers need to be updated as well.

 

Nice! Gains are gains!

 

July 5th, 2024 - Updated HP/MP values in the chart based on testing. Thanks DrChuchu for helping to investigate these. So far, I've recorded:

Warrior - example

• Each Reverse Stale Wash costs -54 HP, and gains +2 MP.
• The AP Reset window is correct.
• The MaxHP skill has no effect. (example)

Pirate (Buccaneer) - example

• Each Reverse Stale Wash costs -42 HP, and gains +14 MP.
• The AP Reset window is correct.
• The MaxHP skill has no effect. (example)

Thief - example

• Each Reverse Stale Wash costs -20 HP, and gains +10 MP.
• The AP Reset window is correct.

Mage - example

• Each Reverse Stale Wash costs -10 HP, and gains +18 MP.
• The AP Reset window is correct.
• The MaxMP skill has no effect. (example)

Beginner - example

• Each Reverse Stale Wash costs -10 HP, and gains +6 MP.
• The AP Reset window is NOT correct. (incorrectly shows -12 HP)

I'm assuming that Archers follow the same formulas as the Thieves. But further testing required for Archers and Corsairs as I didn't have a mule for these at time of testing.

 

You're the best, thank you! Excellent, just as expected, matches the thief formulas!