Saturday, May 25, 2019

The Stanley Parable-Verse Strategy Guide


How to be OP in The Stanley Parable

This verse is a real challenge to be op in while sticking to the limitations.

Local Scale Threat:
Uniquely so far, there's basically just one character on this tier, that being Stanley. So this is a guide basically on how to beat Stanley in a fight.

Let's start by defining Stanley's abilities.

Stanley has almost no feats however what he does have is durability, he is tough enough to survive a very long fall face first several times, and even tanked one when trying to escape. Other then that his base stats are human in terms of strength and speed. And that is probably the hardest part, the fact that you can't use a character who is stronger or faster then average human level but still need a way around his vastly superhuman durability.

What weaknesses does he have? Well Stanley does not have the ability to run or jump, meaning he's somewhat unagile. So a character that can move very agile-y would likely be hard for him to fight. He also has no free will of his own. What effect that would have in combat is unknown, but maybe it would make fate manipulation stronger? Not that most people in his tier have fate manipulation.

He's also implied to be a bit on the dull side so maybe a smart character could trick him. 

So basically things that would be very helpful are someway around his durability, intelligence, and agility. All while within base human level stats.

Let's start with a more general counter


King Midas from Greek Mythology, as well as basically any version of him not over the power limit, would be an excellent counter. The myth goes that he wished anything he would touch would turn to gold and many series, even not greek mythology related have characters that are references to this. Pretty much instant-victory as Stanley has no range advantage nor any prior knowledge and one touch from Midas would be an instant victory.

My next idea was to exploit Stanley's lack of agility with something hard to hit. And that led to my next counter pick


Primera from Magic Knight Rayearth, or really any fairy. I mostly picked Primera because her healing ability would be just another thing to overcome. That said any fairy could take any small object and ram it through Stanley's eye as a cheap win and they would be nigh impossible for him to hit, being able to dart around him with ease. Fairies with invisibility or poison would also be very deadly.

That brings to another tactic. Technically someone could get over the durability without being above the power limit by being a glass cannon, specifically if they have a weapon. In terms of melee a club or bat would be the worst option since the blunt force would do almost nothing to Stanley. A sword would be better since it's more concentrated and an axe would be even better then that though the absolute best would be a speed, since it would have a massive reach advantage, it's easy for any fighting beginner, and all the power is concentrated on one little point. Ranged weapons could be even better since it would give an even bigger range advantage (though probably not a very massive one since they're in crowded corridors most of the time so it's not like they can get that much range advantage. Someone with a gun though could just shoot Stanley a few times to kill him.

You could also use magical equivalents which bring me to my next idea which is sort of a mashup of the prior two ideas


Dobby the House Elf from Harry Potter. He'd be weaker then Stanley physically in every regard, but his magic blasts would at least be able to seriously wound him, if not immediatly kill him outright. But that's just the start. First off all this little guy can teleport at will meaning good luck to Stanley to even getting near this guy. Even worse he's got powerful telekinesis. It would be absolute child's play for Dobby to hold Stanley at bar and just blast him with magic until he dies.

City to Multiverse Scale Threat:
At this scale, there's the Narrator and a few other similar entities whose abilities are only known scaling from the Narrator, meaning we are mostly going to be talking about the Narrator himself here.

The big problem is speed, not that the Narrator is fast, quite the opposite. The Narrator has no speed feats, and the existence of the Stanley Parable Adventure Line basically only gives us subsonic speeds to work with. Universal+ Levels of power here but with such low speed, we're extremely limited with who we can work with.

The Narrator has a lot of abilities; spatial manipulation, mind manipulation, reality-warping, plot manipulation. No character, especially one that's subsonic is probably gonna be able to deal with all that, so the best tactic is a good offense here. Something that kill them first, perhaps.

What are the relevant weaknesses? Well the big one from what I can tell is manipulation abilities. The Narrator thinks he's very clever, but a skilled enough manipulator could trick him, not hard given his lack of bloodlust. Beyond that, soul manipulation. Soul manipulation I think would really likely work. Only the God Tier of the verse has any form of soul manipulation, so a good soul manipulator would probably have a really good advantage. I also think that another thing that would be helpful is some way of knowing their actions before they act on them; pre-cog or mind-reading. With that said, who could we use?


Can't go over subsonic speed but no one said anything about reflexes. Pegasus should scale to the Jonouchi and Yugi reacting to lightning in their labyrinth duel. Beyond that his millenium eye would be an amazing counter to the Narrators. It can seal souls inside playing cards,  and it can see into their minds and so know when to strike. Plus Pegasus is an expert manipulator and would be able to play them for fools most likely. This isn't even getting into his theoretical ability to bring them into a Game of Darkness and drain their lifeforce, something else they have no defense against.


Speaking of card games, Niv-Mizzet the Firemind would also be an excellent counter. While he doesn't have soul manipulation since he doesn't have white/black mana, his supergenius intellect would very easily be able to manipulator the Narrators, especially given he also possesses mind-reading. As a Red/Blue planeswalker not only does he have MHS reflexes, but he has psionic powers far beyond what the verse has demonstrated and could likely casually brainwash them. 

Of course maybe you also wanna deal with the Essence of Divine Art and don't think these abilities would work. I think they would personally but there is one being that I think would absolutely work against and would be the perfect counter for the verse


Chara from Undertale. Not only does Chara possess the same form of possession as the Narrator but Chara's much more directly aggressive abilities would likely make him an absolute terror of the verse. His main attack is strong enough to destroy the game completely, something that would leave the entire SP-cast helpless canonically. Not only that but he is a form of abstact existence related to killing intent and given the Narrator in countless timelines has expressing killing intent for Stanley, ending Chara would be near impossible without some form of conceptual manipulation that the verse hasn't demonstrated. He even has the broken soul manipulation, something almost no one in SP has.

And that's how to be OP in The Stanley Parable.

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