Trial Stew

A Trial Stew is an item in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Super Paper Mario, made by cooking Couple's Cake with a Poison Shroom. If used, it lowers Mario and his partner to one HP and down to zero FP, but completely fills SP.

Lowering the player to one HP could offer an opportunity for a Mega Rush (P) Strategy, but this strategy hits a roadblock because the FP is lowered to zero. Some players ignore this and don't use attacks that consume Flower Points. Others use Sweet Treat or Sweet Feast to bring their FP up (however, they have to be careful not to up their HP unless they want to use Power Rush instead, in which they can up their HP to five). There are many strategies for using Trial Stew, but the casual player will probably have no use for this, other than refilling star power, which is useful if the player is running low on star power.

It also appears in Super Paper Mario. The Trial Stew poisons the hero - however, the player earns 100 points for every HP drained. Thus, one strategy is to create multiple Trial Stews and head to the Underwhere's healing fountain.

Trivia

 * Its name is probably derived from the Pit of 100 Trials, due to the desperate nature of using it.
 * Trial Stew is probably based on the black soup, a recipe from ancient Sparta which is made of blood, pork, and vinegar.