Whenever I try to add an additional status attribute and play the game, some status attributes start to change places.

Example: I have HP, STR, DEX, INT, etc in status attributes. I add DEF to status attributes. Instead of DEF going to the bottom, It shows up in the middle of the status attributes list when I test play the game.
Also, DEX sometimes swaps places with STR for some reason and the change looks like this:
HP -> HP
STR -> DEX
DEX -> STR
INT -> INT

Is there a way to re-sort the status attributes without deleting the status attributes list and starting over? And is there a way to stop Quest from automatically resorting the status attributes?

I don't think anyone has found it yet (pixie/mrangel, correct me if wrong), as it's likely buried in the internal coding...

an easy alternative is to just display the stats yourself (using a 'msg' Function, which can be within a Command, or as an Object's Verb, for activating/showing it whenever you want

I can't figure that one out. I've looked through every mention of status attributes in the code, and I can't see anything that should change the order.

If you use the built-in systems for health, score, or money, those will always be added to the end of the list as the game starts; but that's all I can see that manipulates them.

It may be worth noting that there are three lists of status attributes, which are displayed in order (and within each list, they should remain in the order they were added in).

1. game.statusattributes - attributes of the game element.
2. game.povstatusattributes - attributes of the player object; editable on the "player" tab of the game element
3. player.statusattributes - attributes of the player object. This allows you to change what attributes are displayed when the player switches characters (for example, only showing MP if they're a mage). These can be edited on the 'player' tab of each player object.

If they're not appearing in the order you expected, it's worth checking if you've got them all in the same list.

If that doesn't help, could you share a link to the game so we can take a look at it in action?