Noita is a notoriously mean roguelike. Its world is filled with risk and danger all for the purpose of ending your runs. It does not care for fairness, and neither should you. There are no stats to upgrade between runs, but spells you unlock remain unlocked. The only thing you can rely on in Noita is your own knowledge.
There is a lot to learn. With hundreds of spells in the game, crafting a game winning wand can be confusing. Noita has a steep learning curve, but knowing a few reliable spells can start you on the path to mastery.
10 Spark Bolt With A Trigger
This spell serves as the foundation for many good wands. While the humble spark bolt does a measly three damage, its importance lies in the trigger attached. The trigger makes the bolt cast another spell stored in your wand, but using the spark bolt as its origin point.
In Noita there are many spells that have a static effect, using your witch as a reference point. These range from a healing circle to hazards like explosions. The spark bolt with a trigger allows you to precisely aim these effects where you desire, giving you better control. Other projectiles can have the trigger effect, but the spark bolt has a good balance of distance, accuracy, and speed.
9 Teleport Bolt
Mobility cannot be underestimated in Noita. Your runs can go from calm to disastrous in seconds. Having a wand to help you maneuver around danger will save you precious health as you descend the mountain.
That’s where the teleport bolt comes in. This spell moves your character to wherever the projectile is when it expires. Having a wand able to cast this spell at high speed is the closest you can get to true flight in Noita. While it will help you travel faster, it has a second important benefit; it can prevent destruction of safe zones. Usually, your safe areas will be destroyed as you leave them, but you can teleport past the trigger and leave them intact for return.
8 Black Hole
The smallest version of the black hole type spells, this one isn’t directly dangerous to you. This spell is a powerful digging tool. When cast, it moves forward in a straight line from your wand and destroys all matter in its path. A spell that does no damage may not seem useful in a game where everything wants you dead, but having a reliable digging method will give you access to more items to pick up, and more areas you’re able to reach.
What this spell gives that most other digging tools won’t is the ability to tunnel through the brick of the holy mountain. Brick work serves as the barrier between levels, preventing you from backtracking. Black Hole will let you do just that, opening up the possibilities for wider exploration. The only downside is that the spell itself only has three casts per charge and cannot be made infinite through the unlimited spells perk.
7 Speed Up
This spell does something very simple: it speeds up projectiles with this modifier by more than double. In addition to the speed boost, it also doubles the range of your spells by the sheer fact they are moving faster. Like a spark bolt with a trigger, it moves dangerous spells like the mighty lightning bolt away from yourself.
The second benefit to speed up that makes it a little better is it increases damage for spells that rely on impact damage. A rock flying faster will hit harder, and this principle is mirrored with many of Noita’s spells. Just be careful the added speed doesn’t cause a rebound towards yourself.
6 Homing
Homing projectiles are great. Whenever you see this spell available, you should pick it up if it’s within your means. There are multiple versions of this spell, but they all do the same thing to varying degrees: move your projectiles towards the nearest enemy. With homing, you can create some scary spells.
The seeking on Homing spell is very good. Spells fired will seek your enemies around corners, over hills, and through walls if they have the power to dig. Using this, you can create a plasma cutter, a spell that will cut through anything, and it will burrow through walls to find targets. Homing lets you harness the power of the Summon Rock spell to its fullest. Normally a spell to create a regular stone, Homing turns your rocks into terrifying torpedoes that become one of the best level clearing tools. It is very fun.
5 Damage Plus
This is exactly what it sounds like; Damage Plus increases the damage of a spell. A simple, easy modifier, you can put this damage boost anywhere and see improvement. There are a few versions of spells that increase spell damage, but Damage Plus is the most clear without any drawbacks aside from increased recoil.
This spell is best used as part of a wand that will cast multiple spells at once, as it will boost all projectiles fired, not just one. This can help you elevate normally weaker spells to do higher damage, while keeping the mana cost of the wand to a minimum.
4 Multicasts
There are many versions of this spell modifier that all do one essential thing: allow you to cast multiple spells at once. Some provide a pattern to their spread, while others simply grant the multicasting effect.
In addition to the expected benefit of firing off more than one spell, equipping modifier spells such as homing and damage plus before the multicast in the wand applies their effects to all spells in the cast, not just one spell. Multicast serve as the bridge between your modifiers and your projectiles.
3 Alpha/Gamma
Alpha and Gamma have two similar enough effects that they are as useful as the other. Alpha imitates the first spell in your wand, while Gamma mimics the last. Both the spells include all modifiers to the spell in question when you cast them, and they do it at a much reduced mana cost.
Since these two spells mimic other spells, you can use them to gain unlimited casts of spells that are normally limited — such as the rare healing spells in Noita.
2 Chainsaw
Chainsaw may be the one of the most complex spells to understand in Noita. Its description says it is merely a tool for cutting, and when used alone it is just that. To get the full power of the chainsaw spell, it must be part of a multicast wand as the last spell in the list. Doing this little trick turns the wand into a machine gun.
All wands have something called cast delay; essentially the reload time after a wand has fired all its projectiles. Chainsaw makes this number zero. It turns every tooth in the chainsaw into carriers for your spell, enabling some wands to fire so quickly you can use their recoil to fly.
1 Add Mana
Every spell in Noita requires mana in order to cast. When depleted, a wand will have to spend time recharging until it has enough mana to fire again. For some wands, this is easy, but others have huge reserves and recharge slowly. More powerful spells demand more mana. If you’re not careful, you may find your wands as useful as twigs without the mana to cast spells.
Add mana breaks this process by making whatever projectile it’s attached to replenish 30 mana to the wand every time it’s fired. This spell is one of the keys to making a wand that will break Noita in your favor. You can create powerful, hard hitting spells while never letting your mana run dry. With the right wand, you can make the gods afraid.
