My ultimate beginner's guide to noita

Every lesson I know about Noita, as an intermediate player, condensed into one post.

the basic gameplay loop of Noita is explore, holy mountain, explore, holy mointain…

• exploration: survive, kill enemies, loot
• holy mountain: heal, refill water, shop for stuff, edit wands, select perks

exploration

the loot here includes:

• wands
• spells
• max health upgrades
• items

one of the most important things in the game is water. water neutralizes toxic sludge, puts out fire, evaporates acid, etc. if you don’t start with water, throw out the liquid inside and get water as soon as you can. note that swamp and brine acts the same as water.

treat Noita as a hardcore survival game, as healing is extremely rare. try to take no damage. you will not succeed, but it’ll train you to be as careful as possible.

here’s a tip applicable to every roguelite: remember to utilize all the resources you have. when you die, ask “was I really completely helpless?”

• test out spells that you think are trash, cause they might actually be good.
• use that bottle of invisiblum that’s been sitting around in your inventory.
• use Ambrosia in difficult situations. it’s good enough to completely counter Big Steve.
• etc…

wands and spells

here are some common things your wands can do, classified by the community:

• main damage wand
• digging wand
• teleport wand
• healing wand
• the “extremely high damage, can easily kill me, only reserved for bosses, DO NOT FIRE” wand

in god runs, people usually like to combine different types into their teleport. like teleport + digging + healing + damage.

basic wandbuilding

firstly, all discussions around wandbuilding revolves around no-shuffle wands. shuffle wands will shuffle your spells before firing, so you basically can’t do any wandbuilding. they do tend to have better stats, so in early game, you might prefer a really good shuffle wand over a garbage non-shuffle.

in a no-shuffle wand, the spells are fired from left to right. modifier spells modify the next spell, while multicast casts multiple spells at the same time. trigger spells will look for the next spell (or a block of spells fired by multicasts), stores it as the payload, then releases it upon hiding a wall. timer spells work the same, except it’s on a timer.

if you combine a modifier and multicast, all of the spells will be affected by the modifier. one damage plus can affect 10 spark bolts, for example.

if you put a modifier (or multicast, or trigger) at the end, the wand will loop back and look for a spell at the beginning. this is called spell wrapping. you’re basically firing an extra spell. it gets very useful when you have a spell that reduces recharge time / cast delay, as you’re able to cast it twice, reducing it further.

triggers spells ignore the payload’s cast delay. you can shove a lot of spells in the payload and the cast delay will never increase.

how to loot them

over time, you’ll develop a mental tier list on which spells are good. the only way to learn is to spend time in the community and read the wiki. that said, i’m going to list a few spells/combos that i consider to be S-tier:

• add mana
• reduce recharge time
• chainsaw + any multicast
• lumi drill + ping pong path
• freeze charge modifier
• homing + mist + damage field / damage plus
• homing + rock
• shield
• any healing

wand stats might seem overwhelming at first, but you usually only need to look for 2-3 stats, depending on which stage of the game you’re at, and what you have. for example:

• in early game, look for wands with low cast delay and recharge time
• at some point, you’ll have to start looking for decent no-shuffle wands
• if you’re able to negate cast delay with the overpowered multicast + chainsaw combo, look for the low recharge time wands
• once you get spells that can speed up wands, mana recharge becomes the main bottleneck
• then, as you get into late game, capacity becomes more and more important.

holy mountain

the loot here includes:

• wands
• spells
• perks

remember to refill your water

perks

like spells, you’ll develop a mental tier list of the good perks. here are some that i consider to be S-tier:

• edit wands everywhere
• projectile repelling field
• shield
• all the immunities (except for poison)
• concentrated spells (if you know how to utilize it)

maybe stop picking up glass cannon. or not.

breaking the loop

not sure if this counts as a spoiler. probably mind-blowing for a beginner, but it’s only a small taste of the sheer amount of freedom that Noita gives you.

you can enter/exit the holy mountain without collapsing, basically giving you a home to return to edit wands anytime.

• teleportanium
  • if you found unstable teleportatium, you can stabilize it with slime, which is easily found in the coal pits. just pour out a bit of liquid to make space, add some slime to your flask, and shake it around.
• teleport wand
  • there’s a square hitbox that triggers the holy mountain collapse. by shooting a teleport bolt right through it, you can bypass it.
  • requries some skill. there is some risk of you accidentally missing.
  • unlike most other methods, this does not allow you to go back to previous biomes.
• polymorphine
  • if you go through the hitbox while polymorphed, it will not trigger
  • risky, as enemies can easily kill you while polymorphed.
  • it’s also extremely hard to get back into the holy mountain. one more reason to master tablet surfing, i guess.
• just dig out
  • brickwork is extremely tough. ways of digging brickwork include:
    • lumi drill
    • plasma
    • tablet digging
  • you’ll anger the gods and will have to deal with Steve

dealing with Steve and Skoude

ways to counter Steve:

• statue
  • there’s a reliable setup with the statue at the most left. but remember to check if it’s stuck beforehand.
• tablet
  • my preferred method.
• freeze + kick
• plasma beam
• homing rock
• spray pheromones while invisible
• ambrosia (to negate damage)
• just run away
  • you can safely shop as long as it haven’t seen you yet
  • great if you really really don’t want to deal with Skoude
• see: https://noita.wiki.gg/wiki/Stevari#Combat_Tips

Once you kill 3 Steves, Skoude will spawn in his place. Skoude is much, much, much tougher than steve. ways to counter Skoude:

• homing rock
  • only works before it sees you and activate his terrain destruction
• plasma beam
  • homing makes it trivial
• ambrosia
• see: https://noita.wiki.gg/wiki/Skoude#Tips

keybinds

• bind throw to somewhere like G so you can’t accidentally click it.
  • i never use that key. i always open my inventory to throw stuff. some items, like tablets, can be thrown with a mouse click anyways.
• put water at slot 5, then bind slot 5 to Q to easily access water
• bind kick to right click. trust me it makes tablet kicking much much easier

tablet, and kicking

• throwing a tablet on top of an enemy deals massive amounts of impact damage.
• the more advanced form of tablet throwing is tablet kicking.
  • to tablet kick, kick right before throwing the tablet.
  • imo an essential skill to learn.
  • it’s a nearly guaranteed way to oneshot an enemy.
• tablet kicking requires skill so it comes with a risk. use the tablet in risk free situations, or when it’s less risky to tablet kick than to fight a strong enemy. don’t risk your health to retrieve a thrown tablet.

• tablet throwing always count as trick/accident kills, giving you double gold. tablet kicking is a bit inconsistent for some reason.

• frozen enemies are extremely vulnerable to physical damage, like kicking or tentacles. it’s so strong that most enemies just get one-shot. very useful for dealing with Steve.

misc notes for each biome (contains spoilers)

the mines

• pick up the tablet on the right side. it’s not that important for beginners who haven’t mastered tablet tech.
• the collapsed mines suck. it literally has the same loot as normal mines.

coal pits

• for the first two areas, i personally recommend exploring as much as you can. i know it’s tempting to jump straight to the next areas with better loot, but they’re also exponentially more dangerous. take advantage of the relative safety of the early areas to prepare yourself, get yourself strong enough to actually loot the tougher areas.
• to the left of the map is the Fungal Caverns. if you ever decide to go to the Fungal Caverns, be very, very careful.
  • the fungal caverns also appear in the underground jungle, i think this means the enemies there are at that level of strength.
  • watch out for the blindness mage, the teleport mage, and robocop (can’t be stunned, bleeds oil, immune to a lot of things). the enemies there are already dangerous but these 3 can instantly end your run.

snowy depths

• huge difficulty spike. the most open biome, while also having long range enemies like the hissi sniper.
• watch out for Ukko. it can one-shot you.
• to the left of the map is the Magical Temple. if you ever decide to go to the Magical Temple, be very, very, very careful.
• to the right is a chasm that leads to Squidward’s home, near the mines.
• if you kick the hands, they’ll spawn robotic monks. you can tablet them for free gold. be aware that the more you do this, the more monks will spawn.

hissi base

• do you know concentrated mana melts steel? do you know concentrated mana + water = more concentrated mana? have fun.
• a shop spawns on the left or right side of the map
  • (extra spoiler warning) above the shop is the hourglass chamber. fill in teleportanium to spawn a porter to the eye room, which contains a lot of spells.
    • if you have the patience or a good digging wand, you can just dig to the eye room. go to the top left corner of the biome and keep digging left.

underground jungle

• a relatively safe biome. enemies are very tanky, but mechanical enemies are rare so i like to just keep stunning them.
• if you have ambrosia, a max health upgrade, and a heart mage, you can do the heartache exploit.
• to the left is the dragoncave, with the dragon, the easiest boss in the game. the catch is that its bite deals 2000 damage per second, which will basically one shot you.
  • it drops a tier 6 non-shuffle wand (equivalent to wands found in the Temple of the Art), and a random projectile orbit spell, and a max health upgrade.
  • melee immunity makes his bite harmless

the vault

• hissi base but even more dangerous.
• watch out for plasma

temple of the art

• watch out for the crystals. especiall the red (earthquake) and green (cursed rock) ones.
• watch out for the Glowing creep / Hohtava hyypiö. it retaliates for every projectile you shoot at it, but it can’t attack you if you don’t attack. obviously do not use rapid fire wands against it. my preferred way to kill it is the tablet.
• watch out for lava when you’re teleporting

Original post on Cohost