How to get good?

[Vik]

I've only ever made it past the jungle with lightning bolt, seems like even decently powerful spells totally fall off at this point. How do I make my damage scale up?

[Doom Sayer]

Originally posted by Vik:

I've only ever made it past the jungle with lightning bolt, seems like even decently powerful spells totally fall off at this point. How do I make my damage scale up?

Pay attention to DPS. Also dmg to mana cost ratio is important. If dmg is less than cost that is very bad. (unless you have no better alternative) or have reduced mana usage.

[Doom Sayer]

Another one, if wand/spell is fast enough it can be used to stun enemies while you move around them. (In particular those tank things since HP is too high if you lack dps)

[Aven]

1) Learn which perks can greatly improve a run.
2) Spam is good. Spam you are immune to is even better.
3) Low damage spells can be boosted through various modifiers and combos to make them more destructive than a nuke.
4) "Always casts" wands don't need a spell equipped to use the autocasting spell.
5) It doesn't matter how well a run is going. The odds are still better that you will die.
6) Because the odds are always against you, it's good to gamble. Get an "always casts" perk in your first holy mountain? Gamble it on your starting bomb wand with the .02 second recharge. If you roll meteor, you're set through at least the snow caves. If you roll personal gravity field, throw it away and move on.

[Kalistri]

There's a guide on wand crafting in the steam guides already that's worth looking at but it seems out of date and doesn't have all the information I've collected. Also I recommend googling Noita discord, the channel has a section about wand crafting, you can have a read there and ask questions.

Also, I'm kinda thinking of writing or making a guide, so I've been taking notes about some effects that I've discovered or heard from other people; here are my notes so far:

Spell effects

First holy mountain, move a spark bolt into the wand that carries a bomb. Creates a machine gun effect, but you'll run out of mana after a few seconds.

Spells that reduce recharge time are luminous drill, chainsaw, drilling bolt. Chainsaw is best if you're using it purely for this due to low mana cost and lack of additional cast delay that drilling bolt has. If you can get recharge time close to 0 you have a machine gun effect. Cheaper options like chainsaw is probably the best for the sake of mana. There's an increase mana spell modifier you can use to keep it going longer.

Spell wrapping (DunkorSlam, a streamer on twitch showed me this): luminous drill/chainsaw + double cast + any spell. With this order, if you hold down the button the double spell will call on the spell following it and then call on the first spell as well, meaning you get the benefit of the recharge time reduction twice.

Multicast + projectile modifier; the modifier transfers to all the projectiles spawned.

Trigger/timer spell + multicast + multiple spells = the trigger spawns multiple spells. In fact, you can put in two multicast spells to spawn even more spells with a single trigger. I've used this to create a trigger that spawned eight other spells; you could do more if mana allows.

Trigger spell + chainsaw does a lot of damage for a low mana cost. Combine with earlier strategies regarding recharge time reduction or multicast for extra effect.

Trigger + healing bolt, shoot a wall to bouce the heal back at you. Difficult to aim though. Also with delayed cast + healing bolt you can run in front of the projectile; can also be screwed up. You can also fill a wand with healing bolts and drop it on an enemy to get them to heal you.

Homing shots mod or perk + slow moving projectiles works much better than faster projectiles; static projectiles such as death cross work particularly well. Barrier spells are affected by homing effects as well, they will go through walls to your enemies.

toxic/blood mist + toxic sludge/blood to acid essentially summons a big quantity of acid.

freezing/electric charge + death cross = death cross does damage before exploding. Homing works well with this.

Spore pod spikes are counted as causing accidental death; works well with trick greed/trick blood money.

increased duration + luminous drill = a shooting lazer effect.

Question: increased duration + chainsaw? Lightning bolt? Circle spells (especially vigour)?

Perks

Homing spells: a fast moving projectile trigger/timer (like spark bolt) will mostly negate the homing effect, then you can add slower spells to the trigger which will be more affected by the perk.

Question: plague rats + more love?

Explosion immunity + nuke spells. Duh. The explosion can still set you on fire so fire immunity is also good with this.

breathless + fast swimming + water trail (or a water generating spell like rain cloud if you can get unlimited spells) = flood entire levels, drown everything. Add in electricity perk or electricity immunity + a spell or the electricity stone to make it all go faster. (I read this on steam forums some time ago, can't remember who I read it from.)

Repelling cape + invisibility and/or stainless armour.

Worm attractor will attract worms to the holy temple even if you haven't destroyed/removed the worm crystal.

ground to sand + glowing lance is probably the best combo because the lance will cut through the sand as it travels.

Alchemy

Open your inventory, right click a potion to drink it.

Water mixed with toxic sludge will turn the toxic sludge to water; just a little water is enough, shoot in the mixture to stir it.

Ambrosia stain gives 100% damage reduction.

Berserkium stain increases both damage and explosion radius; beware using it with bombs; could be fun with explosion immunity.

Pheromone for converting healers in hiisi base so they heal you. Need to confirm: pheromone on a wand = a wand that fights for you. Can it be used on a healing wand or would it heal your enemies?

Teleportatium can be controlled to a certain extent: you tend to teleport in the direction of your cursor, unless you would end up in a wall, in which case it teleports you randomly. If you get hit with it or if you're diving into some for gold, try to point your cursor at an open space that doesn't have a lot of enemies.

If you drink worm blood you can see through walls.

The World (contains exploration spoilers)

There are maps of Noita; if you don't mind spoilers, check one out, take note of orb locations. First time you pick them up they drop a spell. In future runs they'll always drop bonus max health.

In the holy mountain you can dig under the perk altar with a luminous drill or even with a black hole in a shallow X shape without angering the gods. This can make it easier to kill the stevari, especially with the luminous drill, the stevari will bleed bone dust which will block it from being able to fire at you. Another method is to fill the area with water; the stevari won't swim through the water to get to you, and will eventually die from drowning. With all of these methods of course you won't have such an easy time with the next temple, however if you do this at the second holy mountain area there are a lot of options to find more powerful wands and spells, especially since you can always return here to edit your wands some more.

West of your starting point, the giant tree. Climb it to find a wriggling egg. Drop the egg to spawn a worm. There are two more eggs further up the tree, however you can't climb that high without teleport/flying bonuses. If you go a little higher than the first branch enemies that shoot acid balls will come after you.

Above your starting point, a ledge. Dig a niche in the arm pit of the ledge and you can regain enough levitation power to get up there.

The pyramid boss is vulnerable to fire; if you set it on fire and back off to let the damage over time run its course twice, then it will die. Most fire spells will bounce off its shell and so you'll need to either wait for it to open or explode a shot right near the boss. Another option is to use a spell with fire trail; just shoot above the boss.

West of first zone, the dark cave. All seeing eye perk or worm blood or (according to the wiki, gotta test this) a torch spell can be used to see in there. The all seeing eye spell doesn't work.

West of the third zone, the temple of magic. All seeing eye perk/spell or worm blood is handy here; it's not totally dark like the cave but the fog of war effect is much more severe.

[Dead Parrot]

You have to learn how to make powerful wands rather than rely on a single spell. Powerful wands can be categorized in three ways:
1. wands that shoot fast
2. wands that shoot many spells at once
3. wands that take advantage of game mechanics to instantly kill or disable enemies

fast wands are the easiest. Many wands drop with low cast and reuse timers, and you can make them and other wands faster by adding chain saws, luminious drills, and a few other cd/cast time reduction modifiers

wands that shoot many spells at once are the next level of wand creation. This is when you start stacking modifiers for multicasting while balancing out mana consumption. These are intrinsically better than fast wands because 5 spells of the same type cast at the exact same time will do more damage than 5 spells of the same type cast quickly in succession and are more likely to hit. Also, some spells can not be cast quickly unless you have a crazy always cast wand which is 99% never going to happen in any given run.

the third and best type of wand requires you to understand game mechanics and how spells interact with one another. The simplest type of mechanical wand would be freeze or electric charges. Freeze lets you instantly kill most enemies, as does electric charge. Electric charge with water trail creates instant electrification. The next tier up are things like burst of air comboing with summon rock to make a wand that is capable of trick kills. My favorite is Stacking increase mana on wands with luminous drill/chainsaw allow you to create insta-kill wands that can dig through anything. You can make these kinds of wands as early as floor 1-2 if rng is in your favor. Of course, combining wand type 1+ wand type 2 will also create a wand type 3 assuming it doesnt kill you in the process.

To better find wands and spells, you will need a 4th type of wand which is a digging wand. Truly getting good is learning how to make good digging wands so you can find more wands and money by taking alternative paths. The most basic digging spells are: bomb, dropper bolt, tnt, triplicate bolt, chainsaw, digging bolt, digging blast, and energy orb. Advanced digging spells are chainsaw/luminous drill and black hole. In any given run, I always try to make one of the following: either an infinite luminous drill wand or a blackhole wand stuffed with modifiers that make the spell faster/last longer such as increase duration, speedup, or accelerating shot. Lightshot also works.

[floaty469]

i'm getting my ass kicked

[FreddyTheMonkey]

Thank you all for this thread, I'm having a blast with the game but I'm struggling to proceed. I did get very very far once because of absolutely OP perks but died in the end.

The sense of mystery the game has is great but I feel like it's WAY too obscure even regarding its most fundamental systems. I still don't quite understand how to build great spells and how wands work, because it's an extremely complex system and I feel like a guide or tips are mandatory. I'll put the info on this thread to good use!

[Eternal President Uncle Slam]

Do not cast the circle of acid spell. Instantly creates a room wiping acid field that melts you and the entire rest of the level. Seriously hardcore noob trap wtf.

[Raemnant]

Originally posted by Eternal President Uncle Slam:

Do not cast the circle of acid spell. Instantly creates a room wiping acid field that melts you and the entire rest of the level. Seriously hardcore noob trap wtf.

Unless you are immune to acid

[that hurts]

there is no way to be immune to acid

[Dead Parrot]

Casting Chaotic Transmutation on acid should turn it into something harmless, although ive never personally tried it. You can avoid an acid death if your hp is significantly high enough, have the extra life perk and are positioned correctly, have a teleport wand to teleport out of range, physically block it with something like circle of water and freeze. You can also physically out run it with accelerate potion and perks. There are counters to everything, and safe ways to use everything. For example, Circle of acid on a no shuffle wand connected to a trigger spell will let you choose where the circle of acid spawns.

after thinking about it a bit, I believe you can also directly counter a way ward circle of acid with freeze field and possibly the freeze field perk.

[TheFjordLord]

I broke the final boss i dont know how but i had only the wands i got in stage one and a black hole spell i got in stage 3 shop but what i had was the teleporting away from damage and a ice aura so i kept taking like 10 damage until i got to the boss and then i don't know what happened but i did damage to myself so i teleported above the level into the lava but because i had the freeze aura i created an obsidian bubble that saved me and i used the black hole to get out when i came back down to the boss somehow it died so i guess i technically 1 shot it.

[TheFoolishWitch]

Learn your enemies well and spend alot of time in the checkpoint area experimenting on spells