New player tips?

[relliott]

I'm around 10-12 hours into the game. I can reach level 3 or 4 semi consistently, but I've only gotten to level 5 once. I'm looking for any advice for how to push further underground.

Some specific things I'm wondering:

- How much am I expected to explore each level? ie, how much gold/health pickups/wands should I get before advancing?

- At what point should I explore the surface world? Is there a way to get back up there after leaving the first level?

- Is it worth it to reroll perks? I've tried it a couple times, but often I get offered worse perks than the ones I had before, meaning I just wasted 200 gold.

- Any advice for what kinds of wands/spells I should prioritize? I've been focusing on recharge/cast speed, then mana regen, then whether or not the wand shuffles. Also, what kinds of spells and modifiers are/aren't worth picking up?

- Advice for how to mitigate damage taken (other than just perfectly dodging every projectile)? Even if I have a good loadout I often die quickly on world 4, with all the tanky enemies spamming projectiles.

Thanks!

[fiese Fee™]

Praise the RNG lords before you start Noita.

If you want to go down without dying - dont fight.

Try & Die more.

[Lucid]

Generally explore as much as you can until your health starts getting low, then bail to Holy Mountain. Don't expect/aim to clear out the entire zone. Take note of some of the consistent formations (like chest or heart under giant vat of liquid in the mines) so you are clued in to where you might find good pickups.

Perks can really define a good run, so the first re-rolls are worth it if you don't like what perks are offered. Experience will help you make the best out of wands/spells and perks, though, so experiment and try stuff out rather than getting too focused on whether you got good RNG or not.

With the right spells and wands you can go anywhere you want to, whether that's the surface world or elsewhere. If you get the ability to, give it a shot. The things that let you explore aren't necessarily the same things that let you kill the boss easily, and vice versa.

What to prioritise is very playstyle dependent, but generally a good digging wand (chainsaws, luminous drill, digging bolt/blast, or a lot of explosives and the infinite spell perk in a pinch) makes exploration easier and lets you snag more pickups, and evade enemies easier. Wand crafting is a huge topic and there's a lot of guides, videos etc. available if you're interested.

Damage mitigation is about learning the enemies and how to minimise risk. Walk softly and carry a big stick. Preferably one that shoots fast and hits hard. There are also ways to heal outside of Holy Mountain, though they are rare.

[Trash Hatt]

To answer two of your questions at once, damage mitigation is mostly about what perks you choose. Fire/Electric/Sludge/Melee Immunity, Permanent Shield, Projectile Repulsion Field, Phasing... all perks, and all of them will reduce the amount of damage you take massively (well, sludge immunity less so, but it's still okay). In terms of spells, there's only a couple of shield spells and they don't show up every run. With that in mind, I would absolutely recommend re-rolling until you get good perks. If you don't have enough money, leave without choosing, scrounge up the cash, and dig your way back through the rubble to re-roll again. It's that worth it.

[Oragepoilu]

I'll add another point of view here.

-Explore a biome if you both have enough health and it isn't too hard to clean/ if it's rewarding.
Some biome are way harder but yet doesn't give much reward. The early biome are OK, but the snow one is usually skipped for me (too easy to take some damage and die here). If the biome deosn't feature wide area and instead use small tunnel, it's way more easy to avoid taking any damage.

-It's possible to get back. Fastest way is find a black hole spell ; you only need 3 charge to cross from a holy moutain to the portal that lead to it, but you will need to deal with the angry god (plenty of way to do so, and his spell are rather easy to avoid)
If you want to dig more, grab a luminous spell. it's slower but infinite. Later it's possible to stack 2-3 of them at the same time with a super low cooldown, to the point you dig almost as fast as you walk.
You can try to grab some explosive spell with a perk/modifier bonus too, but if you aren't immune you might take some damage by accident and it's harder/more rare to be able to get a setup breaking the hardest type of rock, so i'd stick to the first two solution.

-Yes, it is worth it. Also, there is 2 stack of 250 000 gold waiting somewhere on the map, it just require you to take some time to dig and walk. Kinda boring, but might be more safe than jumping on the corpses and take some poison/fire/acid damage or whatever.

-I guess everyone like his setup, but the for me I stick with the basic on wand1 (bouncy spell+ modifier with multi casting and low cooldown). That mean no shuffle of course. Usually it require the same mana as the regen so I can spam it forever and fill the area with bouncy ball, clearly everything while staying out of sight of anything.
Meanwhile I use on wand2 whatever thing that can blast/explode with a lot of dmg even if it's slow.
This way I use wand1 most of the time and wand2 (using charge) if the first wand isn't powerful enough to clear in a safe way.

Later, I grab a wand3 with a teleport spell and a wand4 with some digging spell.

There is more advanced setup that require luck, like freezing and melee (instant kill), electricty (perma stun if it's fast), fire (hit and run while it burn) but usually it's more dangerous to use them and harder to setup.

-First off, always soack into a liquid since it prevent you from cathing fire (water, blood, slime ...). Always have a flask to douse yourself to remove the poison. try to get a way to move fast (teleport spell) so you can quickly go back and fight in know ground, or simply avoid being stunlock after you get hit while flying.
The most important tool to protect yourself is dealing a tons of damage from far away and if possible by bouncing (so they don't have a line of sight, and do not fire back).
Second would probably be having a shield spell or perk, they doesn't hold much but 3-4 hit but recharge fast. It also bounce off deadly spell like the teleporting, polymorphing, blinding spell.
Projectile repulsion field increase the damage you take btw, and change a little where your spell goes - it's best to pick only if you already have a regular shield & some targetting modifier on your wand.
Slime blood perk let you take less damage from projectile, and you are immune to the slow down of slime - it's a really good perk for midgame (against guns) if you can't find better.



As a general tips :
-Don't jumpack in a wide area, you will get shot down.
-Let them come to you first, then if nothing happen quickly show yourself before hidding to "aggro" them so you know where they are. Then proceed to shoot them from outside of your screen.
-Clear west/east first, then go down a bit, then clear east/west, repeat. Don't clear from bottom to top, and avoid clearing from top to bottom.
-Feel free to pick a barrel and them it explode on them. You can also throw a green tablet, rock, table, etc. You miss often I guess if it hit them they usually take a lot of damage and skip their resistance/immunity.
-Put some water of enemy on fire. Don't put on fire robot (useless) but instead use electricity on the oil (they bleed oil) for big damage and stun. it's even possible to use the metal terrain too, so you can hit them from a spot they can't directly see so they do'nt shoot back.
-Don't bother with poison and toxic sludge. It's too hard to deal with (frozen sludge do some damage immetialy with one pixel even if you are immune to toxic sludge, poison change to a gas and you usually breath some of it ...). Fire is however a good way to kill things, if you are patient. If also force them to try to remove the fire from them by pathing toward a liquid; and you can always use electricty to kill them quickly if they are in a liquid.
-Acid reckt everything. It's a bit hard to use a flask of acid, so i'd avise simply throwing it away if you don't have a better solution. Either it kill whatever was the problem of bury it / stuck it in the ground

[DaBa]

I am a really new player as well, 14 hours so far, but I've already beaten the game by getting to what I assume is the standard ending, I know there are way more though. Before I did that I was in a similar situation to yours, however after doing some research and changing my playstyle I immediately started seeing more success and beaten the game for the first time shortly after. My last couple of runs all made it to stage 4, and one even to stage 5. So, even though I don't have any advanced tips, here are a couple of things I learned that helped push me over the edge, hope they will help you elevate your gameplay too:

- Watch a tutorial on how wands work and how spells interact. This knowledge is very important, I already experimented a lot myself and figured out things like basic wrapping without any help, however I never truly understood how to take advantage of everything properly. After I learned about those things, I immediately started to build way better wands, far better than I was able to do previously, and as a result the game became much easier. Here's the series of tutorials I watched, they aren't long but are very informative, I recommend you watch them too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myPiGM9CBrs

- Play carefully, as if you're always close to death. There are a lot of bad habits that a lot of us learned from other games. Usually things like chip damage are not a big deal since healing is readily available. Usually you don't have to worry about dying while at full hp, because the games are forgiving. If you play like that in Noita, you will quickly end up in a very bad situation since the chip damage you're taking is going to keep stacking and suddenly you will be on death's door. Having a lot of HP also gives you a lot of confidence, which leads to taking unnecessary damage, and sometimes even sudden deaths since there are plenty of things in Noita that can 100 to 0 you in moments. Playing overly carefully is slow, but safe and makes survival much more consistent. So I advise to play overly carefully until you feel like you have a good enough grasp to play faster, gradually scaling from there until you can just breeze though things.

- Don't fully explore stages if you don't have to. If you already have a powerful wand and enough gold to take advantage of the shop, just go to the next floor. The more time you spend on the floor the longer you're exposed to dangers, and the more deaths you are inviting into your run. So, when you're having any doubts about your odds of survival if you explore further, just go to the next floor.

- Make more use of your environment. Everything can be a weapon. And an explosive barrel is a better weapon than any of your wands probably are at the beginning of the game. Try using kicks as much as possible to throw hazards at the enemies. Not only do you get double the gold from enemies killed with environment, but it will help you kill things safely. Don't overdo it though, getting too fixated on killing the enemy with a rock can lead to you taking more damage than anticipated. However, whenever you see an easy opportunity, go for it. More gold and less damage are usually the result of it.

This is all I did and it was enough to enable me to beat the game and feel confident about exploring more of the world and seeking new content.

[Stafford's Bees]

Most enemy's projectiles can be avoided by constantly moving perpendicularly to them. Shotgun hissi, flame imps, fire wasps, robocops, bullet jetpack hissi, grenade jetpack hissi (watch the arc), kk-tanki... you name it, as long as you have room and levitation juice you can circle strafe them all.

Both common varieties of jetpack guy can't shoot straight up or down at all.

[Spirit]

There are some pretty interesting combinations of perks and wands you can get that can cheese the game. For instance, I got a perk that gave me a trail of particles that hurt the enemy whenever the character hovers, and then another perk that makes those particles home in on the enemy even through walls. It's nice to be able to easily kill enemies through walls in all directions you cannot even see on the screen.

In any event, play until you get a cheese combination and you should be fine. Until then, just have fun.