Video Game / Noita

"The necessity of concealing the Art is one of the chief anxieties of alchemists.
We are sworn to secrecy by heaven and earth and hell,
By the four elements, by the height and the depth,
By Hermes, by Anubis, and by the howlings of Kerkoros.
An oath has been required of us to reveal nothing clearly to any uninitiated being."

— Emerald Tablet of Thoth

Noita is a roguelike action platformer with heavy simulation aspects, developed created by Helsinki-based Nolla Games, a team comprising three members who have each made a notable indie game in The New '10s- specifically, Crayon Physics Deluxe, The Swapper, and Baba is You. The word "noita" comes from the Finnish word for "Witch", though in practice it's probably closer to "Shaman" or "Medicine-man". The game entered Early Access on September 24, 2019 and was released on October 15, 2020.

The premise follows a mysterious cloaked individual who descends down into a dark mountain to... it isn't really clear what. Either way, they meet all sorts of odd and deadly creatures as they descend further. The gameplay is a platformer roguelike where every pixel is simulated. What this means is that every single individual pixel seen on screen has its own properties, and the game heavily incentivizes manipulating the environment and using the elements over just straight-up shooting your enemies to death. You can drain entire pools of water by blowing out the bottom, set entire massive structures on fire with a single tap of actual flame, and use different liquids to flood entire caverns.

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Noita contains the following tropes:

• Abandoned Mine: The first two levels take place in flavors of abandoned mines, the first being the mine entrance and softer soil, the second a deeper coal mine.
• Abnormal Ammo: Aside from standard magical and non-magical projectile spells, there are also weapons that fire off projectiles such as Deercoys, explosive-filled Minecarts, and a flock of Ducks.
• Achievement System:
  • The Achievement Pillars are a series of broken stone pillars on top of the Great Tree. Accomplishing specific feats for the first time, such as killing a mini-boss or making specific sacrifices at the mountain altar, unlocks new pieces of the pillars.
  • The Work entered after defeating the final boss contains special statues commemorating specific challenges such as completing a speed or pacifist run.
• Action Bomb:
  • The Lohkare/Rock Spirit flies at enemies and explodes.
  • All fungal enemies will explode on death. The Laahustussieni and Myrkkynääpikkä in particular have no attacks other than jumping at an enemy and exploding.
  • A perk causes all corpses to explode. It also makes you explosion-proof, which is a pretty decent trade.
  • The player themselves can become this, either by only firing explosives at close range or having a wand that causes point-blank explosions. And it's entirely survivable with the right perks.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Store prices increase the deeper you progress into the mountain, going from a few hundred to thousands. The perk reroll is even worse as its price doubles with each use and the increased price persists between temples and even into New Game+.
• Alchemy Is Magic:
  • The game has an Alchemy system where various liquids and solids can interact to create different substances, some magical and some mundane. The exact nature of the reactions vary from direct one-to-one conversions of two materials to a mixture of two otherwise inert materials reacting when a non-reactive catalyst is added. There are also three highly valuable substances which can only be created via alchemy: The Lively Concoction, Alechmical Precursor, and the Draught of Midas. The recipes for these substances are randomized with each world.
  • There exist several spells that can transform one material into another as well as spells that create materials.
• Alien Blood:
  • Several enemies bleed slime, acid, poisonous ooze, or even lava instead of blood.
  • Worm enemies bleed a greenish-yellow liquid that, when consumed, vastly improves vision for the duration (with a slight tint).
  • Fungal enemies bleed glowing pink liquid which acts as a potent hallucinogen.
  • Some of the magical enemies bleed magical fluids like Teleportatium and Polymorphine. Others "bleed" things like diamond dust.
  • With the right perk, the Noita bleeds slime, flammable gas, or oil instead of blood.
  • This can potentially be invoked to the absolute extremes by using fungal shifts to change all blood/acid/lava/anything that the various creatures/yourself bleeds in your run to things like midas, vodka, vomit, polymorphine, etc.
• All Trolls Are Different: Hiisi take their name from a mythical Finnish creature often considered a troll. This helps to explain their bulky build, odd skin color, and somewhat ape-like posture in comparison to other humanoids.
• Ambiguously Human: The Noita wears a form-concealing robe at all times and while they bleed, at no point do we see anything under their robe — no face, no limbs. Even when they die, their robe falls in a way that implies there's nothing inside.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes:
  • Also a Bragging Rights Reward, completing the Work on the Sky Altar with 33 Orbs (which requires completing New Game Plus over twenty times or thoroughly exploring the main, east and west worlds on at least one NG+ run to acquire 33 orbs) not only unlocks a special ending, but also permanently unlocks a golden amulet that the player character will wear on every new run afterwards.
  • Managing to obtain 34 orbs, which is quite hard to say the least (A one in 10 MILLION chance to obtain an extra Orb from a Great Chest) changes the Sampo's name to the Amulet of Yendor. Bringing the Sampo to the floating isle altar gives you a much bigger amulet, implied to be the eponymous one.
  • Replacing both Moons with their respective Suns (Moon with the Uusi Aurinko/New Sun, Dark Moon with the Pimeä Aurinko/Dark Sun) gives you a crown.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If you get stuck in the level geometry (for example, by sand piling on top of the Noita), struggling around for a few seconds will result in the terrain immediately touching the Noita to be deleted.
• The Artifact: Certain perks, like Vampirism and Edit Wands Everywhere, enable mechanics from earlier design iterations of the game shortly before it entered early access. These were changed from the default due to gameplay testing revealing that they encouraged players to play in a way against the developer's intention. However, the developers thought the mechanics themselves were still interesting and put them in perks to keep them (where the randomness of the game means players won't develop a metagame strategy solely around those mechanics).
• Artificial Brilliance: Humanoid enemies are smarter than monsters. They can pick up wands and use them against you (though they aren't smart enough to avoid harming themselves with it). If they are on fire, they sometimes go into a nearby body of water to extinguish it. They can also beat corpses in order to splatter themselves with blood for the crit bonus.
• Arrows on Fire: Spell modifiers can set projectile spells on fire or cause them to leave a trail of fire behind them.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • Enemies will often wander into obvious hazards such as fires or damaging liquids. They also have a tendency to drown when they encounter a large pool of liquid, even if it is easily exited.
  • Enemies that steal wands will always try to use them against the player, even if they do no damage or damage the wielder.
• Ascended Glitch:
  • The Parallel Worlds were originally an artifact of world generation, mostly mirroring the original aside from a few changes. The devs eventually added unique features to the Parallels as well as making them significantly harder to access, and even added an ending that can only be unlocked by visiting both the West and East worlds.
  • A certain enemy can inflict a status effect that temporarily halves both your current and max HP, and it stacks with itself if you get hit repeatedly. However, picking up a Heart Container in this state causes you to gain the full, normal value in the moment, which then gets doubled every time the status effect wears off. Players would deliberately get their max HP reduced to 1 before picking up every HP increase in the level, raising their HP meter to ridiculous levels. The devs eventually addressed this exploit... by nerfing the status effect responsible so that it can't reduce your max HP below 10, implicitly endorsing the strategy itself, which remained otherwise unchanged.
  • The Nullifying Altar is supposed to remove your perks and turn them back into collectible item form. However, the "removal" part doesn't work properly if you happen to be polymorphed; it just spawns collectible copies of all your perks without taking them away from you. This was eventually patched by spawning angry Stevari and Skoude if you polymorph too near the altar, without fixing the actual interaction.
• Ascended Meme: Players latched onto the spell "Summon Deer Decoy" and started a gag petition to have it renamed "Summon Deercoy". In a "very important" update the devs did just that.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Giga Disc Projectile is an impressive, heavy-hitting spell that can dig through any material, even without modifiers to improve it. However, it also boomerangs right back at the initial casting location unless it embeds in a surface and can one-shot the Noita. Modifiers can negate some of these drawbacks.
    • This pales in comparison to the power of the Omega Sawblade, which not only launches out with much less speed but also homes at the player's current position and chews through all terrain. Its one saving grace is that it synergizes well with the Projectile Repulsion Field and Homing as it moves much slower than the Giga Disc Projectile, and can also be used to trick Sauvojen Tuntija into summoning it and thereby killing itself.
  • The Nuke is the single hardest hitting spell in the game, easily able to erase an entire screen of terrain and enemies. However, each Nuke spell has only one charge and the player is not immune to the damage dealt, making it too dangerous to use without Explosion Immunity.
    • Berserkium-enhanced bombs and nukes are also this, due to Berserkium doubling the damage done by spells and their blast radius. Due to this, a nuke can easily blow everything on the screen, including the player, to bits. Combining Berserkium and Glass Cannon increases the blast radius tenfold, often destroying large chunks of the world, including the Extremely Dense Rock walls that act as level borders. In fact, the increased radius will end up going beyond the game's physics simulation distance, meaning that beyond a certain point the explosion will not destroy any material.
  • While the regular Black Hole is largely a utility spell for digging, the Giga and Omega variants are powerful damaging attacks which can also injure the player. Both have high levels of gravity which will drag in the player if too close and inflict high amounts of Curse damage, for which there is no immunity. It's entirely possible to delete an entire biome with modifed versions of these spells, but the player is likely to be annihilated as well.
  • Vampirism lets you heal by drinking blood, but accepting the perk cuts your current max HP by one-third and actually healing a reasonable amount requires a lot of blood, more than any single enemy is likely to bleed unmodified. And of course many of the enemies don't bleed actual blood, instead bleeding Acid, Lava or slime. If you can find a way to summon blood infinitely on demand, it's a lot more practical, but getting to this point likely means more common means of infinite healing are available.
• Baby Planet:
  • The Kuu is a really tiny moon that Noita can carry, and it attracts static objects like projectiles or enemy corpses. Its name is literally "Moon" in Suomi/Finnish.
  • The actual Moon up in the sky is only about one screen across. You can also make the Sun, which is around the same size.
• Bad Vibrations: The screen shakes whenever there's a large disturbance in the terrain, such as caused by an explosion. However, continuous shaking is a sure sign that a Jättimato is somewhere nearby, digging its way through the terrain. If this happens, proceed very carefully.
• Bat Out of Hell: The Lepakko and Suurlepakko enemies mean "bat" and "grand bat" in Finnish, but they look less like bats and more like winged eyeball monstrosities that bleed purple slime.
• Beef Gate: The mountain and its surrounding surface terrain can be investigated with some creative use of spells and items. While traveling east normally requires some way to fly efficiently, teleport, or dig through the earth, the tree to the west of the starting area can be climbed by anyone; instead, if you ascend too high you'll find it is guarded by large numbers of powerful flying enemies, preventing players from climbing it without proper preparation.
• Berserk Button: Toveri seems harmless at first, spitting seeds that do no damage and trying to kick the player. Killing a nearby Kauhuhirviö will anger it, switching to a damaging spell and receiving buffs to multiple stats. Killing additional Kauhuhirviös will buff it even further, eventually rendering it immune to most forms of damage.
• Big Eater: Once you kill an enemy, you can crouch over their corpse and begin feeding on them until there is nothing left but a pool of blood, which you can then drink dry as well. This includes sapient humanoid enemies. While this poisons you normally, the Iron Stomach perk allows the Noita to consume infinite food with no consequences.
• Bilingual Bonus: Many enemies and items have Finnish names.
• Blackout Basement: Some areas have little to no lighting, forcing the Noita to use spells or eat certain materials that grant night vision. While some areas have this effect by default, others can have it randomly added as a modifier. The worst is the Dark Cave, which is pitch black permanently.
• Bleak Level: The Vault is darker and more sinister than the previous areas. It's some kind of underground facility where deadly robotic enemies and monstrous mutants roam.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: It's possible for both you and enemies to be soaked in blood, which protects against burning and also gives a chance to deal a Critical Hit more often.
• Blow You Away: The Burst of Air spell creates a concentrated gust of wind that deals minor damage and has high knockback. The spell also interacts with ambient particle effects, fire most notably.
• Booby Trap:
  • Some wands in the Mines are placed on trapped pedestals which trigger when the wand is removed. Ones that are submerged in a liquid will trigger traps to ignite or electrify the liquid while those in the open air will trigger the release of substances such as acid.
  • Chests have a random chance of dropping live bombs instead of a reward. Some can also inadvertently become this if they drop a Thunderstone while submerged and electrocute you, or a Brimstone in a flammable liquid and ignite it.
  • The Temple of the Art and Pyramid have wall-mounted traps that will fire off a variety of attacks if you get close, including arrows, explosions, and acid.
• Booze Flamethrower: A variant of this can be performed by conjuring a cloud of alcohol and setting it on fire. You can also set fire to alcohol vats or pools, as well.
• Border Patrol: The surface of the Parallel Worlds is littered with clones of two dangerous mini-bosses. Travelling without proper precautions can quickly result in being swarmed and killed by multiple clones.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Flasks of water or a wand that creates water. Water has somewhat limited use offensively but it is has a lot of practical uses. It douses flames on the Noita and the ground, cleanses Toxic Sludge pools into more water, removes stains, kills fire monsters, and creates safe rock on top of lava. It is so fundamental that during development it was part of the default Starter Equipment (and still has a decent chance to be the starting flask).
  • Concentrated Mana is a liquid that, either as a stain or when consumed, quadruples mana regeneration. Even on starter wands, this all but eliminates running dry of mana, the only exception being wands with extremely low regen. Concentrated Mana is incredibly easy to mass-produce because a single drop converts an entire body of water into more of itself, and if you get a modifier that produces water, it becomes effectively infinite. With Iron Stomach, the effect can be maintained for hours. It also has the secondary property of being incredibly corrosive to most metals (including gold, which it melts), making it as toxic as acid to machine enemies.
  • Digging Spells are less flashy than Bomb spells or Black Hole spells and take time to dig through tougher materials (depending on type), but they have infinite uses. You can gain loads of gold by digging to gold deposits in terrain with Digging Bolt, for example, and escape from fighting against dangerous enemies by digging a new route. Stronger spells like Luminous Drill allow you to burrow your own paths through the levels, potentially avoiding ambushes or attacking from unexpected angles.
  • Compared to gameplay impacting perks like Glass Cannon and Teleportitis, many of the perks are relatively tame but useful. Stronger Hearts, for example, will double the bonus HP from Hearts, which adds up quickly if you get the perk early.
  • Using Breathless and a water-generating wand to flood levels is one of the safest strategies, though relatively slow. Not only will this combo simply drown most of the enemies in a level, water slows projectiles so they are less likely to hit, while Breathless prevents you from drowning and allows you to retain your on-land mobility. Paired with an Electricity immunity perk and wand modifier that electrifies the water, this strategy can clear entire levels without the Noita ever directly attacking anything.
  • The "Gold is Forever" perk removes the timed-despawning of gold nuggets dropped after enemies die, removing a source of pressure to collect them immediately, especially when doing so is risky. It also means that gold dropped by enemies killed well away from the Noita (such as when enemies fight each other) also remain indefinitely and can be collected at leisure. The result is a large amount of more easily accessible gold that almost eliminates scarcity problems in the first few levels.
  • "Long Distance Cast" plus "Small Teleport Bolt" equals Flash Step. Most useful for exiting Holy Mountains without collapsing them, thus retaining the ability to tinker with wands inside — and without summoning Stevari. It won't kill any Hiisi, but it'll make it way easier to build the wand that does.
• Boss Arena Urgency: On engaging the final boss, two lavafalls appear on either side of the boss arena. This lava will begin flooding the room unless the vents are sealed or the ground is destroyed to let it flow out.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The largest Worms serve as this, inflicting massive damage with their attacks and being the only non-boss creature with a visible health bar. The first kill even yields a health boost.
• Boundareefs: In a non-ocean version, the west and east sides of the world are bounded by infinitely tall walls of Extremely Dense and damaging Cursed Rock, intended to keep players from reaching the Parallel Worlds. It won't stop a persistent player, but it will deter the unprepared.
• Brutal Bonus Level: The Tower is a bonus area accessed through the Temple of the Art, though the portal is out of the way. This section is a marathon level revisiting all the biomes and a random assortment of all enemies from the game, with the added challenge that the player has to travel up instead of down. The entire area is surrounded by a layer of Cursed Stone to discourage attempts to dig through to the reward at the top, assuming you know where to look. As a reward at the top are three incredibly powerful wands, as well as a diamond structure that unlocks certain spells when specific enemies or perks are brought to it.
• Build Like an Egyptian: The Pyramid is located in the middle of the Desert. It contains end-game mobs, a mini-boss, and an entrance to the various caves beneath that portion of the world. An Orb can be acquired on top of the Pyramid which is also where the new Suns can be created.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Played with. Every entity in the game has an in-game name that often looks complex and hard to pronounce... because those are real words in Finnish. Most of the names are actually quite literal, such as the ant enemies being named Murkku, a colloquial word for "ant". Some are a bit more fanciful, though — Stevari, for instance, is actually a slang term for a mall cop.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Of the enemies in Noita, the bat is a purple, one eyed, flying monstrosity with slime in place of blood, and the firefly is a large subterranean beetle that shoots balls of flame at the player. More minor examples include the lamprey, which is an eel-like sea serpent, and the spider, which only has three legs.
• Cannibalism Superpower: Eating the corpse of a Master of Polymorphing grants temporary Polymorph Immunity. It unfortunately doesn't last very long, unless you can engineer a way to eat a lot of them.
• Cartoon Bomb: The Bomb spell casts a black metal sphere with a wick. It's the most powerful basic explosive and appears on most starting wands, but you only get three shots and the projectile is useless on pretty much any slanted surface.
• Cast from Hit Points:
  • Blood Magic is a modifier which reduces a spell's mana cost in exchange for 4 HP of damage.
  • Blood to Power is a modifier which does 20% of your total HP in damage, which is then partially added to the damage of the spell.
  • Destruction does 10% of your total HP in damage in exchange for killing every enemy on the screen.
• Cast from Money: Gold to Power converts part of your gold into extra spell damage. If you reach the gold cap of 2.1 billion, gold is set to infinity and the spell casts at maximum power without taking gold.
• Catch and Return: Flasks thrown by enemies can be caught in the air if you're deft enough, or retrieved intact if they happen to land without breaking, allowing the Noita to throw them. The Alchemist enemy can be exploited for materials like Teleportium through this method, or just an extra flask.
• Chainsaw Good: The Chainsaw spell, a point-blank tiny explosion that has the property of reducing recharge time and completely removing cast delay, allowing the spell to fire incredibly quickly. It has quite high DPS and often gibs enemies, but has no ranged option unless modified. It's also useful for cutting through wood (and other soft materials). Its properties make it a core component in rapid-fire wands, turning any spell into a chainsaw.
• Charm Person: Staining an enemy with Pheromone causes them to see the Noita as an ally. Curiously, while the Noita can also be stained, it doesn't have any effect other than displacing other stains.
• Checkpoint Starvation:
  • The Holy Mountains serve as a wand-editing area and safe zone (most of the time), but the former property is lost if the player exits in the intended fashion.
  • Nightmare mode and New Game+ eliminate some of the Holy Mountain zones, instead transitioning directly between two biomes. This denies the player the related full heal and perk as well as an area to safely edit wands.
  • Going for anything but the most basic ending also generally requires this, since it means that you will have to travel in areas with no Holy Mountains and go back and forth through areas where you've already used them up - it is possible to dig around them or even through them if you don't mind angering the gods, but none of their bonuses will replenish.
• Cheesy Moon: At the top of the sky version of the Work, there's a moon made of cheese.
• Chest Monster:
  • The Matkija ("A Mimic" in Finnish) is a monster that looks like a treasure chest. It remains motionless until you attempt to move next to or stand atop it, at which point you'll find it has no collision and will attempt to bite you. The rare Pahan muisto (Memory of Evil) and Valhe (Lie) are monsters that look like a health boost and spell refresh, respectively, but otherwise behave similarly.
  • A variant, the Leggy Mimic, instead sprouts numerous legs and starts walking away on the walls and ceiling. It's tougher than the normal kind and the legs can damage you. When killed, it drops a unique perk that gives you the same power.
  • Henkevä potu (Potion Mimic) resembles a green potion but when approached will sprout small spider legs and begin following the player while squeaking. They cannot hurt the player and, if charmed with Pheromone, can actually be picked up and used like a potion. However, certain perks and spells will register the mimic as an enemy and act unusually, such as Homing spells targeting the player.
• Climactic Volcano Backdrop: The room where the final boss is fought is located below a lake of lava and two holes open in the ceiling at the start, creating spectacular lavafalls on either side of the boss.
• Combat Tentacles:
  • The Tentacle spell fires a large, long tentacle from the wand. Aside from their melee damage, they also also draw items such as nuggets to the Noita. The Revenge Tentacles perk will cause a tentacle to lash out at anything that damages the Noita.
  • Several enemies use tentacles to attack, either solely or in conjunction with other attacks.
  • The Eldritch Portal spell, which causes a Swirly Energy Thingy to appear for a few seconds and shoot highly-damaging tentacles out to melee attack literally every living thing near by it. Including the caster.
• Combinatorial Explosion: Spells can be placed in wand slots to make extremely varied forms of magic. The way spells can be combined in wand slots are nearly endless, giving you extremely varied effects like homing bouncy projectiles, and will interact differently with various types of environment. The various perks which effect spells only increase the variety.
• Counter-Attack: Some enemies have attacks that will trigger on being injured, such as the Glowing Creep who fires off a piercing explosion every time it is injured. Similarly, several perks grant the player counter-attacks such as bullets or tentacles that fire off on taking damage.
• Critical Hit: There's a chance for your attacks to deal critical damage, which increases if you're covered in blood. There are also perks and spell modifiers which increase the chance of a critical hit and the bonus damage.
• Critical Status Buff: The "Living on the Edge" perk causes all spells to do triple damage when the player is below 25% of their maximum HP.
• Cycle of Hurting: Being damaged interrupts Levitation, grounding the Noita temporarily. This can leave them a sitting duck for further attacks that will also interrupt the Levitation. Machine gun enemies are especially bad about this.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff:
  • Weakening curses cause a target to take more damage from a specific damage type, even if they would otherwise be immune to it.
  • One of the mage enemies has an attack that disables the player's protective perks, which may or may not render them vulnerable to their own weapons in addition to those of enemies they might otherwise be immune to.
  • The Jarated stain from Urine increases the chance of incoming attacks dealing a critical hit.
• Damage Reduction: The Oil Blood perk reduces the damage taken from explosions while Slime Blood reduces the damage from projectile attacks.
• Damage-Sponge Boss:
  • The final boss has increased health based on how many Orbs of True Knowledge the player has gathered. With enough orbs it becomes this, going as high as 131,481 HP when you have found all 11 of them. By visting parallel worlds in New Game+, you can get a maximum of 33 orbs, which increases the bosses health to half a TRILLION, while enough iterations of New Game Plus can take it as high as one SEPTILLION. Good thing the fight is optional at those stages of the game.
  • The Toveri's health increases exponentially for every Kauhuhirviö killed nearby up to 25 with a possible maximum health of 19 million before adding the New Game Plus modifiers. While the number is far less than a fully buffed final bosss, the Toveri also gains immunity to several types of damage and scaling resistance to most of the rest. A wand that can one-shot kill even the most buffed final boss will barely injure Toveri unless customized to its few weaknesses.
• Damage Typing: The game has eleven damage types not counting unique material damage types: Melee, Drill, Projectile, Slice, Fire, Ice, Electric, Explosive, Toxic, Physics, and Curse. Enemies have varying multipliers and immunities which determine how much damage they take from an attack, with a negative multiplier causing that type to heal them instead. The player can also get varying levels of resistance or immunity with different perks.
• Deadly Disc: The Saw Blade spell fires a saw blade which hits hard but can also damage the Noita. Giga Disc Projectile ups the ante by firing off saw blades larger than the Noita at higher speeds which boomerang back to where they were cast, namely at the caster unless they used a trigger spell. Omega Sawblade goes even further in that it explicitly homes in on the caster a second after being cast.
• Deadly Gas:
  • Freezing Vapor and Toxic Gas are directly harmful while Flammable and Poison Gas are only dangerous when set ablaze. Large concentrations of any gas can suffocate creatures.
  • Mist spells can have this effect by creating a cloud of damaging material, such as an Acid Mist. Alternately the spell can be paired with an effect to generate this, such as a Slime Mist which causes anything it slimes to explode.
• Deathbringer the Adorable: The ominously named Kauhuhirviö ("Horror Monster") looks like an unassuming little green spud and is completely harmless. Its only "attack" is to spit seeds which pass right through the Noita without damage and sprout small plants where they land.
• Death by Gluttony: When indigesting too much, the player starts to receive damage. Continuing to consume food and drink too much will make the player explode. Iron Stomach eliminates that drawback.
• Death by Materialism:
  • Quite often, the allure of collecting gold nuggets will lead the player to their doom, when they would have survived if they just left the gold behind. It doesn't help that gold nuggets tend to tumble off ledges, forcing the player to make a blind jump into danger after them.
  • It is possible, if unlikely, to drown in gold. The material counts as a solid, so being submerged in it triggers the breath meter. As the gold will constantly be collected, there needs to be a large amount of gold above the player to ensure a gap doesn't form for air, so this is mainly a danger in the Gold areas or after transmuting the world.
  • The Touch of Gold spell converts all matter in its area of effect into gold. The player counts as "matter", and the spell casts right on top of you if fired unmodified. And two of the endings result in this, either converting the player into gold or leaving them alive in a world of toxic gold that kills them on touch.
  • The Curse of Greed perk triples the gold dropped by enemies, but also converts all solid and liquid materials the player has been near with Greed-Cursed materials which hurt them. Hanging onto it for too long can turn much of the world into a death trap for the player.
• Death or Glory Attack: Mana To Power is a modifier that completely drains a wand's mana and converts it into damage for a single attack. Depending on the wand's mana total, this can translate to a couple thousand damage before other calculations. Unlike other "To Power" modifiers, this one has a use limit because it's a fairly powerful effect on a fast-charging wand.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: The flaming skull enemy releases a large amount of exploding gunpowder on death. Similarly, the ice flame skull explodes into a cloud of Freezing Vapor. The Suur-Ukko also generates a Thunder Charge explosion on death. Kauhuhirviö will unleash a massive slime explosion on death. Mecha-Kolmi explodes on death, which can be deadly if you're too close and don't have immunity.
• Deflector Shields:
  • The Permanent Shield Perk which gives the Noita a field that will deflect projectiles. After blocking it breaks and needs a short time to reset. There are also some spells which grant this effect, either as a full or half barrier.
  • The Projectile Repulsion Field Perk will repel any projectile that gets near the Noita, or at least slow it down.
  • Some enemies and bosses have this, most notably the Stevaris and Skoude sent to kill players for damaging the temples.
• Defog of War: There are several ways to remove the darkness that covers the levels beyond simply exploring them, with varying levels of effectiveness.
  • The All-Seeing Eye spell removes all darkness from the screen where it's cast, which can be used to see inside large masses of terrain. It doesn't work in certain areas, like the Dark Cave. Its bigger brother, the All-Seeing Eye perk, removes all darkness from the world permanently, trumping all environmental effects.
  • Consuming Worm Blood tints the screen slightly and grants an All-Seeing Eye-like effect for the duration. This does trump environmental effects, but the darkness comes back once the effect wears off.
  • Traveling several Parallel Worlds away from the main world will eventually cause the the game engine to stop rendering the fog, revealing the surrounding terrain. Returning to the main world will cause it to reappear.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Wand building requires you to know how a wand's stats effect spellcasting, how spells work, and what order to put spells in to maximize effect. The only way to learn any of that is to experiment with wands and you're very likely to blow yourself up with your own spells in the process. But once mastered, you are capable of building insane, game-breaking wands that will destroy anything in sight like a hot knife through butter.
  • Many of the more powerful spells, such as the Nuke, are incredibly powerful but also very difficult to use without dying. Doing so requires collecting the right combination of perks, wands, and spell modifiers.
• Disadvantageous Disintegration:
  • More powerful destructive spells such as the Black Hole will clear out most rocks but can also destroy the contents of chests, flasks, and gold.
  • Destruction kills every enemy on the screen, but they drop no gold and any wands being carried by an enemy are also destroyed.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • If the player can find a means to get over or through the tree to the west of the mine entrance (the Mines usually contain a method of doing so) , they can walk to the Lake and sacrifice a tablet to get a decent mid-game wand preloaded with an attack spell, which is never randomized. The wand itself has fairly consistent stats, though it tends to be on the slower side. There is the risk of fighting a few enemies on the surface, but running into something your starter wand can't kill is rare.
  • The randomized nature of loot means it's entirely possible to pick up a midgame quality wand on the very first level. Similarly the recipe for Lively Concoction or Alchemical Precursor may allow for creation in the first area, giving the player easy access to healing and vast amounts of gold early on.
  • The Pyramid used to contain three mid-level wands. It was possible to get them as early as the first level depending on level geometry and acquiring a wand capable of breaking through the exterior.
  • The Overgrown Cavern can be reached at the start of the game with a basic explosive or digging wand. This allows the player access to the biome's unusually large number of mid- and late-game quality wands, health upgrades, and items. While the enemies and environment are very dangerous at this point, they are also relatively easy to avoid with the proper approach.
  • Tablets are an inadvertent example. They can be used to block projectiles, jumped on midair to refresh Levitation, and when thrown can one-shot most enemies if thrown from high enough. A tablet can even one-shot a Stevari.
  • The player's initial bomb wand appears useless due to its single slot and incredibly low mana pool/regeneration but it has an incredibly low cast delay and recharge time. If no useful wands are discovered in the first level the player can swap a basic attack into the bomb wand and use it as a magical machine gun. These stats also make it an ideal wand for the basic digging spell.
  • With the right world generation it is possible to access a hidden area called Gold which contains a quarter million in gold pixels as early as the first level. This is enough to buy every item in every shop over the course of the game. Just don't drown in it.
• Door to Before: In the Temple of the Art, there's a hidden portal to the west which leads to the Tower, the most difficult area in the game. At the top of the Tower is a portal which deposits the player back where they began the game.
• Doppelgänger: The Shadow Noita, what looks like a Noita with no legs who flies around and attacks the Noita with a wand from one of the player's previous runs.
• Double Unlock: Several spells are only unlocked after defeating a boss or completing certain quests. A few of these unlocked spells don't drop as part of the reward, but are instead added to the spell pool in appropriate shops and must be purchased.
• Downer Ending: In the default ending, the Noita reaches the end of their quest but completes The Work in the wrong place and is turned to gold.
• Dungeon Bypass:
  • Careful use of items or spells will allow players to bypass seemingly impassable obstacles, potentially allowing them to reach later or earlier levels of the game out of standard order. Some areas are surrounded by Cursed Rock to prevent this, but even that can be bypassed with some preparation.
  • There are various secret rooms in the game that are accessed through puzzles that generate a portal when completed, usually holding a wand or some other reward. Not all of these puzzles spawn in every run, but the rooms themselves do, and a player with a wand capable of digging and an idea of their location can simply dig to the room itself. The only penalty is that the ability to edit wands in these rooms, normally granted when solved the right way, doesn't activate. The exception is the room which is opened by way of beating Levithan, which has portals to the game's major areas. This room only performs its function if the player gets there by way of portal. If not, it's just an empty room.
• Dungeon Shop: The Holy Mountain areas always have a shop, and you can buy wands or spells with gold in this place. Similar spell shops have a chance to spawn inside levels as well and high-end spell shops are guaranteed to spawn in the Hell and Sky versions of the Work.
• Easter Egg: Messages in the runic language are hidden in extremely out-of-the-way areas such as in the hardest bedrock where few if any players will be digging normally or at the top of otherwise empty caves. At least one asks what exactly the player is doing there of all places.
• Egg MacGuffin:
  • The Three Eggs that appear in the lore. Various rune texts state the three eggs birthed the competing forces of Nature, Magic, and Technology. The Egg of Technology can be discovered in-game, slowly dissolving in the lava sea beneath the map and containing the End of Everything spell.
  • In-game, the Noita can acquire the spell Summon Hollow Egg, a trigger spell which activates the next spell when the egg breaks. What makes it unique is that the eggs it summons are treated as items, and will retain the spells they would have cast if you can avoid breaking them (such as firing into water). While they can be lobbed as makeshift grenades in this state, their real utility comes when are dropped when the Noita is polymorphed, leading to the "Safety Egg" strategy — i.e., filling an egg with protection and healing spells which will detonate to shield the Noita when vulnerable.
• Elite Tweak: There are a large number of oddities and unique behavior in wand and spell interactions, to the point that changing the order of one spell can vastly change the resulting cast. Players have developed advanced guides detailing how to take advantage of these to great effect.
• Evil All Along: "Evil" is stretching it, but the main ending reveals that the Noita had no traditional heroic goals and was purely motivated by their own greed.
• Emergent Gameplay: This is heavily incentivized by the game.
  • In general, the large bodies of water and other liquids that are found throughout the cavern will usually be what kills a lot of enemies at once, either through drowning them out or causing a large explosion. In addition, some wands fire spells that are better used on the environment than in combat, further pushing the player towards messing with your environment. Also, enemies drop double gold nuggets when killed by environmental damage, which includes dropped tablets and certain spell effects.
  • Basic projectile wands deal decent damage and are useful at all ranges, but there is a wide array of modifier and unusual spells. Something as simple as adding a single spell or changing the spell order can result in a vastly different effect. This encourages players to experiment with the full array of possible spells rather than relying on straightforward attack wands.
• Enemy Summoner: Some large enemies have the ability to generate lesser enemies, such as the Suurlepakko which can summon additional Lepakkos.
• Energy Weapon: With the Concentrated Light spell, you can shoot a beam made of light.
• Escape Rope: The perk Summon Sädekivi grants the player a single-use item which blasts a tunnel to the surface, allowing the player to retreat to less dangerous biomes even if they lack a digging wand.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Player Character is never referred to by name (the Progress screen and death messages call them "Minä", but that's just Finnish for "me"), but a few secret messages call them "Knower to Be".
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
  • Well, the tin happens to be in Finnish, but all the exotic sounding enemy names are more or less just straightforward descriptions of what they are.
  • The End of Everything spell is more or less intended to kill the caster and annihilate a large chunk of the world in the process.
• Exploding Barrels: There are versions for most of the game's liquids. A little damage will cause them to leak all of their contents rather than explode which reveals they contain more liquid than suggested by their size. Gunpowder crates are also present which do not leak when damaged, but instead explode.
• Explosive Stupidity:
  • Careless use of wands by the Noita can easily cause this as they are not immune to their own spells. Examples include a wand exploding right in the face.
  • Enemy mobs also get a helping of this as they may recklessly destroy explosives with their attacks or even bounce their own bombs back in their face. Hiisi with wands are especially prone to this as their AI does not identify the dangers inherent in certain spell layouts such as firing a Nuke at point blank range.
• Extreme Omnivore:
  • At launch, the Noita could consume a wide range of items, including the corpses of enemies, fungus, and most liquids. The only materials that gave trouble were oil, which caused ticking damage, and lava, which made the Noita catch fire. Later updates added a food poisoning mechanic for materials the Noita logically shouldn't consume, the duration increasing as more is consumed. However, the Noita can still consume a wide array of materials.
  • The Iron Stomach perk removes all negative consequences of eating, both in terms of overeating and the negative side effects of certain materials. If the player consumes certain liquids with a negative effect (polymorphine, for example) they gain brief immunity to those substances. The one drawback is that Berserkium no longer grants its effect if consumed, as its property of increasing aggression of nearby enemies is considered a negative side effect despite also having beneficial properties.
• The Faceless: Nothing is seen of the Noita except their face-concealing robe (and their blood, when they bleed). Their gender, appearance, or even species are all unknown.
• Falling Damage: While the engine tracks falling damage, almost everything is immune to it. Almost, because curiously, fish are an exception, which can cause problems if you're polymorphed into one.
• Fantastic Nuke: The "Nuke" spell will cause a extremely large and powerful explosion (if you can see where the missile lands, you're too close), and said explosion destroys any material.
• Fatal Fireworks: Fireworks! is a relatively weak but flashy explosive spell.
• Featureless Protagonist: The Noita wears a form-concealing robe, uses magic, and bleeds when struck. Outside of what we can guess about their goals based on context, that's just about all we know about them.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: Beneath the lava of sea can be found Hell, a lava-filled zone populated by unique monsters.
• Five-Finger Discount: If a wand or spell is removed from a store they can be picked up without costing any gold. This can be accomplished by either destroying the ground under the item so it falls out of the store or using the Tentacle spell to drag it away.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: In the final room of the game, the Noita discovers a gold statue of a Noita and background runes that read "WHAT YOU DESERVE". This foreshadows that this is the wrong place to complete the Work, as it will turn the Noita into gold.
• Flame Spewer Obstacle: In Temple of the Art, some of the faces shoot out flames.
• Flaming Skulls: The Liekkiö ("Flame-thing") and Jäätiö (Ice-thing) are flying, burning skulls. The former has standard fire while the second has blue cold fire.
• Forced Transformation: Creatures who touch Polymorphine will temporarily become a winged sheep with no attack and little health. Unstable Polymorphine will choose a random Hiisi while Chaotic Polymorphine can transform into any creature in the game, which can result in an enemy or hazard being more or less dangerous. Polymorphers use this as their primary attack and are among the most dangerous, since your helpless animal form can be one-shot by just about anything. Being hit by a polymorph spell while already polymorphed is a guaranteed One-Hit Kill. And, of course, there are ways that Noita may either protect themselves from or exploit Polymorphine, despite lacking the Wands to cast it yourself.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Some of the tablets warn alchemists that attempting to rush their work will have poor results and any good alchemist will first focus on preparing a solid foundation. If the Noita completes the Work in the easiest manner, skipping all the Orbs and using the obvious location, they will die.
  • One Emerald Tablet mentions mountains of silver and gold. Which is the Noita's true goal, to complete The Work and gain unlimited wealth by turning the mountain and surroundings to gold.
• Formulaic Magic: While varied, spellcrafting is a logical and mathematical process. Assuming no shuffle, the cast order goes from left to right. Any spell modifiers will be applied to the next projectile spell and these can stack, allowing for multiple modifiers to a single projectile. The number of slots on a wand limits the complexity of spells while the Mana limits the cost.
• Fungus Humongous: Fungal Caverns and Overgrown Cavern feature very large glowing mushrooms. These tend to explode upon taking damage. There are also edible non-mushroom fungi that can also reach large sizes.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • The game's engine tends to become increasingly unstable on longer playthroughs. This can result in gameplay breaking bugs such as despawning entire biomes from the world, potentially including the final boss. Far worse is the chance for a crash to cause the save file to become corrupted, wiping out all progress.
  • The way areas load and unload while playing can cause some items to shift around unexpectedly. In particular, the Desert Music Machine has a bad habit of disappearing if visited more than once. This prevents players from using it to attune the Crystal Key, locking them out of the Coral Chest rewards for that run.
  • Terrain generation doesn't always accommodate certain constructs in the game such as the Hiisi Base Anvil or the various puzzles. If too many pixels of the construct are destroyed, it no longer works and any rewards are lost.
• Gas-Cylinder Rocket: Freezing Vapor containers in the Hiisi bases will fly around if damaged before exploding, filling the area with Vapor.
• Gatling Good: The Experimental Wand found in the Power Plant is rather obviously a chain gun of some form, firing "???" bullets and producing piles of brass casings.
• Geo Effects: Each of the main biomes has a chance of spawning with a modifier. Effects include changing the types and rarity of enemies, adding new materials, changes to material behavior, and more esoteric effects like enemies sometimes receiving ghostly helpers. Some zones also have modifiers by default, like the Desert which has a Hot modifier that causes water to evaporate.
• Giant Corpse World: The Meat Realm is a dangerous zone deep in the Sandy Chasm, seemingly formed from the buried corpse of a giant creature given the presence of an enormous skull. The terrain is Meat material studded with Cysts which release damaging Pus liquid. The zone itself is filled with dangerous and extremely hostile variants of the Hiisi and a mini-boss which inflicts a zone-wide curse until killed.
• Giant Spider: The Hämis in the early levels is identified as a type of spider. In later levels there are the significantly large and more dangerous Hämähäkki and Lukki which can crawl anywhere on the screen and even burrow through Brickwork. The Final Boss, Kolmisilmä, is a gigantic Lukki that forms a shield on its main body.
• Glass Cannon: The name of a perk, appropriately enough. It caps your health at a mere 50, but quadruples your damage output... and also causes your explosive spells to have 5 times the radius.
• Gotta Catch Them All: There are a number of orbs and essences hidden around the game world. Collecting them all is not needed to complete the game but they do impact the ending.
• Grenade Hot Potato: Bombs thrown by enemies can be deflected mid-air, though their timer is short enough to allow for more than one or two hits.
• Grey Goo:
  • Void Liquid is a rare material which converts any Toxic Sludge or Fungus it touches into more of itself. This is largely harmless in most of the game, but all of the soil in the Overgrown Cavern biome is treated as Fungus. Even a few pixels of Void Liquid released at the top of the area will wipe out a massive swath of terrain.
  • Concentrated Mana converts any water it touches into more of itself, quickly transforming any body of water with a mere drop. The effect is entirely beneficial for the player (other than melting gold that falls in), but represents an ecological disaster given the potential disruption of the water cycle.
  • Creepy Liquid transforms any air it touches into more of itself, expanding at an exponential rate to fill all available space. A few pixels released in an open area will drown the entire world in the material.
  • Fungal Shifting Gold into Draught of Midas can cause this. Draught normally converts solid materials into gold, but with this transformation it will instead create more Draught. As a result, every nugget or deposit of gold will become the seed for an exponentially-growing amount of Draught which will eat through every solid material in the game.
  • Fungal Shifting Flammable Gas into Acid can also cause this. Acid destroys other materials and is consumed in the process, generating a large amount of Flammable Gas. With this transformation, any acid will duplicate itself at an extraordinary rate while eating through the entire game world.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The 'satiety' mechanic is there simply to prevent the Noita from drinking an entire lake of water, blood, or what have you. Nowhere is this mentioned, and new players may be forgiven for thinking that a full stomach somehow gives a minor Regenerating Health mechanic, often to their detriment. (It works with Vampirism, but that's a comparatively rare perk.)
  • Obtaining any ending that doesn't kill the Noita and unlocking New Game Plus requires thinking well outside of the box. The player must not only find the locations of the Orbs, many of which are in heavily-guarded bonus areas outside the mountain mine, but also have some way to return to the surface after killing the boss.
  • The various quests in the game use oblique signposting and in-game texts offering vague or overly poetic hints. Most were solved primarily by players pooling information to work out the various steps.
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: Most players agree that the final boss is nowhere near as difficult as surviving the levels to reach it. While collecting Orbs of True Knowledge will increase the boss's health exponentially, it takes a lot of orbs for its new mechanics to become a problem. The various mini-bosses are significantly more dangerous than most enemies, but are also all optional.
• Hard Mode Perks: Nightmare mode starts off by giving you three free wands (in addition to your normal starting two) and four free perks, one of which is always the highly-coveted Tinker With Wands Everywhere. You're gonna need them.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest: There are only two healing spells in the game and both have limited charges that can't be circumvented by the Unlimited Spells perk. Magical substances for healing are also very rare, with the only reliably obtainable healing item being Gourds hidden in a dangerous sub-zone.
• Healing Potion: Flasks of Lively Concoction and Healthium can be used to heal, either by pouring a puddle to stand in or drinking a portion. Both liquids are rare and evaporate quickly when poured out.
• Healing Shiv: Healing Bolt is, as the name implies, a bolt of energy that heals its target instead of damaging them. The enemies don't seem to know this, as if they get their hands on a wand with this spell they'll shoot you with it as readily as any attacking spell. Since you can't shoot yourself normally, part of the trick is figuring out how to get the bolt to hit you.
• Helpful Mook: Parantajahiisi are Hiisi that shoot their allies with healing beams... or, well, they try to. It's very easy to trick them into healing you, because they don't check their firing line at all. The classic setup is to get two Parantajahiisi, kick them both for minimal damage, and stand between them as they try to heal each other, but there are several more ways to do it if you're creative.
• Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Consuming fungus, fungal blood, frogs, or glue causes the Tripping effect. Maintaining this effect for several minutes at various sites is the only way to see the clues for creating the New and Dark Suns.
• High-Pressure Blood: Landing a critical hit on an enemy (or otherwise killing them in a brutal way) can have them spurt out quite a bit of blood. This is useful in some circumstances and less useful in others: becoming covered in red blood increases your critical chance, but not all monsters bleed said red blood. Some bleed acid, which hurts you, or slime, which slows you down.
• High-Voltage Death: If a liquid is electrified it stuns and causes massive damage to any non-immune creature. This can be accomplished with an electrified projectile, Lightning Stone, an electrified wand, or the Noita with the Electricity perk. Certain enemies can also electrify water, such as mechanical enemies and the lightning wizard.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Sauvojen Tuntija has the ability to copy projectiles used against it and turn them on you, but can't copy the synergies in the wand that fired it. Simply fire something that causes self-damage with zero range like a Plasma Cross and watch the boss chew itself into giblets.
• Holiday Mode:
  • On Valentine's Day, extra Pheromone and health boosts (hearts) will spawn in the world.
  • On Vappu, the Finnish celebration of Walpurgis night, all potions have a chance of being replaced with Sima or Mämmi, a mild alcoholic drink and pudding, respectively, which are traditionally enjoyed during the holiday.
  • Around Juhannus, the Finish midsummer celebration, some Hiisi will be drunk, empty booze bottles will be scattered in some areas, and Juhannusima potions have a chance of spawning.
  • On August 24th, Team Fortress 2 is celebrated by the presence of some Snipuhiisi throwing jars of urine.
  • On Halloween, various Jack-o-Lanterns will spawn at locations throughout the game world.
  • During the Christmas season it snows on the surface world and the Santa Hiisi can be found in the caves. He throws explosive freezing presents that leave behind snow and freezing vapors.
  • Around New Year's, there's a chance of a fireworks box spawning in the starting area.
• Hollywood Acid: Acid, identified by its dark green color, is highly destructive, able to kill enemies and dissolves most substances. It also produces a gas which is highly flammable.
• Homing Projectile:
  • The "Homing Projectiles" perk makes all projectile spells slightly turn to pursue nearby enemies. The same can be accomplished by adding a Homing modifier to the wand, thought this increases the mana cost. These abilities can stack to increase the rate of homing. Amusingly, homing projectiles will target the Noita if they are transformed by Polymorphine.
  • The Omega Sawblade has an innate homing ability which causes it to aggressively pursue its caster. Layering a homing modifier on the spell will cancel this only so long as an enemy target is present, otherwise it will default to the caster.
  • Some spells such as Death Cross have an inherent homing ability which only works on passive creatures with the "prey" tag, such as fish and sheep.
• HP to One:
  • Toxic Sludge will continuously damage the Noita until they only have 5 HP left. Any attack from an enemy is enough to kill at that point.
  • Polymorphine transforms the Noita into a slow-moving sheep which will die to a single attack. Chaotic Polymorphine has a wide variety of forms, many of which are similarly fragile.
• I Believe I Can Fly: The Noita has the ability to levitate but the energy pool will run out quickly over large flights.
• Incredibly Durable Enemies: New Game Plus significantly increases the health of enemies such that even an optimized boss-killing wand can struggle.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Scattered throughout the levels are wood treasure chests with gold trim. They can drop wands, spells, gold, items, and live bombs.
• Infinity +1 Sword: At the top of the Tower are the three strongest wands in the game: a wand with max capacity that casts a couple dozen spells at a time; a wand with Always Cast Nuke; and a wand with negative cast delay and higher recharge than most wands. A player may only choose one and the Tower is not present in New Game+.
• Interface Screw:
  • The Sokaisunmestari can inflict blind curse with their projectiles. With this blind curse, your screen periodically fades into black.
  • Flummoxium stains reverse horizontal controls for both the player and enemies. It also increases projectile speed, which can throw off aim.
• Intoxication Mechanic:
  • Alcohol stains increase the spread of spells. Drinking Whiskey also increases spread, and the more you drink the more the spread increases. Once you drink enough to become Wasted, you also become poisoned and start vomiting periodically.
  • Eating fungus, glue, or frog meat causes the Tripping condition, resulting in a Mushroom Samba filter. The filter becomes increasingly heavy as more of the substance is consumed, eventually resulting in hallucinations of three eyes appearing while the player vomits.
• Invisible Monsters: The Forgotten and its minions are invisible and cannot be harmed unless a Paha Silma is nearby to reveal them.
• It's Raining Men: Placing a worm repelling crystal on the sky altar causes the message "This is not what you seek!" to appear followed by dozens of various-sized Worms falling from above.
• Jet Pack: Some of the Hiisi fly around with jet packs.
• Kaizo Trap: Defeating the boss opens a portal to the Work. Completing the game there will kill the Noita regardless of anything else. The correct way to finish the game is by ascending back to the top of the caves and completing the Work on an altar above the mountain.
• Kill It with Fire: Fire is a surprisingly useful resource in the early two areas. It does quite a bit of damage, spreads easily, can be created easily (even without a bomb, since the oil lamps in the mines can be shot to cause an explosion and a common spell allows you to set the tip of your wand on fire indefinitely) and tends to chew through any wood material. The result is that it's often much safer to cover an entire cavern in fire than it is to descend down into it yourself.
• Kill It with Ice: Freezing attacks, either direct or as a modifier, encase foes in ice and may or may not paralyze them briefly, depending on the enemy. A frozen enemy is extremely vulnerable to melee damage, such that a single kick will take half their health at a minimum. A drawback, however, is that killing a frozen enemy prevents them from bleeding, which can be detrimental if said blood is a useful resource (worm blood, for example).
• Kill It with Water: Enemies that are made of fire are weak against water. Use spells that generate a body of water or spill water from a water flask for easy kill. More generally, most enemies will drown if submerged in water so it's entirely possible to drown them by flooding the level.
• Knockback: Attacks have varying levels of knockback. A spell modifier and perk can be used to increase knockback on enemies.
• Laser Blade: The Luminous Drill spell creates a short-lived laser blade from the wand, with the secondary effect of drastically reducing the recharge and cast delay of the wand. It cuts through everything and does decent damage per hit. With the right setup, it can easily reduce the delay on a wand to 0, allowing it to fire for as long as the wand has mana to fuel it. Timer versions of the spell can be chained to make a longer beam, and certain modifiers (Ping-Pong Path, notably) will extend the range of the beam. The drawback is that, at 10 mana per cast (30 for timer) combined with its natural high fire rate, it will drain most wands in under a second unless the cost is negated by Add Mana.^note To put it in perspective, a normal Luminous Drill drains 600 mana per second, assuming it fires continuously, and very few wands have a regeneration rate that high.
• Laser Sight: Snipuhiisi ("Sniper Hiisi") and the Tankki ("Tank") variants have one of these which tracks the Noita just prior to firing. The Noita can get one also with the Pinpointer perk.
• Last Chance Hit Point: The Saving Grace perk gives you this ability, making any single attack which would normally kill you instead leave you with 1 HP, as long as you have more than 1 HP before receiving an attack.
• Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: Lava has similar physics to other liquids in the game, flowing like water and not emitting any dangerous heat. It can be carried around in a flask and some enemies even bleed lava instead of blood when killed. The Noita can even drink a flask of lava, though they will catch fire. That said it has some nods to realism as it emits a red/orange glow, is opaque, and causes massive damage if the Noita touches it.
• Lethal Joke Item:
  • Flock of Ducks seems like a goofy spell with no real use. However, the Ducks are one of the few projectiles with an inherent piercing property and their death explosion is capable of hurting the caster. Modifiers applied to the spell also applies to each of the summoned Ducks, multiplying the effect.
  • Music note spells work as projectiles but have such short lives they seem to only be usable for flavor or the handful of musical mysteries. However, notes are one of the few spells with inherent piercing and they also have one of the highest tick rates in the game. Paired with a few modifiers to extend their life and home on enemies, they become an extremely powerful projectile.
• Level in the Clouds: The Cloudscapes and the Work (Sky) are dangerous zones located far above the ground, with the vast majority of the materials consisting of Cloud material. Though the player can stand on the clouds, gold will fall right through them.
• Level-Map Display: The Spatial Awareness perk will display a minimalist map highlighting important locations and your position relative to them when the player is standing still.
• Lightning Gun: The Lightning Bolt spell works like this. It shoots a bolt of lightning, and destroys things with an electric explosion. This can also be replicated with a combination of a timer spell and the Explosion of Thunder, where the timer spell will shoot out and then trigger the Explosion at a distance.
• Literally Shattered Lives: A frozen creature will suffer massively increased damage from any physical attacks and crumble apart upon death, but won't bleed if they would have otherwise.
• Lock and Key Puzzle: Some of the biomes can randomly generate puzzles which spawn a reward on completion, typically a chest or wand. The most common design is a vat of some kind with symbols indicating the liquid which must be used to fill it.
• Loophole Abuse: The Holy Mountain has a trigger which causes the area to collapse when the player enters the exit tunnel, deactivating the ability to edit wands within if the player finds their way back. However, if the player can avoid the specific spot that triggers the collapse, they can come back and abuse the feature to their heart's content. For example, a polymorphed player won't trigger it, and teleportation tricks can likewise bypass it. Similarly, the No Fair Cheating mechanic can be avoided with very precise digging, as the trigger boundary doesn't completely encompass the room. Learning how to do this consistently helps immensely when trying to keep up with the increasing difficulty as you press downward, allowing you to revisit shops and edit better wands.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: In Holy Mountain, the selection of perks can be rerolled if desired, which doubles in price for each use.
• MacGuffin: Before fighting the final boss the player receives an item which is used to trigger the Work. The MacGuffin itself has a different name based on how many orbs the player has recovered, but it's internally known as the Sampo, an ancient artifact mentioned in The Kalevala, a Finnish epic. And much like its namesake, completing the Work correctly will bring great fortunes to you.
• Machine Blood: Robotic enemies leak oil when attacked, which can create a significant fire hazard if they also explode on death.
• Made of Indestructium: Brickwork in the temples is extremely resistant to damage and won't break to anything but black holes, matter eater, acids, luminous drill, or tunneling Worms. It is highly advised to not cast those spells while you're in the temple. Steel has a similar strength while Dense Steel and Extremely Dense Rocks are even more resilient. Cursed Rock is the hardest material in-game as it even resists Matter Eater.
• Mad Scientist Laboratory: An alchemist's lab can appear on various levels. Inside will be shelves stocked with flasks of various liquids, a brewing pit filled with lava, and either an Alkemisti or a caster inside as the alchemist. Unfortunately, it's quite prone to having enemies damage it without your input.
• Mage Marksman: Someone in the Power Plant has invented an Experimental Wand with a curious spell named only "???". The wand is pretty clearly a chaingun, and ??? is firing ordinary bullets, complete with Spent Shells Shower.
• Magic Wand: The Noita's arsenal consists of a variety of wands with different properties and capacity for spells.
• Magic Misfire: Sätkymestari inflicts the Twitchy condition which causes the player's wand to fire without their control, while also making the spells cast able to hurt them. It's recommended switching to an item for the condition's duration.
• The Magic Versus Technology War:
  • There's an enemy faction, the Hiisi, made up of strange humanoids with guns, jetpacks and robots, who are just as aggressive towards monsters as they are towards you.
  • According to the translated runes/glyphs Magic and Nature were born from the eggs of a loon, Magic wants to give a soul to the creations of Nature (animals and substances), breaking the laws of Nature. Finally, in the last egg Technology was born, giving the creatures of Nature the ability to use devices and machines. In other words, the game is a conflict between the Monsters (representing Nature), the Noita (representing Magic) and the Hiisi (representing Technology).
• Mêlée à Trois: Hiisi enemies and monster enemies hate each other, and they often fight.
• Melee Disarming: Enemies which pick up wands can be disarmed with a kick. This is especially helpful against the Kummitus, which has no natural attack.
• Mind over Matter: The Telekinetic Kick perk replaces your kick with a telekinetic power that allows you to pull objects to you from a distance, and push them away with the same force.
• Minus World:
  • If you dig below the bottom of the game, you'll find one unusual "hell" version of the final level; if you dig further, you'll find repeats of the game's biomes, but increasingly glitchy and with steadily-increasing system instability until the game crashes. The same can be found directly above the mountain itself.
  • Digging through the wall on either side of the world leads to the Parallel Worlds, mirrors of the original world but with significantly increased glitches in terrain generation. Going further will lead to even more Parallels, again with increasing system instability as you move further from the main world.
• Midas Touch: The Draught of Midas turns any solid material it touches to gold. There's also the Touch of Gold spell, which converts any material in its area of effect into gold, including the player. When you complete The Work and beat the game via the normal method, the entire world turns to gold... including you, which kills you unless you have at least 5 Orbs of True Knowledge or have the Saving Grace perk, in which case the effect will be an HP to One.
• Molotov Cocktail: Tulihiisi throw a flask of Liquid Fire at enemies, although your inventory will refer to it as Cocktail. The Alkemisti can also manage this by throwing a flask of Lava or, if there's a fire source, Whiskey or Oil. Using any of the above flasks, the Noita can get the same effect.
• Money Multiplier: Enemies drop double nuggets if they are killed by a "Trick Kill", which generally speaking is defined as another enemy or anything classed as environmental damage, with some exceptions. This includes any environmental damage created as a side effect of wands, such as acid left behind by a spell. Physical objects kicked or thrown by the player similarly count, though Telekinetic Kick attacks do not. There are perks that increase amounts of gold nuggets from enemies killed in this fashion.
• Money Spider: Almost enemies drop gold when slain, be they wild animals, magical monsters or robots. There are a few exceptions, such as monsters summoned from hives.
• Mook Maker: Certain enemies such as Toimari will spawn a set number of lesser enemies as they take damage, while others such as Suurlepakko constantly spawn weaker enemies as a form of attack. There are also hives which will constantly spawn new enemies unless destroyed.
• More Dakka:
  • Wands with low Cast Delay or/and Recharge Time stat can cast spells very fast, so you can shoot projectiles rapidly. Although casting spells fast tends to consume your Mana quickly, it can be mitigated by using spells with low Mana cost like Spark Bolt. The player can turn almost any wand into such a wand by stacking recharge and charge delay reductions (Chainsaws, for example), assuming the wand has the slots for it.
  • Wands with Always Cast projectile or bomb spells can be paired with the Chainsaw. The Chainsaw has low mana cost and while active it will constantly trigger the Always Cast spell, causing such absurdities as spawning dozens of bombs in seconds.
  • Combining a Mist spell with a Personal Fireball Thrower will cause the Mist to shoot off sixty volleys of fireballs every second.
• Multi-Directional Barrage:
  • With the Formation Hexagon multicast spell, you can fire projectiles in six directions. You can use two or more Formation Hexagon spells to fire projectiles in even more directions, but you will need wands with a very high Capacity stat.
  • The Personal Fireball Thrower will shoot off multiple fireballs when the effect triggers.
  • The Liekkiö and Jäätiö (flying skulls) fire off multi-direction barrages when far from their target.
• Multiple Endings: Depending on where you place the MacGuffin at the end of the game and how many hidden orbs you've collected, you will receive a different ending reward.
  • The Greed Ending: Completing the Work at the Hell altar turns the entire world into gold... yourself included.
  • The Toxic Ending: Completing the Work at the sky altar with too few (less than five) or too many (more than eleven) Orbs turns the entire world into toxic gold, which kills you without protective perks (and leaves you stuck otherwise). In successive New Game Plus runs, these numbers are adjusted based on how many iterations the player has gone through.
  • The Pure Ending: Completing the Work at the sky altar with the 11 main world Orbs turns the entire world into gold and gives the player infinite money. Since there's nothing to do after this, your only choice is to kill yourself.
  • The Peaceful Ending: Completing the Work at the sky altar with 33 Orbs (only possible in New Game Plus) regenerates the world and turns all enemies peaceful. A variant of this ending, the Amulet of Yendor, requires an exceedingly rare 34th Orb and gives the player infinite health and immunity to virtually all forms of damage. Both endings reward a necklace, with a shiny red jewel for the latter.
• Mundane Utility:
  • The Telekinetic Kick power is normally used to hurl objects at enemies, but is also very handy for grabbing gold nuggets from a distance or carrying items that you can't normally pick up.
  • The Draught of Midas can grant effectively unlimited gold by converting anything non-living to gold dust. This ability also means it can be used for digging outside the levels and through the hardest materials in the game.
  • Every spell has a hidden Digging rating which determines what materials it can destroy as a digging tool. A fair portion of the game will be spent devising more efficient methods of digging.
  • Wand Refresh forces a wand to reset regardless of any spells placed after it, a utility meant to aid in the use of certain Greek letter spells by sectioning off spells you intend to call on with the Greek letter while keeping them from interacting with the wand otherwise. This can also be used to turn a large capacity wand into storage for spells you want but don't have inventory space to carry without rendering it useless.
• Mushroom Samba: Consuming enough Fungus, Fungus liquid, Toads, or Glue causes the screen to begin flashing in psychedelic colors while trippy music starts playing.
• Mystery Cult: Based on the tablets, the Noita's order functions as this to protect the secrets of their alchemy.
• Nature vs. Technology: The Hiisi is a faction of monsters that wield guns, jetpacks and explosives, they are just as aggressive to the Noita as they are aggressive to the rest of the monsters. According to the translated runes/glyphs Nature, Magic, and Technology were all three born from the eggs of a cosmic loon, and they are in constant conflict.
• Necessary Drawback: Repelling Cape is a useful skill as it causes stains to fall off quickly, reducing damage from materials like Toxic Sludge and Poison. This in turn synergizes with perks like Invisibility and Stainless Armor. However, Repelling reduces the stain time of all liquids, even beneficial ones like Ambrosia.
• New Game Plus:
  • If the player collects enough Orbs but not all of them (5-10) and completes the game correctly, it allows the player to transfer their character for a New Game+. A new world is generated with a significantly altered layout and more difficult enemies. This process can be repeated, each time adding an additional + to the game mode, with each iteration requiring more Orbs, eventually reaching the cap at +28.
  • Completing the game unlocks Nightmare mode. Enemies do more damage, attack faster, and have significantly more health. Some levels are also merged such that there is no temple between them, meaning there are less opportunities to heal, choose perks, and edit wands. However, the player also starts the game with several free perks.
• Nigh-Invulnerability:
  • The Stevari and their bigger brothers the Skoude, due to their extremely tough shields.
  • The Noita can become this in extremely long runs by stacking Immunity and resistance perks, to the point that some "god runs" are near impossible to end because nothing can hurt the character.
  • Completing the Amulet of Yendor ending grants the player infinite health, protection against all damage, and immunity to polymorph. The only way a player can die at this point is by getting a debuff that renders them temporarily vulnerable to Polymorph.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Averted as almost all projectiles are subject to gravity. Slower and heavier projectiles tend to have much more notable arcs than the faster, smaller projectiles.
• No Fair Cheating:
  • While the Holy Mountain areas between levels are made of a stone that resists casual explosions and digging, it's possible to burn through it with acid or various matter-eating spells. Doing so lets you travel easily back and forth between levels (rather than one way, as intended) and allows you to go back to alter your wands whenever you want; however, it also causes the gods to send a Stevari, a powerful Lich-like avatar of death to punish you for your sacrilege. If you kill three Stevarit inside the Holy Mountains, the Gods will be even more pissed and send a powerful Skoude to stop you.
  • Chaotic Polymorphine can give the player several useful forms such as the Worm, which can be used to burrow between levels and into the Minus Worlds. To prevent players constantly using Polymorphine to get desired forms, after 85 transformations the Noita risks being trapped in the transformation.
  • The game's ending is based on the number of Orbs of True Knowledge the player has acquired during the run. Most are located in hard-to-reach locations so a player might be tempted to take the easier ones from the Minus Worlds. However, these come with Cursed Health Pickups that damage the player while also giving the typical health boost.
  • As a general response to players exploiting the Minus Worlds to gather extra perks, Cursed Rock was added to the wall between the worlds. Not only is the rock the hardest material in the game, touching it causes massive damage and even hovering in areas where it was mined out still causes significant damage. Combined with boss clones on the surface, the Parallel Worlds are significantly harder to farm.
• No-Sell:
  • Immunity perks allow the player to completely ignore certain types of damage, such as Melee, Electrical, and Explosion.
  • The Fire, Lightning, and Water Stones all provide complete protection against their various elemental dangers (burning, shocking, drowning) when held, though the latter only works if you weren't already drowning. The Water Stone also notably displaces all other stains with water, assuming you aren't presently submerged in such a substance.
  • Ambrosia grants complete resistance to all damage for the duration of the stain. To prevent the player from abusing it, it's one of the few liquids that won't grant the effect when consumed.
  • Some enemies resist damage from certain types of attacks. For example, fiery enemies won't get burned by fire-based attacks, thunder mages won't get electrocuted, and so on. Syväolento is the most extreme, being immune to nearly every type of damage and highly resistant to the rest.
• Not Completely Useless: The Kuulokivi (Music Stone) is an item whose only apparent use is to play the background music of a biome when held. However, it also has a powerful gravitational pull on the different Sun variants, making it one of only two items capable of moving them.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Throughout its Early Access period, updates included fixes to counter potential exploits. Notably, several of these patches implicitly endorse the exploit by only making it more dangerous without fixing the root cause.
  • The East and West Worlds were difficult to reach initially only due to the thickness of the separating walls which made plundering them for additional perks and wands a default strategy. To counter this, a large section of Cursed Rock was added to the wall between worlds which will quickly kill unprepared players. Additionally, Orbs in the alternate worlds were also modified with Cursed Health Pickups that damage the player rather than boosting their health, though a careful player can collect the former without touching the latter.
    • Later updates went even further, adding clones of the main world's mini-bosses to the surface and hidden in the barrier rock walls.
  • Chaotic Polymorphine:
    • Players could use the potion repeatedly to transform into Worms, allowing them to burrow through unbreakable stone walls to reach Gold, later levels, or the alternate worlds. To prevent abuse the potion was modified such that after 85 transformations the player runs a risk of being permanently transformed.
    • While transformed players had unlimited flight which was used to access difficult-to-reach locations such as Gold. This was modified so players would have limited flight, even if the transformed creature has unlimited flight.
  • The Pyramid originally contained three mid-game quality wands which could be reached while avoiding any enemies. These wands were removed and replaced with a mini-boss which drops a wand.
  • The Satiation mechanic added in the Feast update was obviously meant as a counter to players being able to do silly things like drink the Dark Cave or Lake empty. The Iron Stomach perk allows the player to bypass that problem.
  • The Nullifying Altar can be exploited with Polymorphine to duplicate a player's perks. A patch released shortly after the exploit's discovery spawns a hostile Stevari or Skoude if a player is polymorphed at the altar, making this more difficult to pull off.
  • The Matosade spell summons nine giant worms. To an enterprising player, that means nine extra health pickups. This was patched so the spawned worms don't drop extra health, unless Add Trigger is used to modify the spell.
• Oculothorax: There are several floating eye monsters.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: The Noita
• Optional Boss: Every boss except the final one is optional and finding them takes some exploring. Defeating one typically rewards a wand, some spells, and a health boost.
  • At the far right of the Underground Jungle there is a blocked entrance to the Dragon Cave which contains a single massive egg. Breaking the egg releases Suomuhauki, a giant worm boss who also breathes fire.
  • Kolmisilmän Koipi can be found in the optional Pyramid zone. It was originally summoned in the desert by filling a skull with water, but the boss tended to flee combat in the open area, so it was relocated. He summons adds to attack and has a protective shell.
  • The Gate Guardian breaks into four mini-bosses when activated by throwing three eggs at its inert form in the Temple of the Art. They emit a damaging aura and will attempt to reach the player, burrowing through ground as needed.
  • Mestarien mestari is located far to the east of the Temple. It's a three-phase fight, starting as a ranged fight before becoming a melee fight. The boss is surrounded by orbs which either grant it invincibility or reflect damage.
  • Ylialkemisti is at the far end of the Ancient Laboratory beyond the Dark Cave. It summons spectral wands that fire massive blasts and has a shield that reflects all attacks back at the player.
• Orbiting Particle Shield: The Magic Guard spells create an orbiting group of magic orbs that reflect attacks. Unlike the regular shields, this has to be cast to activate it and doesn't refresh on its own.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Vampirism is a perk which allows the Noita to consume blood puddles and flasks to slowly regenerate their health, and the usual downsides (weakness to light, et cetera) are absent.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Enemies will bleed slightly when hit, but a critical hit will cause them to spray high pressure streams of their blood analogue. Long fights can potentially create more blood than could realistically fit in their body. Taking the More Blood perk makes enemies bleed even more. In addition, you may find pools of blood lying around the caverns.
• Overflow Error:
  • Repelling Cape causes stains to fall off faster, but if stacked ten times it will glitch and cause stains to never fall off.
  • Gold caps at ~2.1 billion. Surpassing that value makes your gold infinite, though still mechanically capped at that value when checked against for purchases and spells.
  • Perk rerolls double in cost every time you take one. This is tracked both on the individual machine and on the world — visiting a new machine will set its starting value, and it'll stay there until you actually use it, even if you use other machines in the meantime. By visiting several Parallel Worlds' worth of machines to lock them all in at a low starter price, it's possible to overflow the world value, causing future reroll machines to start at a negative value, making them essentially give out several hundred rerolls for free.
  • Spells with infinite lifetimes can be created via an underflow error. Every projectile has a variable lifetime measured in the numbers of frames it will exist, which can be increased or decreased with various modifiers. By combining the right set of modifiers and projectile, it is possible to create a spell with a -1 frame lifetime which the game treats as infinite. This error is very particular however, as a lifetime of -2 or less will be treated as having a lifetime of 0. Doing so nets an achievement.
• Oxygen Meter: Getting the Noita's head surrounded by any liquid, solid, or gas causes an oxygen meter to appear. If it runs out, the Noita takes ticking damage. The Breathless perk removes the meter.
• Pacifist Run: Difficult but possible; each level will award you with a bonus chest at the end if you make it through it without killing any monsters. Completing the entire game without killing anything except the final boss (which is needed to open the portal to the end of the game) is a valid "challenge run" and will spawn an additional gold statue in the Work. There is also a way to reach the Work without killing the boss, but it's going to require a lot of searching.
• Permanently Missable Content: The Forgotten does not spawn in New Game+, which means there is no way to get the Sun Seed. This renders the Sun Quest inaccessible once New Game+ is activated unless the player brings the item with them.
• Philosopher's Stone: Alchemical Precursor, while not a stone, serves this role, being the ultimate goal of the game's alchemy system and allowing you to both heal your wounds and convert materials to gold. The stone itself is also one of the possible names for the MacGuffin at the end of a playthrough, depending on how many orbs you've collected (eleven, to be precise).
• Pinball Projectile: Some projectiles will bounce around for a brief period before dispersing. The "Bouncing Spells" perk will turn all projectiles from your wands bouncy. A similar effect can be achieved by linking multiple "with Trigger" spells such that each time a spell hits a surface it triggers another spell which will do the same thing.
• Plasma Cannon: Plasma beams are created by several spells and traps in certain biomes. They appear as stationary beams of light emitting from a fixed point; anything which touches them will take a large amount of damage for every frame they're in contact. The spells are highly effective against enemies and mini-bosses and can even be used for digging through most terrain, but they will damage the player just as easily making them a risky choice.
• Pooled Funds: It is possible to swim in gold, and even drown in it. This is difficult to do because you automatically collect gold on contact, but with a large enough supply, the mass of gold can cover you faster than the rate at which it's collected.
• "Pop!" Goes the Human: An unfortunate result of consuming too many things, edible or otherwise, now that the Noita no longer possesses a bottomless stomach or a tolerance for usually-inedible substances, the latter resulting in a vomit indiscretion shot. The game does try to warn you not to eat too much beforehand by commenting on your character feeling uncomfortably full and beginning to take damage by choking on their food, but continuing beyond “bursting at the seams” rewards you with yet another stupid death.
• Power Copying: The palauttajamestari can copy spells being used in its vicinity, including yours! This makes them a particularly dangerous foe to go up against with high-powered spells. The mini-boss Sauvojen Tuntija has a similar ability. However, they have some drawbacks; they can only replicate the basic projectile instead of the precise function of your wand, they can't copy any status effects applied to you such as berserk, and spells that are dangerous to the user such as Plasma Beams are just as likely to kill them as you. Using Plasma Cross is a good way to get these enemies to kill themselves for you.
• Power-Up Letdown: There are several perks that may make your life harder.
  • The Boomerang Spells perk makes your spells arc toward you in exchange for increasing their speed and damage. Like the My Reflection item from The Binding of Isaac, this perk reduces the effective range of projectiles, throws off the aim of those that are fast enough to not boomerang back, and makes firing explosive or flaming projectiles much more dangerous because they can and will fly right back into your face and harm you.
    • It can be Not Completely Useless when combined with the Homing Spells perk; it still limits what spells you can use, but when combined with spells that only harm enemies, it will cause them to circle around you and accumulate until an enemy comes within range, at which point they'll dart out and kill them. This becomes an outright gamebreaker when combined with certain aura spells, which can pass through walls and last several minutes, immediately killing any enemy who approaches the entire time with no further effort on your part. The combo can be done more safely by using a boomerang wand upgrade instead, but that increases the mana cost.
  • With the Essence of Earth perk, your body periodically fires bolts of light in 8 directions. The problem is, you will take 1 damage from a bolt's explosion. So you shouldn't stand on the ground when your body fires bolts, or you will receive some damage.
  • The Electricity perk (not to be confused with Electricity Immunity) grants immunity to Lightning effects, but also permanently gives your character a charge that will electrify conductive material (liquids, metal). If you can submerge your foes with certain spell combinations, you become walking death. However, the electricity will also inadvertently activate traps and will cause explosive barrels to detonate after a short while. Given just how many explosive barrels litter the game, this makes navigating much more dangerous. In addition, pouches and flasks submerged in liquids will take damage and break before they can be picked up. It also makes exploiting the healing enemies in the Hiisi base harder, as you're liable to accidentally kill them unless you're extremely careful.
  • The Lukki Mutation generates additional limbs which attack anything near the Noita, which unfortunately includes explosive barrels. While it technically grants limitless levitation, the catch is that at least one of the limbs must be touching a solid surface, restricting the Noita's range of movement significantly.
  • Freezing Aura freezes any liquid around the Noita, including lava, making it an ideal perk if the player intends to enter Hell. However the liquid always freezes in place, more often than not trapping the Noita in a mesh of ice pixels which must be shot to get free.
• Precision-Guided Boomerang:
  • The Boomerang Spells perk causes all projectiles to return to the Noita. This can be exploited with projectiles that don't hurt the caster to surround the Noita with a swarm of spells.
  • Unless they strike and embed in a surface, Giga Disc Projectiles will fly back to the original caster and kill them. Omega Disc Projectiles are even faster at this and are much harder to stop.
• Press X to Die:
  • Thanks to diverse spells and its effects, the game sometimes generates wands that are very dangerous or outright suicidal to use, like ones that generate a fiery explosion in front of your face, or shoot nukes in six different directions. They are not entirely useless because you can take spells from the wands and use them for creating safer wands.
  • Cessation is a hidden spell which temporarily removes the player character from the game world. However, adding the wrong spell modifier will make the removal permanent without actually causing a game over.
• Pun: Mixing a Healing Potion with lava will produce a gas which restores your HP. It's called Healium.
• Quad Damage: Berserkium can empower characters and increase the effectiveness of their attacks. If you are under its effect, your spells deal much more damage, and the radius of explosions will be increased.
• Random Effect Spell: Several variants with different levels of control. Most are a very good way to accidentally suicide.
  • Random Damage is perhaps the tamest version, simply adding a positive or negative damage modifier to each shot. The damage cannot be reduced below one, and statistically it is more likely than not to generate a positive average over time, especially in rapid-fire, low-damage wands.
  • Copy Random Spell, and its variants Copy Random Spell Thrice and Copy Three Random Spells, will cast a random spell from the currently equipped wand.
  • Zeta, which copies a random spell from another wand in your inventory. On the plus side, it's the cheapest of the copy spells and its randomness is easy to manage, if not as practical as the others.
  • Random Projectile Spell and Random Static Projectile Spell will cast a random spell of the corresponding type.
  • Random Modifier Spell will modify the next spell cast in a wide variety of unpredictable ways, potentially sending it right back in your face or making four nukes orbit the spell. It can also add...
  • Chaotic Transmutation turns any material into another, random material.
  • Chaos Magic, which turns the spell into a trigger that will cast a limited selection of random different spells on expiration. As might be expected, this includes nukes.
  • And then there is simply Random Spell, which is completely unrestricted and unpredictable wild magic.
• Randomly Generated Levels: While the layout of zones is constant across worlds, each seed generates a unique version of those zones.
• Randomly Generated Loot:
  • Wands in this game are randomly generated. Each wand type has a range of stats that it can spawn with, with more variation the further down you go. The selection of spells is also randomized. You can take spells from wands and install them into other wands to achieve the desired effects.
  • Chests contain a random assortment of items, ranging from gold to items to spells to live bombs.
• Reality Warper: Getting more than 180 seconds of the Tripping effect allows the Noita to replace one substance throughout the world with a different substance — for example, all lava being replaced with water. This process is mostly random, though the player can influence one of the substances by holding a flask full of it.
• Recoiled Across the Room: Spells with high recoil will push the Noita around. With the Low Gravity perk or a high fire rate it's possible to be thrown clear across the screen by the force of the wand.
• Recoil Boost: Spells with high recoil (Magic Bolt, for example) or a Recoil modifier can be used to turn a wand into a makeshift jetpack, assuming the player can compensate for the mana drain and fire the spell fast enough to outpace gravity.
• Recursive Ammo:
  • Trigger spells cast the following spell in the wand after making contact with an obstacle or an enemy. This is key to safely delivering some of the game's most dangerous spells. Double Trigger spells do the same but cast the next two spells.
  • Similarly, Timer spells cast the following spell in the wand after a set time limit or when they hit an obstacle, whichever happens first. For example, a Luminous Drill with Timer will cast another spell at the end of its extremely short duration, such as another copy of itself.
  • Fireball Thrower causes any projectile to randomly shoot fireballs around it as it flies. Personal Fireball Thrower causes whatever the projectile hits to do so.
  • The various Larpa modifiers will cause projectiles to fire out copies of themselves under certain conditions (traveling upward or downward, on impact, etc).
  • The Orbit modifiers cause every projectile to fire with a group of other projectiles orbiting it. This can range from simple fireballs to deadly sawblades to ridiculously excessive nukes. The Orbit Larpa, truer to the spirit of the trope, casts orbiting copies of the projectile itself.
  • Chain Spell will let a projectile shoot another copy of itself after it expires, up to five times, but decreases the lifetime of the spell as a tradeoff. The Elite Mook Thunder Mage has this attribute attached to its projectiles.
• Red Filter of Doom: Taking a lot of damage in a short period of time will cause your screen to flash red. If your health drops below a certain level, the edges of the screen will be tinted a pulsing red until you heal or die.
• Reduced to Dust:
  • The Ground to Sand modifier causes a projectile to reduce any solid, non-living material within a short radius of the projectile to be converted into powdery sand. This works regardless of the toughness of the material. It's a great digging tool if the limited charges can be bypassed.
  • The Thunder Charge spell (and its equivalent cast by Thunder Mages) causes any material it hits to dissolve into a powder equivalent of itself.
• Required Secondary Powers:
  • Some spells are too dangerous or unwieldy to use as-is and must be paired with a perk or modifier spell. For example, a point blank explosion will damage the Noita but this can be avoided either with the Explosion Immunity perk or a projectile timer that casts the explosion after it has traveled a distance.
  • Some perks also require additional perks to work as expected. For example, Explosion Immunity may prevent direct damage from explosions, but the player can still catch fire or get coated in Toxic Sludge. Similarly, Stainless Armor and Invisibility don't function if the player's robe is stained making Repelling Cape a necessity.
• Sand Worm: The Matot (Worms in Finnish) are monsters which can burrow through any substance, leaving behind tunnels. They come in various sizes and small ones can even be hatched from eggs the player finds. they diverge from the small Pikkumato, to the massive Jättimato. And the biggest of them all, the Helvetinmato, lives in Hell.
• Schizo Tech: At first the game seems to have a fairly standard medieval fantasy environment with the most high-tech thing in the first area being gunpowder. Then you start getting Hiisi with shotguns, and after that sentry robots with lasers...
• Schmuck Bait:
  • Some spells transmute anything in their radius into things like water... including you. They specifically warn you of the latter point in their description, but nothing stops you from casting them point-blank anyway, which invariably kills you.
  • The Giga Disc Projectile is noted to have a "curious flight path". Said flight path is a boomerang right back to the caster. The Omega Disc Projectile straight up targets you specifically.
  • Crossing the lava lake on the right side of the Mines (simple with a water flask) leads to a bridge across a chasm and an Orb on the other side. Trying to go back summons Sauvojen Tuntija just slightly offscreen in the chasm, whose polymorphing attack is likely to end the player's run unless they knew it was coming (and sometimes even then).
  • Climbing the tree to the left of the spawn point (which is very easy once you have a basic grasp of levitation) leads you to a Wiggling Egg (which, when thrown, hatches into a hostile worm) and an Eternal Wealth perk. Also known as Curse of Greed, this perk triples all gold drops, but follows you with magic bursts of turning everything into highly-dangerous greed-cursed rock and liquid. Climbing further up, which requires a method of extending flight or a way to make footholds, summons a swarm of acid-spewing Slimeballs to make your return trip mich deadlier without a decent wand.
  • The altar in the Work in Hell has multiple subtle warnings that this is not the place to finish the game. Doing so anyway will kill the player.
  • The End of Everything spell outright warns you NOT to cast it. Doing so spawns several massive explosions, elemental effects that may kill you or drop you into lava, and giant death worms.
• Segmented Serpent: The Worm type enemies use this type of design, requiring the full body to change shape in order to change direction. On death the body tends to break up into the individual segments.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook:
  • The enemies are split into different "factions" which will fight enemies from different factions on meeting. Taking the More Hatred perk increases the fighting by splitting up the existing factions so that formerly friendly enemies now fight one another. Conversely the More Love perk reduces the infighting by merging factions.
  • The "Charm" condition causes an enemy to temporarily become friendly to the Noita and hostile to all other enemies. This is applied either via one of several Charm spells or contact with Pheromone liquid.
• Sentry Gun: The Torjuntalaite is a stationary turret used by the Hiisi.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Abuse of Polymorphine eventually locks the Noita in their polymorphed form permanently.
• Shock and Awe: There are a variety of spells that use lightning damage, from the basic Lightning Bolt to a modifier that creates arcs of electricity between multiple projectiles. Though powerful, these are also dangerous to the user, not only because they are friendly-fire enabled, but because any wand with an electric modifier will electrify pools of liquid after a few seconds. There is also an enemy mage who attacks with giant bolts of lightning.
• Shotguns Are Just Better:
  • Shotgun Hiisi early on and the rarer flying, bomb-throwing version fire a three-pellet shot that does decent damage, especially by the standards of the Mines. It has poor spread over range, but travels fast and can be hard to dodge if you don't spot them or hear them chamber a shot.
  • Triplicate Bolt does the same for the player, firing a three-bullet shot that increases spread and thus lowers accuracy. Modifiers affect all three bullets, however, making it synergize incredibly well. It also causes rather excessive bleeding.
  • Wands can replicate this if they have high spread and fire multiple spells per cast. The effect is reinforced if the spells used have shorter ranges.
• Shout-Out:
  • There is the Holy Bomb spell, and it looks like the Holy Hand Grenade from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. One tablet has the relevant passage from the Book of Armaments.
  • One of the enemies is called Robottikyttä, and it means Robot-Cop in Finnish.
  • The Holy Mountain is also the name of a film which heavily features alchemy.
  • The descriptions for a bottle of rainbow (yes, that is a thing that exists) and the status effect "Rainbow Farts" (gained from consuming Rainbow) are lyrics from Erasure's "Always". Associating that with rainbows also doubles as a reference to Robot Unicorn Attack.
  • The Refreshing Gourd can be thrown at the final boss to transform its spider body into a gourd body, referencing the difficult Eggplant Run from Spelunky.
  • Mimics are chests which will bite the Noita on trying to open it. A rare variant will sprout dozens of human legs and pursue the player, reminiscent of The Luggage.
  • The use of "Larpa" to refer to various forms of Recursive Ammo comes from Liero, in which a "larpa" is a missile that drops bullets as it flies.
  • The Urine liquid can spawn in a unique jar container, causes the "Jarate" stain effect, and on August 24th there is a chance for Snipuhiisi to throw multiple jars of Urine rather than shoot. All of this is in reference to the Jarate ability of Snipers in Team Fortress 2.
  • Mämmi is a material very similar in appearance to Excrement. Eating it gives a player the title "The Loathsome Mämmi Eater".
• Sickly Green Glow: Toxic Sludge and Toxic Rock both have a bright green glow and will damage anything that touches them.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Third and fourth levels take place in ice caves. The frequent lakes of water have slippery ice on top, and any water produced by melting snow or other means will quickly freeze over as well.
• Socketed Equipment: Wands have a variable number of spell slots. Spells can be purchased, found, or swapped in from other wands to create custom spell layouts.
• Solid Clouds: Cloud is a substance encountered in the Cloudscapes and sky version of The Work. The material is technically a gas, but it forms semi-solid platforms that the player and enemies can walk on. Liquids and heavy objects, like gold, will fall through Cloud, often displacing the material. The Gas Fire perk is very dangerous in these zones as it will set the clouds on fire.
• Spent Shells Shower: The "???" spell, found in an "Experimental Wand" that plainly looks like a chaingun, ejects some brass behind the user with every projectile fired.
• Sphere of Destruction: Explosions carve out circular holes in levels provided none of the material is resistant to the explosion and there are no secondary explosions or fires.
• Spider Limbs: The Lukki Mutation perk causes the Noita to sprout multiple spider-like legs that attack anything nearby and increase movement speed. You also have limitless levitation so long as at least one limb is touching a solid surface, but cannot levitate at all if that condition isn't met.
• Spotting the Thread:
  • The Matkija is a mimic that looks identical to a treasure chest, only to bite players that attempt to open it. However, while it looks like a chest, it still interacts with the world like an enemy. If one is in water, the game will mark it with the "wet" status, which gives away the fact that it's a monster; it also floats if the water is sufficiently deep rather than sinking. Also, hovering the cursor over a mimic won't display a "Treasure Chest" identifier.
  • The Pahan Muisto is a rare mimic variant that looks like an Extra Health Max pickup and will attack when the player gets close. The key to spotting one is the white plus icon. Normal pickups have the icon on the right side, while the mimic's is on the left side.
• Spread Shot: Supplementary spells can be used to fire two or more projectiles with a single shot. The most extreme variants fire bolts in all directions around the player. There are also some spells that fire multiple projectiles by default which can in turn be linked to the aforementioned modifiers.
• Starter Equipment: By default the player starts a basic projectile wand, some type of explosive wand, and a single full flask. One of the official mods adds different starting sets.
• Static Stun Gun: Wet creatures struck with Lightning attacks will be temporarily stunned with the traditional white lightning running over their body.
• Status Effects: Aside from catching fire, stains on the Noita's robe apply an effect that can be harmful, beneficial, or a mix. Water will give the Noita limited immunity to fire, toxic sludge causes ticking health damage, slime slows them down, etc. The Noita can suffer multiple effects depending on how much of each stain they have as new stains displace old ones.
• Story Breadcrumbs: At first glance the game has no story. However, there are tablets hidden around the world which give details on the world and the player's motivation. There are also carved runes on walls in some locations which give additional details, such as the one above the final boss which explains the esoteric opening cinematic.
• Stuff Blowing Up: A good piece of advice in this game is that if you see something you can interact with, it can probably explode. Throughout the caverns there are massive pools of flammable liquids, explosive containers, piles of gunpowder, and more. With the right spells and positioning you can blow surprisingly huge chunks out of the levels.
• Summon Magic: Spells to summon monsters loyal to the Noita exist.
• Superboss:
  • Sauvojen Tuntija appears when players collect the Orb east of the lava sea and try to leave. While its health is relatively low, its default attack is a homing projectile that will polymorph the player into a sheep with a second attack while transformed being lethal. It also retaliates against any attack by casting the spells back at the player.
  • Unohdettu is ordinarily invisible and can only be seen when an Evil Eye is nearby. It fires off powerful explosion spells and when in contact does high curse damage. The boss arena includes an object that spawns illusions which can hurt the player but can't die and two crystals which heal the boss while active.
  • Syväolento is hidden deep in the Lake and will fire powerful projectiles when approached. It's larger than the game screen and immune to most types of damage unless weakened with curses.
  • Limatoukka is even more massive, found by digging deep beneath the eastern map into a buried skull. Like all worms, it deals major damage with its bite but it also fires homing projectiles from its body as it moves. Killing it is notable for being the only way to acquire a Tier 10 wand.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: The Breathless perk removes the Noita's oxygen meter while swimming or in any other situation that would cause them to suffocate, as well as granting increased mobility in fluids. This makes simply flooding the levels and drowning all the monsters a viable tactic.
• Super-Persistent Predator:
  • Toothy spiders in the Lukki Lair are relentless once they spot you and can dig through everything. Pray you have a freezing or slicing spell to kill them, as they heal from everything else.
  • The final boss will not stop pursuing the Noita. Whether it's through caves of solid rock, deep water, or the depths of the lava lake, it will continue to follow and attack.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: A Mimic may sometimes spawn next to a wooden sign that reads "Not a mimic".
• Swarm of Rats: The Plague Rats perk will cause any enemy slain near the Noita to spawn Plague Rats loyal to the Noita.
• Story And Gameplay Integration: Slain enemies drop gold which can be spent in shops to buy wands and spells. As the game goes on, it gradually becomes apparent that gold is very important to the lore and storyline. The Noita's end goal is to complete The Work to obtain unlimited gold.
• Swap Teleportation: The Master of Swapping, as the name suggests, fires teleport bolts that swap your position with it. The effect also triggers automatically if you damage it. It's a nuisance on its own, but can lead to an unwelcome surprise if it swaps you into a group of enemies. It can become really dangerous with persistent or explosive projectiles that are capable of damaging you, leading to you accidentally killing yourself if you're not careful.
• Taken for Granite: The Petrify modifier causes projectiles to turn an enemy to stone if their health drops below 40%, but enemies killed in this fashion drop nothing.
• Technicolor Toxin: Toxic Sludge and Acid are both bright neon greens (the latter somewhat darker) while Poison is a glowing purple.
• Teleport Spam:
  • Teleportitis causes the player to teleport a random distance and direction any time they take damage. This includes damage over time effects, which can result in a player teleporting uncontrollably every second.
  • Teleportitis Dodge can trigger a short-ranged evasive teleport every few seconds when an enemy projectile gets too close.
  • A mage enemy with green robe (Siirtäjämestari) will constantly teleport. Their attacks also cause their targets to randomly teleport.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • Spells like the Nuke or Holy Bomb make quite large and powerful explosions, but you can combine it with Berserkium (increases the explosion radius by 2) or even Glass Cannon perk (increases the explosion radius by 5). We hope your game won't crash!
  • Explosive spells are usually limited to a set number unless refreshed in the Holy Mountain. However it is possible to get wands that will always cast an explosive spell meaning the player has a limitless number of bombs. Paired with a low-cost, fast-casting spell such as Chainsaw these wands can create dozens of bombs within seconds.
• This Is a Drill: Digging Bolt and Digging Blast are drill-type spells that are intended for mining. They can dig through all but the hardest materials, have a radius as large as the Noita, and reduce recharge time (but slightly increase cast time, unlike the Chainsaw). They even use drills as their icons. They make poor weapons compared to the Chainsaw, and Digging Blast cannot damage enemies despite having damage listed in its stats.
• Translation Convention: When approaching a tablet, its text will be displayed written with the in-game language. However, the runes will fade away to be replaced with a translated copy of the text in a few seconds.
• Transmutation:
  • There are various modifiers which allow projectiles to convert one substance to another. For example, the most practical of these is "Lava to Blood", turning one of the most dangerous substances into something nearly as harmless as water.
  • The "Touch of" series of spells convert all material in their area of effect into the specified material... yourself included, since it isn't a projectile unless modified.
  • Fungal shifts will permanently transmute all of a certain element in the world into something else, even if more of that element is created after the shift. This can range from quite helpful to run-ending, with only a modicum of control based on if you are holding certain elements at the time.
  • The ultimate goal of the game is learning how to turn the entire mountain into gold, though this can go wrong if you don't do so properly.
• Unrealistic Black Hole: The basic Black Hole spell creates a slow moving black hole that can burrow through any substance before dispersing, but won't hurt enemies. The Giga variant creates a larger, stationary singularity which will suck anything nearby into it, destroying anything that reaches its core. The Omega variant is even larger and more destructive.
• Variable Mix: The music becomes more intense when you are fighting against stronger enemies. There are three intensity variations in every area. The low-intensity consists of ambient music cues, the medium is a subdued theme and the high-intensity version plays during combat with multiple or large enemies. When there has been no action for some time, the music stops altogether.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: There are several animals such as sheep and deer which are completely incapable of hurting the player and thus there is no reason to kill them. Doing so and then eating the "Meat of an Innocent Creature" they leave behind causes the player to temporarily attract Worms.
• Warp Whistle:
  • Inside the Giant Tree is a secret room containing a collection of notes and an ocarina-style wand to play them. Playing tunes written on the background in various locations will summon portals while playing incorrect tunes can summon monsters.
  • Filling the Desert skull with water opens a portal to the Lake island; similarly, filling the cavern beneath the island wicker man with blood opens a portal to the skull.
• Wingdinglish: The runic alphabet is a simple substitution of runes for English letters, allowing easy translation.
• Wizard Needs Food Badly: The player never needs to eat or drink anything unless they take the "Eat Your Vegetables" perk. This perk rewards bonus damage with high Satiation but inflicts ticking damage at low Satiation.
• World Tree: To the left of the mine entrance is the Giant Tree with three eggs in its branches. This mirrors a legend in the translated runes where a waterfowl lay three eggs in a tree, from which came Nature, Magic, and Technology.
• Yet Another Stupid Death: The game's simulation engine provides a multitude of ways to kill yourself via your own stupidity. The game is so notorious for this occurring that fans call it getting "Noita'd". Some highlights include:
  • Exploding a bomb next to yourself
  • Exploding a bomb while berserk and forgetting about the increased explosion radius
  • Submerging yourself in oil and using a fire-based wand
  • Holding an electric wand while submerged in water
  • Using the Nuke without explosion immunity
  • Killing an acid enemy at close range.
  • Experimenting with wand building and killing yourself testing your new wand.

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