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 comprised of 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 abandoned mines.
• 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.
  • 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 the various liquids can interact with other materials and each other to create different substances. While most of these are logical in nature (poison + oil = toxic sludge), there are three magical substances which can be created: 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 and Fungal enemies bleed a greenish-yellow and glowing pink liquid, respectively, which both act 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 can consume endless amounts of any liquid without being harmed (although stepping into some will harm them), 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.
  • Now, with the Feast update, the Noita does have a limit to how much they can eat or drink, and overeating will first lead to slowness, then to taking damage over time through choking, then to explosive death. The Noita also reacts realistically to consuming toxic or disgusting substances, suddenly vomiting.
• 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. 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.
• 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.
• Arrows on Fire: Spell modifiers can set projectile spells on fire or cause them to leave a trail of fire behind them.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Giga Disc Projectile is an impressive, heavy-hitting spell, 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.
    • 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 most types of terrain(including Holy Mountain Brickwork!!!) (and thus can't be stopped by it). 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 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 you lose a third of your health and actually healing a reasonable amount requires a lot of blood. And of course many of the enemies don't bleed actual blood, instead bleeding Acid, Lava or slime.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Booby Trap:
  • Some wands 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 ground, cleanses Toxic Sludge pools, 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.
  • Digging Spells are less flashy than Bomb spells or Blackhole spells and take a time to dig, but they have infinite uses. You can gain loads of gold by digging terrain, and escape from fighting against dangerous enemies by digging a new route.
  • Compared to gameplayer impacting perks like Glass Cannon and Teleportitis, many of the perks are relatively tame but useful. Extra Maximum HP From Hearts for example will double the rate at which a player increases their HP bar.
  • Using Breathless and a water-generating wand to flood levels is one of the safest strategies, though relatively slow. Water slows projectiles so they are less likely to hit, freezes lava, cleanses toxic sludge, kills some enemies on contact, and drowns many others. Paired with a perk or 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.
• 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 Worm 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 Cursed Rock, intended to keep players from reaching the Parallel Worlds.
• Brutal Bonus Level: The Tower is a bonus area unlocked after beating the boss, 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. Going around the levels isn't possible as the entire Tower is encased in Cursed Stone. As a reward at the top are three incredibly powerful wands.
• Build Like an Egyptian: The Pyramid is located in the middle of the Desert. It contains end-game mobs, a mini-boss, and an entrace 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.
• Cartoon Bomb: Bomb spell casts a black metal sphere with a wick.
• 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.
• 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, 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.
• Chainsaw Good: The Chainsaw spell. It has quite high DPS and often gibs enemies, but you must get close to them. It's also useful for cutting through wood.
• Checkpoint Starvation:
  • 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, along with its Leggy variant. The rare "Pahan muisto" is a monster that looks like a health boost.
• 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 spells which fire a large, long tentacle from the wand. Aside from attacking they can also draw items such as nuggets to the Noita. The Revenge Tentacles perk will cause a tentacle to attack 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.
• 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.
• 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. Good thing the fight is optional at those stages of the game.
• 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 even further 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 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 which converts matter into gold is fatal without proper care as the player counts as "matter". 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.
• 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.
• 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.
  • The Projectile Repulsion Field Perk will repel any projectile that gets near the Noita.
  • Some enemies have this, most notably the Stevaris and Skoude sent to kill players for damaging the temples.
• Difficult, but Awesome: 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.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • The randomized nature of loot means it's entirely possible to pick up an endgame 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.
  • 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 but it has an incredibly low 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.
• 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.
• 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
• Dungeon Shop: The Holy Mountain areas always have a shop, and you can buy wands or spells with gold in this place. Similar shops have a chance to spawn inside levels as well.
• 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.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: Depending on how far you go, it's possible to make your ending worse by doing more work. Specifically, completing The Work in the proper place with precisely eleven orbs (the normal number possible without visiting parallel worlds) nets you an already esoteric happy ending where the entire world turns to gold, which you now have no use for. But if you collect a few more orbs, without going all the way to 33 - impossible to reach before New Game Plus in any case - you get... an even worse ending, where the world turns into toxic gold; this is also the ending if you collect a mere zero to four orbs, meaning that collecting just some of the parallel world orbs without going all the way makes your ending actively worse.
• 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 come across or acquire Hollow Eggs, which are seemingly useless items, but have A LOT of spell slots on them that can activate when they are broken. While they can be lobbed as make-shift grenades, they are dropped when the Noita is polymorphed which led 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 2x gold nuggets when they were killed by environment.
  • 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 Concentrated Light spell, you can shoot a beam made of light.
• 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:
  • As launched, 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.
  • Zig-Zagged as of the 4/28/2020 update; drinking certain liquids such as oil or slime, or too much of other liquids like alcohol, will give the Noita food poisoning, with the duration increasing as more is consumed. However, the Noita can still consume a wide array of materials and the Iron Stomach perk allows them to consume pretty much anything safely, even lava and oil.
• 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.
• Fantastic Nuke: The "Nuke" spell will cause a extremely large and powerful explosion, and the said explosion destroys any material.
• Fatal Fireworks: Fireworks! is a relatively weak but flashy explosive spell.
• Flame Spewer Obstacle: In Temple of the Art, some of the faces shoot out flames.
• 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.
• 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 actually 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.
• Gas-Cylinder Rocket: Freezing Vapor containers in the Hiisi bases will fly around if damaged before exploding, filling the area with Vapor.
• 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 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:
  • 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 dupliate 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.
• 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.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest: There are only two healing spells in the game and both have limited charges. 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Holiday Mode: 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.
• Hollywood Acid: Acid green, 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.
• 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 and cast eight spells per cast; a wand with Always Cast Nuke; and a wand with negative cast delay. 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.
• 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 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 Laser Sabre spell creates a short-lived laser blade from the wand. It can be modified with other spells, including additional Laser Sabres, to increase its length or lifespan.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 created 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.
• 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).
• Męlée ŕ 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 it is cast at to 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 another enemy or environmental damage. This also includes any environmental damage created as a side effect of wands, such as acid left behind by a spell. There are perks that increase amounts of gold nuggets from enemies, too.
• Money Spider: All enemies drop gold when slain, be they wild animals, magical monsters or robots.
• 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.
    • Pairing one of these wands with three Chainsaws, a multi-cast spell, and a projectile effectively turns the wand into a machine gun.
  • 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 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.
• 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.
  • 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.
  • Wand Refresh can 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:
  • Acquiring enough Orbs and placing the final boss drop on the sky altar 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.
  • 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.
• Nintendo Hard: Like other Roguelike games, Noita is very hard. This game has lots of deadly enemies, and sometimes you die to your own deadly spells if you were not careful. And then there's Nightmare mode which makes it even harder.
• 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, they also 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.
  • Ambrosia grants complete resistance for the duration of the stain.
  • 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.
• 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.
• 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.
  • The Reroll Machines can be "broken" by visiting multiple machines to lock their cost at a low value and then rerolling all of them at that cost. At a certain point, the game is unable to process the ridiculously high reroll value and starts charging only a handful of gold instead. This glitch eventually fixes itself, but only after hundreds of reduced cost rolls.
• 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 its going to need a lot of searching.
• 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 (if 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.
• "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. However, they have some drawbacks; they can't replicate the synergies that make your wand effective, nor can they copy any status effects applied to you such as berserk.
• Power-Up Letdown: There are several perks that may make your life harder.
  • Taking the Boomerang Spells perk makes your spells arc toward you. Like the My Reflection item from The Binding of Isaac, this perk reduces the effective range of projectiles, and firing explosive or flaming projectiles becomes much more dangerous because they would fly 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.
  • Electricity grants immunity to Lightning effects which is important when using those spells. However it can also inadvertently activate traps, electrifies nearby liquids, and will cause explosive barrels to detonate after a short while. Given just how many explosive barrels litter the game, this makes navigating more dangerous.
  • The Lukki Mutation attacks anything near the Noita, which unfortunately includes explosive barrels. It also disables levitation, restricting the Noita's range of movement significantly.
  • Freezing Aura freezes any liquid around the Noita which includes 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. And Toxic Ice causes damage on contact even if the player has Toxic Sludge Immunity.
• Precision-Guided Boomerang:
  • The Boomerang Projectiles 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.
• Quad Damage: Beserkium 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.
  • 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 any wand in your inventory.
  • 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...
  • 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. They have different stats and spells, though you can take spells from wands and install them into other wands.
  • Chests contain a random assortment of items, ranging from gold toitem to spells to live bombs.
• Reality Warper: Tripping while at a Fungal Altar allows the Noita to replace one substance throughout the world with a different substance - for example, all lava being replaced with water.
• 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: High recoil wands, especially with perks and a recoil boosting spell, can be used as an alternative and often faster mode of flight.
• Recursive Ammo:
  • Timer projectiles function as this, travelling a set time before triggering a second spell. Similarly, Trigger spells cast a second spell on impact with an obstacle; Double Trigger spells do the same but cast two spells.
  • Fireball Thrower causes any projectile to randomly shoot fireballs around it as it flies.
  • The various Larpa modifiers will cause projectiles to constantly fire out copies of themselves as they travel.
  • Chain Spell will let a projectile shoot another copy of itself after it expires, up to five times.
• 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.
• 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...
• 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 Less Hatred perk reduces the infighting by merging factions.
• 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.
• Shmuck 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 apparently a boomerang right back to the caster.
  • The altar in the Works 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.
• 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. There is also an enemy mage who attacks with giant bolts of lightning.
• 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.
  • Item description for a bottle of rainbow (yes, that is a thing that exists) is lyrics from Erasure's "Always". Associating that with rainbows also doubles are 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.
• Short-Range Shotgun:
  • The Haulikkohiisi wields a shotgun that fires multiple rounds per shot. These tend to have some spread so the Noita is more likely to take more damage at close range.
  • 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Spotting the Thread:
  • The Matkija is a mimic that looks identical to a treasure chest, and waits for players to get close before going in for the attack. However, 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: Oh good gosh yes. 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. While its health is relatively low, it's 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. Combining this with Faster Swimming makes simply flooding the levels and drowning all the monsters a viable tactic.
• Super-Persistent Predator: 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.
• 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.
• Technicolor Toxin: Toxic Sludge and Acid are both bright neon greens 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 Beserkium (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.
• Translation Convention: When approaching a tablet, its text will be displayed written with the in-game langauge. However, the runes will fade away to be replaced with a translated copy of the text in a few seconds.
• 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-intensiy version plays during combat with multiple or large enemies. When there has been no action for some time, the music stops altogether.
• Unrealistic Blackhole: 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.
• 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.
• 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. 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

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