Critical Hits

Critical hits (crits) are a game mechanic that gives a percent chance for a projectile to deal five times its base damage. Minä starts with a 0% chance to perform a critical hit, but this chance can be improved in many ways, including:

• Blood stains ( Bloody) increase the chance of a critical by 5% per projectile in the cast state
• The perks Critical Hit +, Close Call, among others
• The spells Critical Plus, Critical on Wet (Water) Enemies, and similar modifiers
• Many spells affect critical chance, such as Spark Bolt which adds 5%

This mechanic applies to damage of any type, not just Projectile Damage.

Multiple projectiles

When there are multiple projectiles in a single cast, either all of them crit or none of them crit.

E.g. Casting 7 spark bolts at the same time results in 35% chance to crit. If it crits, the wand is accurate, and all 7 spark bolts land then it deals 3 * 5 * 7 = 105 damage. Adding a single damage plus would bring the damage up to (3 + 5) * 5 * 7 = 280 damage

Furthermore, the mana cost is extremely minimal and it should be fairly easy to rapid fire the wand, rendering most enemies completely trivial. Adding short range homing would ensure almost every single projectile lands.

Shuffle

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Spells/Cast

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Damage above 100%

If the chance of a critical hit is increased over 100%, not only will every hit be a critical, but the additional % chance will be added to the critical hit multiplier. Furthermore, for each point of critical chance past 100%, it gains another 5% damage when it crits. For example, 300% crit chance means that it will crit 100% of the time and deal 15 times the damage.

E.g. with 7 Critical Plus modifiers (7×15%=105%), a Magic Arrow (10 base damage, and 5% critical chance) will deal 55 damage on every hit. I.e. (105% chance from Critical Plus + 5% base chance from Magic Arrow itself) × 5 base critical multiplier × 10 base damage.

This can be an efficient way of boosting damage for late-game wand builds.

Critical on Material

The material spells and the trail modifiers can be used to stain enemies. It is not necessary for them to touch the particles of liquid due to a quirk - if a projectile is multicasted with a material spell/trail modifier, only the projectile needs to touch the enemy to stain them. This works even if the liquid has been fungal shifted away.

Critical On spells (water, blood, oil, burning) grant an additional 100% chance to crit per copy of the spell the wand has.

Pairing the two, we can guarantee a critical hit. E.g. This wand has 105% chance to critical hit.

Shuffle

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Spells/Cast

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Critical hit stacking

The critical hit multipliers do add together. In a nutshell, this wand deals 20x damage:

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Spells/Cast

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A detailed explanation is in this video:

Noita's Critical Stacking Mechanic - DunkOrSlam

Resistances

Some enemies are resistant or immune to critical damage, meaning they will take only the base damage of the projectile, plus a fraction (or zero) of the increased damage that would come from a critical hit.

For example, a Sätkymestari has 40% resistance to critical damage. So from the previous example, a Magic Arrow with 7 Critical Plus modifiers will deal 37 damage per hit: 10 base damage + (100-40)% resistance × (55 critical damage - 10 base damage).

Notable examples:

• Sauvojen tuntija and Mestarien mestari are immune to critical damage.
• Ylialkemisti has 80% resistance to critical damage.
• Skoude has 50% resistance to critical damage.
• Minä is immune to critical damage, so you need not worry about receiving a random critical hit from an enemy, although this also means you cannot boost the critical hit chance of a Healing Bolt to heal more.