Energy Sphere
Energy Sphere is an early game Projectile spell often found within the Mines. The spherical blue projectiles it creates are long-lived and follow an arcing trajectory, bouncing up to 5 times. Upon their final impact they explode with a weak digging effect, but deal no 
Explosion damage to you or enemies.
The normal variant is a possible starting spell. Damage is split evenly between 5
Projectile and 5
Slice damage, making this somewhat like a Bouncing Burst/Disc Projectile hybrid. Energy Sphere’s damage is partly affected by speed, but this only affects its Projectile damage, and not the Slice damage component.
There is also a Timer variant which is notable for having the longest duration Timer in Noita - 200 frames, or 3.3s. This comes at a significant mana cost increase to 50, making it one of the most expensive Timer spells. Unless you need the long Timer duration, this is unlikely to be a useful spell.
Tips
- This spell is best in the early game due to its average stats, but isn't bad later if modified with extra damage or other effects.
- One of a very short list of spells that inflicts Slice damage while not having Friendly Fire.
- Useful against enemies that have resistance to projectile damage, without the potential for accidental damage to you that spells like Disc Projectile have.
- This spell is very useful for mitigating recoil caused by other spells.
- Similar to how Chainsaw sets Cast Delay to zero, Energy Sphere sets Recoil to 20. Place it after spells that add large amounts of recoil and you can remove all but 20 of it. A single Recoil Damper after that will remove the rest.
- As the spell bounces a little, it can be lobbed around corners.
- With an explosion radius of 2, this spell can be combined with two Explosive Projectile modifiers to produce 325 (player-safe) explosions.
- The Timer version with its much higher mana drain is less suited for the early game due to most wands at that stage being unsuitable for combos. If you need a timer then look for Spark Bolts with that suffix. They are very common.
Speed & Damage
The Projectile damage dealt by some spells, including Energy Sphere, depends on the speed of their projectile. Specifically, base damage is multiplied by the ratio of its Final Speed and Initial Speed, i.e.:
Since all the projectiles that have this effect naturally slow down over their lifetime, the damage they cause reduces over time. If you modify them such that they speed up instead then damage increases - the effect works both ways. You can increase the ratio, and thus bonus, by reducing the initial speed, increasing the final speed, or ideally both.
- Accelerating Shot is ideal for this since it reduces the initial speed, increases speed over the projectile's lifetime, and prevents it from losing speed from moving through the air.
- This modifier provides no acceleration in the first frame of the projectile's life, and so alone it can't save projectiles that spawn with too little initial speed.
- For Bouncing Burst, up to three copies can be used without additional acceleration 650px/s initial speed ×
0.32 × 0.32 × 0.32 = 21px/s, which is above the limit of 5px/s - For Energy Sphere, up to two copies can be used without additional acceleration 400px/s initial speed × 0.32 × 0.32 = 41px/s, which is above the limit of 20px/s
- Heavy Shot also reduces initial speed while providing a hefty damage boost (which is multiplied by the speed damage).
- Rotate Towards Foes is also ideal since it does not change the projectile's speed, only the direction it is moving in.
All the projectiles with this effect also have a minimum velocity below which they die. If you reduce their starting speed too much they may not spawn at all, or only when you point your wand downwards. Gravity or Anti-Gravity are easy fixes for this, providing enough acceleration to avoid early projectile death. The check for low velocity, and the recording of the projectile's Starting Speed, both happen at the end of the first frame of its life, meaning the die on low velocity speed is the lower bound for the bonus. The upper bound is the projectile's Terminal Velocity, which for all those with this effect is 1000px/s.
Since this damage is calculated as a bonus on impact it cannot be absorbed by Spells to Power. You can do it the other way around though, use Spells to Power to add damage from other projectiles to one with speed scaling - the damage absorbed by Spells to Power will be multiplied by the speed bonus at impact.
Removing Recoil
Here we have a (completely reasonable) wand build with 7 copies of Nuke, each of which adds 300 recoil.
Removing that amount of recoil requires 11 copies of Recoil Damper (or one copy and a Divide By 10).
Alternatively, you can remove almost all recoil using just one copy of Energy Sphere.
The remaining recoil can be removed with Recoil Damper, but only if it is placed after Energy Sphere.
Gallery
- Spells with positive cast delay
- Spells that modify lifetime
- Spells that modify spread
- Spells that modify recoil
- Spells related to projectile damage
- Spells related to slice damage
- Spells that bounce
- Spells tagged with starter
- Spells tagged with speeddamage
- Spells tagged with setlowrecoil
- Spells with Timer
- Spells tagged with timer
- Spell pages with multiple spells
- Spells
- Spells of type Projectile
- Pages with example templates
- Spells with damage scaled by speed