Expert Guide: Discards from the Hand

The Draw guide lays out how Noita's wand system works like a card game. This guide outlines some additional mechanics that can come into play when cards move from the Hand to the Discard.

Mechanisms for Moving Cards from the Hand to the Discard

There are two ways that cards in the Hand can move to the Discard:

• Normal discardure: a wand cast is completed, and the Hand is moved to the Discard.
• Using Wand Refresh.

Normal Discardure

Spell use reduction, progress update

When spells are cast normally and moved to the Hand, their uses left are not immediately reduced, and they are not immediately added to Progress stats; instead, these changes --- potentially --- occur when they are moved normally from the Hand to the Discard. Specifically, the game will attempt to reduce the uses remaining and add to Progress stats if:

• The spell is a Utility spell or "Other" type spell.
• The spell is any other category of spell, and a Projectile, Static Projectile, or Material spell entered the Hand during the same cast.

The Unlimited Spells perk may prevent uses from being consumed.

One key takeaway from this is that limited-use Projectile Modifiers and Myriad Spell will not have their uses consumed if they are not cast normally alongside Projectile, Static Projectile, or Material spells. Another is that to fill in spell progress entries, one has to cast a spell normally via the Hand.

Elimination of always-cast card copies and (newly) 0-use spells

When a wand casts its Always Cast spell(s), copies of them are added to the Hand. When the Hand is moved to the Discard normally, these copies are completely removed (not discarded) instead. Spells in the hand with 0 uses left are also removed rather than discarded; when this happens, you may need to switch away from and back to the wand for it to work as one might expect with Greek Letter Spells. (Normally, 0-use spells are discarded directly from the Deck rather than added to the Hand, so they stick around on the wand.)

With Wand Refresh

None of the above extra processes occur. See Wand Refresh for details.

Applying Normal Discardure Exceptions for Infinite Projectile Modifier Uses

Projectile modifiers with limited charges can be cast normally via the Hand without reducing charges by avoiding casting Projectile, Static Projectile, or Material spells via normal means in the same cast.

Example 1:

#

Unlimited uses of Matter Eater by pairing with projectiles from non-Projectile-type spells. Requires at least one use left on Matter Eater.

Matter-eating Note:

Shuffle

No

Spells/Cast

1

Tinker

Matter-eating Long-Distance Cast:

Shuffle

No

Spells/Cast

1

Tinker

Example 2:

#

Unlimited uses of Matter Eater by pairing with Projectile-type spells "cast" in a nonstandard way. Requires at least one use left on Matter Eater.

Three matter-eating Slimeballs.

Shuffle

No

Spells/Cast

1

Tinker

Alternating matter-eating and non-matter-eating Slimeballs, one way:

Shuffle

No

Spells/Cast

1

Tinker

Alternating matter-eating and non-matter-eating Slimeballs, another way:

Shuffle

No

Spells/Cast

1

Tinker

Example 3:

#

Unlimited uses of Mana To Damage in trigger payload. Alternates with ordinary Bubble Sparks due to details of Add Trigger's payload search. Requires at least one use left on Mana To Damage.

Shuffle

No

Spells/Cast

1

Tinker

Avoiding Normal Discardure for Infinite Projectile Modifier Uses

Alternatively, certain spells will reproduce the effect of projectile modifiers without adding them to the hand, so they can be unlimited while still casting Projectile, Static Projectile, or Material spells normally alongside.

Add Trigger modifiers on target projectile

The modifiers applied to the target projectile (or when there is no target) by Add Trigger are not added to the Hand, so normal discardure processes do not apply to them. (It also discards the target projectile spell if there is one, but unlike the preceding modifiers, will manually reduce its uses left.)

Example 4:

#

Unlimited uses of Matter Eater on trigger target. Add Trigger checks for nonzero uses left on Matter Eater but does not reduce its uses left, and directly discards it from the Deck.

Shuffle

No

Spells/Cast

1

Tinker

Greek Spells

Greek Spells do not add the spells that they call to the Hand, so the story is similar.

Example 5:

#

Unlimited uses of Matter Eater via two mechanisms. The first cast use Gamma to call Matter Eater and works even if the Matter Eater spell has 0 uses left. The second cast, if there are Matter Eater uses left, will use Gamma to call Slimeball and avoid Matter Eater use reduction via normal Hand discardure exceptions.

Shuffle

No

Spells/Cast

1

Tinker

Note on Copy Random Spell

Copy Random Spell does not add the copied spell to the Hand, but will manually reduce its uses left. So we do not want it to select a limited-use modifier to copy. (See above example for unlimiting uses by making it copy a projectile instead.)