Summon Tentacle
Summon Tentacle is a spell that calls forth a tentacle from a casting point attached to you or whichever spell triggers it. It has a special interaction with projectile and items if certain modifiers are attached (see Summon Tentacle#Special Interaction interaction below if interested). It is not affected by Homing and will always fire in a straight line.
It will not damage crates or barrels by itself.
Also has a timer variant.
Tips
- Projectile Eater will stop Summon Tentacle from firing at certain angles.
- Casting a tentacle with the Matter Eater modifier will localise the terrain-destroying effect on the casting position for the duration of the effect, allowing you to tunnel through the ground like a worm. This digging effect is even faster (but only reliable when standing still to dig/drop downward) when paired with Projectile Energy Shield.
- Plasma Beam Orbit will damage enemies but not you.
- Tentacle With Timer will normally drop its payload at zero or near-zero velocity; this may cause certain types of projectiles to immediately disappear. Modifying the tentacle with Floating Arc, Anti-Gravity, or Gravity can fire the payload off at a medium to high initial velocity instead. (Floating Arc's velocity modifications are dependent on the caster's position relative to terrain.)
- When in the payload of an Expiration Trigger spell, the tentacle will originate from the caster rather than the trigger projectile, unless the tentacle's lifetime has been modified to be zero or negative or the caster is unknown. The former can be used to near-immediately release a secondary payload at the caster's location by setting the Expiration Trigger's payload to a Tentacle With Timer modified by two Reduce Lifetimes and one Orbiting Arc/Ping-Pong Path, which will normally have a one-frame lifetime. In the latter case, tentacle will be balled up and fly off from the expiration trigger.
- When modified by Auto-Aim, Matter Eater, or orbiting-projectile modifiers such as Orbit Larpa (see wand designs below), the projectile "tip" of the tentacle will be considered to be the location of its "parent" for some purposes. The "parent" can be you if the Tentacle was cast directly or in the payload of an Expiration Trigger projectile, or a projectile that held the tentacle as its payload.
- Tentacle With Timer or Add Expiration Trigger + Tentacle will release its payload from its "parent", rather than the end of the tentacle.
- Arc modifiers such as Electric Arcs will originate from the parent's location.
- Damage Fields will deal damage at the parent's location despite appearing to be elsewhere.
- Projectile Energy Shield has a similar effect as Auto-Aim & co., but places the projectile part underneath the caster or near a parent projectile.
- Upon adding a tentacle to a trigger spell, firing the spell into terrain will not summon a tentacle unless the trigger spell bounces or otherwise remains alive, which can be accomplished, e.g., by adding Bounce, and the tentacle will only remain alive for as long as the parent it was spawned from is alive. If the trigger spell hits an entity that is a physical object (holy mountain statues, explosive canisters etc), a tentacle will be fired off that does damage. Using a timer spell will fire the tentacle from the spell when the timer activates. Using a spell with an expiration trigger will cause the tentacle to be fired from you when the spell expires, Long-Distance Cast, Teleporting Cast, and Warp Cast have a similar reaction, all of which firing the tentacle from you, seemingly having no effect. Despite not appearing to be attached to their parents in terms of position, tentacle wisps will still die when their parents die and have other special interactions due to this parent relationship.
- When a tentacle with positive lifetime is spawned from a trigger or timer projectile hitting the world (but not enemies or projectiles), or a timer reaching its time limit (but not from earlier timer release due to having a shorter lifetime than timer duration), it will add its lifetime to each of its ancestor projectiles. This can convert ancestor projectiles from infinite lifetime (represented with the special value -1) into finite lifetime. It can also help make very long-lived projectiles by placing Tentacle With Timer plus Tentacle in the payload of a piercing trigger, forming a "parasite wisp"[1][2] This can be paired with trigger loops or perfect wisps to continually add lifetime if making a regular wisp is not convenient, or to remove the need for a parasite wisp to hit you or enemies as part of the initial setup.
- Certain projectile modifiers applied to the Tentacle will actually apply effects to its root instead, or be influenced by the root in more complicated ways. These special projectile modifiers include Quantum Split, Larpa spells, Spells to Power, Essence to Power, Nolla, Remove Explosion, Plasma Beam Enhancer, Concentrated Explosion, Remove Bounce, Projectile Area Teleport, Homing (cosmetic), and Accelerative Homing (cosmetic). Orbit Larpa will try to create orbit projectiles based on the root (if it is a projectile) orbiting around the tip of the Tentacle. Essence to Power and Spells to Power apply damage boosts to the tentacle, but apply particle effects to the root; Spells to Power will not convert the root to power and will forbid the root, rather than the damage-boosted Tentacle, from being converted by other instances of Spells to Power, at least when the root is a projectile rather than you; see applications here.
- When modifiers above were added to a trigger spell's payload, modifers will apply effects to the trigger spell instead. Additionally, each time it triggers tentacle with modifiers, it applies modifiers again to the trigger spell.
- Certain projectile modifiers applied to the Tentacle will actually apply effects to or be influenced by its direct parent instead. For example, while Piercing Shot applies its damage modifier and friendly fire to the shot state, its piercing effect is applied to the parent projectile if there is one; e.g., with Spark Bolt With Timer, Piercing Shot, Tentacle, the spark bolt will gain the piercing effect, while the tentacle will have the damage modifications and friendly fire.
- Certain projectile modifiers applied to a Tentacle will also apply to its root and other tentacle "ancestors" while the modified tentacle(s) is/are alive. These modifiers include Critical On Oiled Enemies and similar modifiers[3] and Venomous Curse[4].
- If you enable self damage (with Bloodlust or Piercing) or if an enemy picks up a wand, you can parry Tentacles.
Special Interaction
At certain velocities, a summoned tentacle will noticeably interact with projectiles and dropped objects. This can be achieved with the use of speed multipliers such as speed up, light shot, decelerating shot, or even anti-gravity (explanation further down). The form this interaction takes will differ based on the velocity and lifetime of the spell, but it can be summarised with one term 'velocity injection.'
When the spell first takes place, it triggers an initial generation of the spell's sprites and script. The sprites are generated from the point where Noita's sprite holds the wand, rather than the tip of the wand, this is because the script needs a sprite to keep track of the start point and adjust the spell's sprite accordingly, and changing wands would cause the script to lose track of the attached sprite, this also leads to some buggy behaviour when it is cast from some spells with an expiration trigger, as the start point is either destroyed along with the expired projectile or designated at the caster.
Piercing Shot on the trigger spell, combined with Homing should mitigate this effect, though even without the sprite, the script may still deal damage. So can other ways of releasing trigger payloads without destroying the projectile, such as Add Trigger on naturally piercing projectiles, or firing bouncing trigger projectiles against terrain.
The script then scans the main sprite and hooks it before injecting velocity, generating sprites (terrifying but harmless) trailing behind it. The script does this injection process in two batches, one singular time towards the coordinates of the mouse cursor, and repeatedly towards the casters current position once it reaches its extension limit, which is limited only based on the initial velocity from the start point.
One interesting point to note is that the spells script does not seem to have a velocity limit, but it does have a custom hard coded collision checker max distance between, that can be reached with approximately three of any combination of light shot and decelerating shot, this means that provided this collision check doesn't touch anything, the projectile can go through walls and deliver a payload of modifier effects or if using the timer variant it could even deliver spells. Do note that this collision check requires a deal of precision to hit anything in particular as it is also responsible for registering hits and not just distance.
This leads to the apparent thievery of unrelated items and spell sprites at the position of the main projectile, any speed faster than the resistance applied to an affected projectile or item will result in an injection of noticeable velocity towards you.
Holy Mountain#Stealing spells from the shop
As such, even a single anti-gravity modifier is enough to demonstrate an effect, levitating an item before dropping it back down, and excluding adding a decrease lifetime to expire the tentacle before it reaches its extension point, this is the safest method of using this spell. Or just use a freeze charge light shot combo to decimate anything vulnerable to melee damage while frozen, which is most enemies in Noita.
This effect will differ from wand to wand due to their inherent speed modifiers, so be advised to experiment carefully.
An accurate method of seeing the collision check for precision practice is to use a Black Hole to create a long and straight tunnel, and use a Freeze Charge modifier on the spell.
Modifiers that are confirmed to change the frequency of the collision check are Phasing Arc and Piercing Shot.
Keep note that while the distance can be accurately changed with modifiers, it will also vary between different wands, so a safe or effective distance on one wand may become unsafe or ineffective if you switch the same spells to a better wand.


Advanced Guides
Spells To Power
Unusually, when used with Tentacle With Timer Spells To Power can absorb itself, repeatedly, which can increase damage exponentially. Spells to Power scales with projectile and explosion damage, so the damage modifier can be anything that adds those. Divide by 10 can be replaced with Divide by 4 for less lag. Warning: If this combo has negative damage, spells to power creates an infinite loop that freezes the game. Make sure you add enough damage if you use damage reducing spells like divides.
Do not shoot the enemy directly! Shoot somewhere near the enemy to give Spells To Power time to absorb the damage.

With copy random spells and without divide by spells. Also less lag.

Alternative wand build for less lag and spell storage.

Infinite damage without any Greek letters, add triggers, divide by, but expect a lot of lag. The trigger chain after the rock can be filled with most reasonably non-destructive triggers. Check the Rock#Trigger Duplication section to see some triggers that can be used. Removing triggers from the trigger chain will remove a lot of lag at the cost of damage. Replace the damage modifier as needed. (Works very well even without damage modifiers and no Damage Plus) Summon Missile can be replaced with some other projectiles, for example Auto-Aim with Glowing Lance or Magic Missile. The damage is slightly luck based and might require multiple shots.

Infinite damage and infinite lifetime note spell wand build.

Higher cast speed build. Cast delay and Recharge.Time should be consistent with the build, otherwise the casting speed will be reduced.
WAND

Orbit modifiers
When used with Orbit modifiers, the tentacle will become a "child entity" and always stick to Minä. When Minä dies or is polymorphed, the tentacle expires. Guide To Infinite Lifetime Spells is a good way to use it. Spells to spells can remove the tentacle.

Plasma Beam Orbit
A Plasma Beam Orbit will also not harm you, and can be made into plasma armor

Plasma Tentacles
If you favour a more aggressive playstyle, you can make the tentacles hold balls of plasma as they flail around you. While still being (in comparison to most other uses of plasma) relatively safe, be wary of all the things the tentacles may bring toward you, enrage or otherwise interfere with.
All you need to get started with this effect are Summon Tentacle and Plasma Beam Orbit, but this basic build is a good starting point (any Add Trigger variant works):

This is a great build to incorporate into a travel wand, for example (first trigger must be expiration):

Pollen Feeback Loop Wisp
These builds are capable of continuing to operate when the chunk they are placed in unloads, by abusing the mechanics of the Summon Tentacle spell.

The above wand build simplified by using Inner Spell.

See also: Expert_Guide:_Waypoints#Self-loading_waypoints
Gallery

History
- Apr 8 2024:
- Changed the spawn probabilities for Summon Tentacle on tier 4 from 1 to 0.5, and tier 6 from 1 to 0.8.
- Changed the spawn probabilities for Summon Tentacle with Timer on tier 4 from 0.6 to 0.8, and tier 6 from 0.6 to 0.7.
- Nov 5 2019: Melee damage decreased from 25 to 20.
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- ↑ Wandcrafting video introducing "parasite wisp" tech and coining the phrase, by Nymphs on YouTube.
- ↑ Listing of lifetime-modification behaviors by Noby, Ko0bEy, and Nikita on Discord.
- ↑ Crit on X Tentacle high-damage wand by kaliuresis on Discord
- ↑ Venomous Curse tentacle payload observation by makspll on Reddit