Wands

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Wands are the primary tool and combat utility in Noita. They take up the first four spots of your inventory bar, and can have many different uses and powers depending on the Spells that are in them.

While exploring through the caves in Noita, you can come across new wands on pedestals spread throughout the map, akin to those which can hold potions. Unclaimed wands create a sizeable shining light effect to make them easy to see, even through the unexplored darkness known as the Fog of War, which goes away once the wand has been picked up. Unclaimed Items also shine in the dark, but much more dimly.

Wand examples

Starting Wands

When a new game is started in Noita, you are usually given two wands: One for regular combat, and one for utility spells, usually for digging. The wands contain a random assortment of spells by default, picked from a small pool. Stats on the wands are also picked at random, with the utility wand usually having less Mana Recharge than the regular combat wand, in exchange for faster reloading times.

Note that the Starter Utility Wand has an unnecessary Shuffle stat, which has no effect since the wand can only hold one Spell regardless.

STARTER WAND

Wand handgun.png
Inventory Icon gun shuffle.png Shuffle
No
Inventory Icon gun actions per round.png Spells/Cast
1
Inventory Icon fire rate wait.png Cast delay
(0.15-0.25) s
Inventory Icon gun reload time.png Rechrg. Time
(0.33-0.47) s
Inventory Icon mana max.png Mana max
(80-130)
Inventory Icon mana charge speed.png Mana chg. Spd
(25-40)
Inventory Icon gun capacity.png Capacity
(2-3)
Inventory Icon spread degrees.png Spread
0.00 DEG
Inventory Icon speed multiplier.png Speed
× 1

STARTER BOMB WAND

Wand bomb wand.png
Inventory Icon gun shuffle.png Shuffle
Yes
Inventory Icon gun actions per round.png Spells/Cast
1
Inventory Icon fire rate wait.png Cast delay
(0.05-0.13) s
Inventory Icon gun reload time.png Rechrg. Time
(0.02-0.17) s
Inventory Icon mana max.png Mana max
(80-110)
Inventory Icon mana charge speed.png Mana chg. Spd
(5-20)
Inventory Icon gun capacity.png Capacity
1
Inventory Icon spread degrees.png Spread
0.00 DEG
Inventory Icon speed multiplier.png Speed
× 1

Starter spells

Spark Bolt
Spark Bolt
A weak but enchanting sparkling projectile
Spark Bolt
Bouncing Burst
Bouncing Burst
A very bouncy projectile
Bouncing Burst
Energy Sphere
Energy Sphere
A fast, arcing projectile
Energy Sphere
Spitter Bolt
Spitter Bolt
A short-lived magical bolt
Spitter Bolt

There is a 50% chance for the starting spell to be Spark Bolt, and a 16.7% chance of each of the other options.

There will be 1-3 copies of a set spell placed on the wand, depending on capacity.

Starter bomb spells

Bomb
Bomb
Summons a bomb that destroys ground very efficiently
Bomb
Dynamite
Dynamite
Summons a small explosive
Dynamite
Firebolt
Firebolt
A bouncy, explosive bolt
Firebolt
Magic Missile
Magic Missile
A fiery, explosive projectile
Magic Missile
Unstable Crystal
Unstable Crystal
A crystal that explodes when someone comes nearby
Unstable Crystal

There is a 60% chance for the starting bomb spell to be Bomb, and a 10% chance of each of the other options.

The Daily Run game mode may change the contents of either of both wands; such as turning the bomb wand into a Fireball wand. You will also be given different loadouts if you start with the official class mod enabled.

Unlike with the other starter wand, the bomb wand always carries just one spell.

Strategies & Tips

  • Wand-ordering: Remember to swap the positions of your wands around by dragging and dropping. Place wands in predictable spots on your hotbar to allow for quick use.
    • E.g. You might always keep your: Primary damage in position #1, teleport in #2, digging in #3, and storage in #4.
  • Spare slot(s): Whilst exploring, you will likely find new wands you want to grab. Try to keep an empty slot or more.
  • Mana drain: While tempting, it is usually not desirable (especially with Shuffle wands) to completely fill a wand with spells. Each spell and modifier costs mana, and the stacking mana costs can cause a decent combat wand to become useless in extended fights.
  • Pausing the game: When you click to pick up a wand it completely pauses the game, unlike looking at the Inventory screen. Pausing can give you some time to think.
    • You can throw a wand currently in your inventory onto the ground by drag-and-dropping it out of the inventory menu, throwing it nearer or further depending on where your target-reticle is.
  • Some types of enemies may pick up and use wands.[1] This can be very dangerous, or destructive, or useful - either to yourself or the enemy. For example:
    • If an enemy cannot cast the wand (due to it not having spells, or not having a high enough mana max, or containing only something like All Seeing Eye), then it is possible for the enemy to stand around and fire nothing. However, they may still use their normal attacks even while holding a wand (usable or not).
    • Some enemies have reflection abilities or shields, but can still hurt themselves. You might throw a wand with an Earthquake on it (and then run away!).
  • Charmed Wands: Wands with spells that are dropped in a pool of Pheromone will cause them to come to life and start following you as long as you are stained with the liquid. However, these charmed wands will disappear after a minute, so it is advised to only apply this strategy when a wand is no longer needed, but more firepower is.
    • The wand's entire hitbox must be covered, which might require throwing it into a slightly deeper pool, or digging away underneath it.
    • Empty wands will instead be sold, paying 200 gold per wand tier.
      • Before this feature was introduced, dropping an empty wand without Always Cast spells into a pool of pheromone would result in an infinite amount of wand ghosts spawning, which would subsequently not pick up the wand since it is empty.

Wand editing

Wand editing is one of the main game mechanics of Noita, changing which spells and orderings are used in each wand. Wands can usually only be edited while inside the Holy Mountain.

Click to show content

Wands can be edited elsewhere using the Tinker with Wands Everywhere perk, or while holding the Sauvan Ydin item.

Wand appearance

Wand appearances are usually procedurally-selected.[2] Similar designs may appear between runs, due to containing the same general spells and/or stats. This is primarily seen in the earliest biomes.

There are a few identifiable relationships between a wand's design and its statistics:

  • Gemstone: Non-Shuffle wands have a rhombic core (gemstone) in them.
  • Length: Longer wands usually have a larger Capacity and short wands usually have only a few spell slots.
  • Width: Wider wands usually have a higher cast delay.
  • Tip(s): Wands that have multiple tips will have a Spells/Cast equal to or greater than the number of tips. However some single-tipped wands can be multicasts as well.
  • Glow: Rare wands will have a faint purple glow to them, and an Always Cast spell.

The other two wand properties to affect appearance are recharge time and spread, however there is no clear pattern as to how they affect wand appearance, and can often vary greatly without affecting appearance at all.

Below are some examples:

Some spells, when loaded onto a wand, cause the wand to emit sprites or particles. For more information, see Wand Appearance or individual spell pages.

Wand Statistics

Shuffle

  • Can be Yes or No.
  • If the wand is Shuffle, the wand will go through the spells assigned to it in random order, as if the spells were randomly shuffled on every recharge.
  • Each modifier or multi-cast is treated by a shuffle wand as a valid starting point for combos within a recharge cycle. ex. a Double Cast and two individual spells will result in two single spell casts and a double spell cast, at random, within a single recharge window. Similarly a fire trail and single projectile spell will fire both a fire trail and a regular trail spell within a single recharge cycle.
  • Shuffle wands respect the queue, just not the order within a single recharge cycle. For example a wand with 5 magic missile spells will use one charge from each magic missile spell until it has used one charge from all 5 spells, then it will recharge before randomizing its cast order again and repeating this pattern.
  • If the wand has Formations, Modifiers, Triggers, or Timers, the structure of your custom spell may not work properly due to the nature of Shuffle. The wand may select a spell ahead of your modifiers, bypassing it completely and casting the basic form of the spell. If it hits a modifier though, it will apply it to the next chosen spell. If a modifier is followed by another modifier, both modifiers apply to the next chosen spell. This repeats until it hits a valid spell, wrapping back to it’s first chosen spell if no spells are left to choose from. This can lead to shuffle wands varying slightly in the amount of projectiles shot per burst.
  • Shuffle wands typically have better stats to compensate for how they restrict and impair spell setup. You can improve consistency by adding multiple copies of the same or similar spell.
  • Shuffle can be useful for rapid-fire low-mana spells, if you have fewer spells available in inventory, or for creating variable distance casting with trigger and timer spells.
  • Shuffle is generally considered inferior to No-Shuffle, especially for limited quantity, high mana, and dangerously powerful spells.

Spells/Cast

  • An integer number representing how many different spells are cast every time you fire the wand.
  • It essentially acts as the Burst spell modifiers, as if they are applied before each of your spells. (Spells/Cast will still skip over what has been cast already; you will not fire every possible permutation.)
  • When using a spell with trigger on a wand with 2 or more spells/cast, the trigger will reserve the spells connected to it (for example: a sparkbolt with trigger and a lightning bolt next to each other. In this case, the wand will consider this combination a single cast).

Cast Delay

  • A decimal number, measured in seconds. How long it takes to cast the next spell in the wand queue; a cool down before the next spell in the wand's inventory is cast.
  • Usually shorter than Recharge time; loading multiple identical spells will cast faster if the cast delay is shorter than the Recharge time.
  • Each individual spell in a multi-cast group will be summed together to determine the cast delay.
  • Spells packaged inside a trigger or timer are ignored for calculating cast delay.
  • Cast delay occurs simultaneously with recharge time. At the end of a wand, if the recharge time is low but the cast delay is high, the cast delay will have to be waited out before the wand can be cast again. Similarly, if the cast delay is low and the recharge time is high, the recharge time must be waited out. However, they don't add to each other; a wand with 0.5s cast delay and 0.5s recharge time will only be waiting 0.5s to recharge, during which the cast delay will also tick down on its own.

Recharge Time

  • A decimal number, measured in seconds. When the spell queue reaches the end, the wand must recharge for this long in seconds, refreshing the spell queue. It's like a cool-down effect for the whole wand.
  • Recharge time is cumulatively affected by any spells that add or remove recharge time as they are cast, but the cooldown is only triggered after all spells in the wand have been cast.
  • Hot-swapping the equipped wand does not cancel a recharge once triggered, but it will instantly refresh the spell queue if not recharging.
  • A low recharge time is desirable for ongoing combat, and can be lowered using some spells like Chainsaw or Luminous Drill.
  • Recharge time can be avoided using some techniques, see Single cast and instant recharge trick.
  • A higher recharge time can be used to prevent repeat casting of powerful spells or long duration spells, e.g. Bomb, Rain Cloud.

Mana max

  • An integer. This is how much mana the wand holds when full. The relative current mana of your held wand is shown alongside your other stats in the top right corner of the screen as a blue bar.
  • Spells will consume mana instantly for every single spell and modifier in the cast. If there are Trigger/Timer spells, then mana is consumed for every spell that could be fired - even if the Trigger condition does not get fulfilled. If there is insufficient mana for a modifier or connected Trigger spell, the chain will ignore it.
  • If there is insufficient mana for a Trigger/Timer, but enough mana for a spell connected to that Trigger/Timer then connected spell will be casted instead. For example Magic Arrow with Trigger (35 mana) → Explosion of Brimstone (10 mana) will result in second spell being casted right where you stand if mana drops below 35 and wand's mana recharge rate can't keep up with fire rate.
  • Spells, or even just spell modifiers, might fail to be linked to the cast if there isn't enough mana. For example, if you have a Freeze Charge modifier that costs 10 mana and a Digging Bolt spell costing 0 mana, you will always be able to cast the Digging Bolt, but Freeze Charge will only apply to it when there is enough mana.
  • A high mana max is useful for wands that have many modifiers and/or heavy-duty spells.
  • A low mana max may be unable to cast even a single spell, e.g. a wand in the Mines that spawns with Black Hole, but not enough max mana, rendering the wand and the spells it contains useless until it can be modified in the Holy Mountain.

Mana charge speed

  • A flat number representing how much mana is regenerated per second.
  • Mana will still recharge when the wand is not held in the hand, unlike the Recharge time.
  • A high mana charge speed is desirable for constant combat.
  • A low mana charge speed can still be useful for spells not used often, eg. Bomb, Rain Cloud.
  • Increase Mana can be used to alleviate a low Mana Charge speed.

Capacity

  • A flat number that determines how many slots are available to insert spells and modifiers into.
  • A no-shuffle wand will cast spells from left to right. This can be imagined as a queue. A shuffle wand casts its spells in a random order before recharging.
  • Related to the recharge time. The more spells there are to cast, even if it is the same copy, the longer it takes before the wand reaches the end of the spell queue and must recharge.

Spread

Wand spread.png
  • A decimal number that represents the potential random spread of your spell's projectiles, as measured in degrees. This is your cone of fire.
  • A positive spread value causes inaccuracy. Negative spread does not result in inaccuracy. It simply helps mitigate (positive) increased spread.
  • The final spread is calculated by adding together the wand's spread and the spell's spread with modifiers added.
  • Therefore, a wand with negative spread can counteract a spell with positive spread, or vice versa.
  • Positive spread values can also be mitigated by the Homing Shots perk, and modifiers Homing and Reduce Spread. These are not always reliable if you are using Formation modifiers, however.

Always Casts

  • Often highly desirable. Every spell emitted from the wand itself (not via a Trigger/Timer) will have the Always Casts spell or modifier added on.
  • The mana drain of the spell is ignored, as are limited uses (if any), but the cast delay and recharge time modifiers will be applied.
  • The always cast spell is chosen when the wand is randomly generated, and can't be removed or changed to another spell.
  • There is a perk that can add always cast spells to a wand, up to a maximum total of 4, but the spell chosen is random.
  • May be difficult to rediscover what it casts. If you forgot the spell's description, know that you can drag and drop your wands out of your hand and onto the floor, letting you pick the wand up again and see its full description. You may also read the descriptions of your already picked up wands on this screen, so attempting to pick up other wands also works. Another option could be going to the Progress entry in the pause menu and finding the spell's icon among discovered spells.
  • Always Cast spells with Timer or Trigger variations applied will never activate their trigger/timer function. However Spark Bolt With Double Trigger will activate once, as will Delayed Spellcast.

Speed Multiplier

  • A hidden stat changing the velocity of projectiles cast by the wand.
  • Set to 1 for most wands.

Unique wands

There are also some unique named wands, which can be obtained from secret locations or solving puzzles.

Wand Tiers

Wands have a level/tier number between 1 and 6, and in rare cases it can be 10[4]. Higher wand tiers generally have higher stats, and a larger spell pool from which to pick spells to generate with.

Detailed info about Wand Tiers can be found on this page: Wand and Spell Tiers

Wand Generation Procedure

Detailed info about Wand Generation can be found on this page: Wand Generation

Trivia

  • Pedestals holding wands can occasionally be found in custom-designed rooms, often containing traps. These pedestals are made of Glowing Stone that is impervious to most explosions and spells.
  • Wands on the ground will rotate around the handle's tip, with the exception of some wands found in the Mines.
  • Wands that contain a electricity spell or modifier (I.e Lightning Bolt, Thunder Charge, Electric Arc, etc) that are held and submerged in a liquid will cause electric particles coming off the wand to intensify and then send out continuous electric shocks after ~3 seconds which will only stop when the wand is pulled out, put away or dropped.
  • There is about a 5% chance to get a "Rare" wand, and about 4% chance for a wand to have an AC without being Rare.

See Also

Notes

  1. Generally the Hiisi, Mages, and Robots
  2. Except for the #Unique wands
  3. 3.0 3.1 "Traditionally vihta was used more often in Western Finnish, while vasta was used in Eastern Finnish." - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vihta
    See this glorious image explaining it: https://i.imgur.com/IKN4g1M.jpg
  4. When a level 10 wand is spawned, the game actually calls for a level 11 wand to be generated, allowing Tier 10 Spells to appear on the wand.