Noita Perk List + Ratings

A guide on all the Perks I could find, so you know which to pick up and which to disregard. Plus, it lets me give some feedback to the devs in the game’s Early Access state.

Intro + Tiers Explained

When I list a perk, I’ll do so in this format:

Perk Name

Rating

Description. Any additional notes that stray from the Perk’s actual description will be written out of bold here, like explaining exactly what a vague effect is or any hidden effects people discover.

My assessment.

The “Ratings” are a shorthand I’m using to essentially make a Perk tier list, so those who don’t want to think about the game much can just grab whatever’s good. The tiers mean:

S
Provides amazing bonuses, perhaps too strong. You will essentially always want to pick these up unless other S-tier or A-tier perks are present.

A
Not quite as overpowered as S but still very strong. Most players will want to take these upon seeing them, but an individual A-tier perk might not make or break a run.

B
A pretty good perk, but there are a reasonable number of situations where you might not want to take it. B perks might be situational, have big upsides and big downsides, be a matter of preference, or simply be solid perks, but aren’t as impressive as A or S perks.

C
An okay perk and certainly better than nothing, but you can do a lot better. Maybe the effects of the perk can easily be replicated by a Wand/Item or gotten around by good players, but these are still okay to have.

D
Mostly bad perks you should avoid taking in comparison to other perks. While these are positive effects, (or positive for some playstyles, and not others) most players will not get much use out of these.

F
An exclusive category that I would rather not use, F tier perks include anything that I would actually argue is either overall detrimental to a run, or just plain useless.

Offensive Perks

Any Perk that directly increases your damage or makes it easier for you to deal damage.

Homing Shots

B

All projectiles home towards enemies very slightly. Sometimes hard to notice on some wands like the basic starting blaster, but very easily noticeable on bouncing projectiles.

A pretty solid perk, but I would say it largely depends on your wand/spell loadout as to if you should take this or not. If your main damage output wand involves lots of bouncy/rolly/slow/piercing projectiles, the perk’s very much worth it, otherwise however the perk doesn’t really provide any benefits that good aim wouldn’t get you.

Critical Hit +

C

Increased critical hit chance. While I’m unsure exactly what % of crit this gives, I assume it’s the same as the wand version, +15%.

Essentially a permanent damage increase. Not very flashy and I’d prefer a lot of perks over it, but more damage is never a bad thing especially with how much health some later-game enemies have. However, I’d like to note that a good Wand will always outdo any bonus crit chance in terms of damage output.

Getting more health so you can explore more to get more gold, or perks to increase your gold gains, all in the name of getting an OP wand, is generally going to help your run a lot more than this.

Electricity

A

You’re immune to electric damage but metal and liquids around you electrify constantly. Look out!

Look out for what, killing your enemies too fast? Electricity not only makes you immune to electric damage, which while rare is good to have, but also makes it so essentially any enemy sharing a liquid with you is going to die very, very quickly. If you can soak the zone with water, everything dies.

Well, to be fair, this DOES come with some additional hazards like potentially accidentally triggering traps, blowing up nearby barrels or lighting oil fires, but as long as you’re aware of the risks, this is potentially very powerful.

Glass Cannon

B

Your spells deal x5 damage and have larger blast ranges, but your maximum health is capped to 50. Also increases the terrain deformation potential of spells dramatically, spells that normally can hardly deform terrain like Spark Bolt can now be used to dig with ease. The max health cap overrides everything, even other perks like Extra HP. No matter what other modifiers you have, your maximum health is always exactly 50.

Okay, that 50 max health limit is pretty devastating, but the effects are also worth it. As long as you’re willing to bombard enemies from a distance and take a more hands off, safer approach, the payoff is amazing. x5 damage means that essentially everything you do deals what they’d normally do with a crit, and actual crits are pretty much instakills, and the enhanced terrain deformation is simply beautiful. The reason why this is a B though, is THAT DOWNSIDE! Try to end fights as quickly as possible before your wonderful run gets shattered, okay?

Also, I’d like to humbly recommend the Glass Cannon + Energy Orb (spell) synergy. Every single Energy Orb becomes a mini nuke that tears through almost all terrain in a radius larger than the default bomb, and can’t even damage you as friendly fire.

Defensive Perks

Any Perk that is directly focused around making death a rarer activity for you.

Permanent Shield

S

You gain a small, permanent shield. Shields do all kinds of nifty things like deflecting bullets, transmuting harmful substances to harmless ones like fire to water, and so on.

While the shield is weak, it’s a free permanent shield that doesn’t require any Wand investment or anything. It will regularly save you HP, which both lowers your chances of dying and indirectly increases the amount of cash you can make each floor, making it pretty solid.

Stainless Armour

C

You take 50% less damage as long as you have no active stain effect. As in, no liquid on you.

Not very good. A 50% reduction is awesome, but the requirement of being stainless is a very costly and impractical one to maintain especially considering the way you negate most fluids is with other fluids. This also means you need to choose between your 50% damage resistance and all those handy buffs fluids can give you, like increased crit damage from blood and so on.

Stainless Armour may be worth using in conjunction with Perks like Repelling Cape however, and this is where the usefulness is very much valid.

Invisibility

S

You’re invisible. Stains, casting spells, kicking and taking damage remove the effect temporarily. “Temporarily” means for roughly 5 seconds.

Passive invisibility is a pretty great thing, as it allows you to easily “ghost” through parts of areas if you’re finding them too difficult, as long as you avoid liquids or hazards. You can even collide with enemies without them noticing.

The downside is that Stains are a major nuisance. However, as long as you can avoid liquids, this one perk can carry you through the whole game.

Saving Grace

C

If you would die and have more than 1 HP, your HP is set to 1 instead.

There’s a very high chance that whatever killed you, like fire, a horde of enemies, or so on could just hit you again and render this perk moot. Still, this perk MIGHT just save your life, and its re-usable. If you can combo it with a source of healing outside of the Holy Mountain, it also gets a lot stronger. However, I would advise getting Perks to prevent getting in this kind of situation in the first place as opposed to prepping for failure.

Teleportitis

B

You take 20% less damage. Every time you take damage, you teleport away.

Teleporting involuntarily is annoying, but getting out of bad situations can actually be quite great. If you prefer to avoid combat rather than engage in it, this is a phenomenal perk, but if you’d prefer to actually fight enemies or can’t react quickly to teleportation, not so much. Just, uh… Try not to get any DoTs on you.

Toxic Sludge Immunity

C

You take no damage from toxic sludge. Technically, this is wrong, this effect only means that Toxic Sludge will no longer Stain you. Toxic Gas and Toxic Ice, despite being different states of Toxic Sludge, still damage you.

You could do worse, especially considering Toxic Sludge is pretty annoying. The reason this is a C Perk is because you can also negate Toxic Sludge with any water source, as water converts Toxic Sludge into more water, so emptying out one of your potion flasks, going into a water source to fill your flask with water, then spraying said water into a Toxic Sludge pool will get rid of said sludge very effectively.

Fire Immunity

A

Take no damage from fire.

Fire is a very dangerous and common hazard, so being immune to it is great and offers all kinds of incredible options. Set the world ablaze without consequence! Go crazy with oil-creating spells!

Explosion Immunity

C

You take no direct damage from explosions.

You REALLY should not be getting exploded in the first place. Still though, this Perk will potentially save you a lot of HP or your life in a bad situation, and allows you to be far, far more reckless with wand customisation than normal.

Electricity Immunity

D

Take no damage from electricity.

Electrical damage is so rare that you’re unlikely to get much use out of this. IF you have an item like a Thunderstone, this perk gets a LOT better, but Thunderstones are rare enough that I still think this Perk deserves a D tier. Admittedly, electrical damage IS devastating when it comes up thanks to that extended hitstun, but I don’t think this is worth the perk investment.

Melee Immunity

C

You take no damage from close-range enemy attacks.

Okay, making some enemies essentially totally unable to damage you is pretty cool and the only reason this isn’t a D. However, this perk isn’t particularly practical considering that most serious threats in this game are either physics-induced DoTs, or powerful ranged attacks, not melee.

Extra HP

C

50% extra maximum health.

A decent perk that just doubles your max health. Preferable to Extra Max Health From Hearts, seeing as this multiplier just applies to your whole health pool. However, generally speaking Perks that allow you to more easily avoid damage are better than Perks that let you absorb more damage.

Extra Life

C

Upon death you respawn with 100 health.

While it’s not reusable like Saving Grace is, the generous 100 health you have after you cheat death allows you to escape far more situations. While not bad, there are a lot of better choices, though.

Breathless

B

You won’t drown when submerged.

Opens up far more possibility with liquid play by totally removing your oxygen limit. The perfect skill for a liquid-centric build, but on its own not very useful. Also, technically allows you to breathe in gases like Smoke or Steam, but with the current state of gases in the game this is mostly a non-feature, though this might change in future.

Vampirism

A

You regain health by drinking blood, but you lose one third of your maximum health. For those who don’t know, you drink by holding S.

Losing max health might suck, but having health regen outside of the Holy Mountain is VERY, VERY good, especially reusable regen from drinking blood. Combo this with More Blood and you’re golden, combo this with More Blood and a brutalising want effect like Chainsaw and you’ll have tons of health to work with. Sometimes however, getting use out of it can be frustratingly difficult, and losing max health is still a tough pill to swallow.

Also, combining this with spells that can generate Blood is… Yeah. While direct Blood generation spells do actually have usage limits, there are spells like Lava to Blood that are infinite and can circumvent this.

Note that you can also empty out potion flasks, then fill them up with Blood to essentially carry artificial medkits for future areas when you might need healing.

Greed Perks

Any Perk that is not focused around the benefit it gives you in the moment and more about allowing you to accumulate more stuff in the long run.

Perk Lottery

S

When you pick a perk, there’s a 50% chance the others won’t disappear.

Yeah, this is insane. Even just when you pick it up, you have a 50/50 chance of it paying for itself immediately. Sure, you are leaving the overall strength of your run to RNG, but a 50% chance is really, really good odds.

Honestly, I think this perk is crazily overpowered and could probably use a total rework, such as being able to reroll the Perks in a Shrine at the cost of having 1 less Perk to pick from every time or something, or giving you two completely random perks immediately upon taking it. Until that happens, a perk that gets you more perks is a total no-brainer, and every time you can pick up all 3 perks in a Shrine is incredibly satisfying and ridiculous.

Trick Greed

C

4x instead of 2x gold when death is an accident. For those unaware, killing enemies “accidentally” through use of the environment, like by burning them alive or blowing them up, gives twice the cash, now it gives four times the cash.

Doubling your gold income sounds pretty alluring, but accident kills are pretty impractical and hard to set up. Even if you do hit the jackpot and kill a big loot enemy/a horde with an accident kill, it needs to be a situation where you can actually grab the loot, and on top of that, uses for gold are somewhat limited. Would be a lot better if it had something like healing with accident kills, maybe?

Extra Perk

B

From now on, you will find an extra Perk in every Holy Mountain.

More choices, and a higher chance of you getting a Perk you want, are both good. The only downside is the “wasted” Perk slot, so only take this if the other Perks in the shrine aren’t looking appealing.

Extra Maximum HP From Hearts

C

Hearts bestow double the maximum HP. Is not retroactive, so your HP will remain exactly the same before and after you pick up this perk. Only applies to future hearts collected.

This is solid, especially if you enjoy exploring as much of every floor as possible. However, having to find the hearts in the first place is a bit cumbersome and will put you in more danger, and maximum HP can only really do so much. Still, hard to say no to this one especially on a run that’s already going well, where you know you’ll be able to get all the Hearts on a given floor.

Greed

A

You gain 2x gold per nugget.

Aha, this segment’s namesake. Greed is simple and rewarding, will just flat out double your gold income allowing you to better optimise your wand selection between floors. You can do a lot worse, and while sometimes a solid Perk might be better, Greed is still perfect for ensuring you get your dream superwand if you’re struggling in that department.

Utility Perks

Any Perk that doesn’t directly boost your combat capabilities or anything like that, but provides some kind of utility.

Edit Wands Everywhere

A

Divine blessing allows you to edit wands everywhere.

Pretty incredible. You can strip wands of their useful spells right as you grab them instead of being forced to leave wands behind, you can leave niche spells like say digging-focused spells in your inventory and take them out when you need them… Yeah, this has a lot of potential. The only complaint is that if you already have a set of four wands that you feel are already good for most situations, this really won’t do anything for you.

Repelling Cape

C

Stains drop at a fast rate (when moving). Very fast, moving for only a few seconds will remove all stain effects.

Very useful for getting rid of stuff like Oil or Toxic Sludge, and synergises greatly with some other Perks. However, also removes almost all potential for things like invisibility, using Beserk potions to amplify your damage, using Water stains as a buffer against fire, and so on. If you’d rather play without dealing with Stains this option exists, but in my opinion, excluding Perk synergies, a good player can get more upsides out of the Stains system than downsides.

Low Gravity

F

Your movement is floatier and you jump higher.

Moon gravity might sound fun, but this really will not help you. Sure, you can ascend vertically easier, but there is almost never a situation in the game where the vertical height you can already attain isn’t enough. Plus, it makes landing take a lot longer, which is a massive dealbreaker in combat when getting hit in the air carries some nasty stuns. There is almost no upside to this perk and the drawbacks are unfortunate.

Bombs Materialised

C

Bomb-like spells can be placed in the ITEMS space in your inventory and thrown without a wand. Note: Aside from the starter Bomb spell, I have no idea which other spells currently in the game may fall under “Bomb-like”. If any are discovered, please comment below and I’ll add them.

Considering you start with a Bomb wand, this saves you a Wand slot, which is pretty neat to have. This is a very nice utility especially if you can find a bunch of bombs, but nowhere near as good as some other Perks.

Strong Levitiation

B

You can fly 100% longer.

Levitation is an extremely versatile tool for traversing the environment, avoiding damage and so on, so being able to do that for twice as long is a great bonus.

Chaos Perks

Any Perk that directly interacts with the world around you to do crazy stuff, or just introduces an element of CHAOS to the game.

More Blood

B

Blood blood blood. Enemy bleeding is magnified. This applies to their corpses as well, and applies to any substance the enemy bleeds as a blood equivalent, such as Toxic Sludge or Slime. Note that enemies still need their bodies to be seriously damaged to bleed at all.

Aside from simple fun factor, this Perk is extremely handy for covering levels in blood, letting you crit more and more easily suppress fires. Combine with a chainsaw/drill you can use to maul corpses and you can generate actual lakes of blood. The only downside is enemies with hazardous bloodtypes like Lava or Toxic Sludge, so if you’re not good at dealing with said enemies, you may want to avoid this perk.

More Hatred

D

Creatures in the world are more aggressive towards each other.

Enemies being more likely to kill each other isn’t unusable, but really not something you should be relying on.

Slime Blood

D

You bleed slime.

Hey, you know what’d be great when you took damage? If you got covered in a substance that slowed you down whenever you take damage so removing yourself from that situation is harder!

To be fair, there are situations where the slime might help, and it does mean getting hit in the air won’t cause you to fall to the ground (essentially negating hitstun), which is the only reason why this isn’t an F perk, but most of the time, it won’t help and if you don’t have a reliable way to remove the stain debuff, you’re SOL. Only consider this if you’ve got Repelling Cape or simply don’t care about being slow and just want to take care of hitstun

Dissolve Powders

B

Sand and other soft, powdery materials dissolve quickly in your presence. So quickly, that you cannot even stand on powders, you will just straight up fall through them with this perk.

Actually a lot better than you would think. Sure, you can’t stand on powders anymore and this can sometimes backfire, but the ability to cut through these forms of terrain can actually be very handy for skipping fights and navigating the map, especially in areas of snow. Plus, just fun to use.

Revenge Explosion

D

Often when you take damage, you release a magical explosion that hurts enemies. Said explosion does not trigger on DoTs, and will destroy very weak substances like powders, but not hard walls.

While retaliation damage is great and all, ideally you should never be close enough to an enemy for this to be very effective, seeing as the range is quite bad.

More Love

F

Creatures in the world are more friendly towards each other.

…Why? I guess less creature-on-creature killings mean you can loot easier and makes for a more stable environment? But, even then, the benefit seems minimal, generally speaking enemies killing each other from far away is preferable to them all teaming up against you. I’d ask Nolla to buff this, if I wasn’t convinced this was probably a joke perk.

Freeze Field

D

Freezes liquids around you.

A very mixed perk. For one, it makes getting caught on fire very improbable, as fire in this game is technically a liquid. However, Toxic Sludge remains harmful even in ice form, it renders it impossible to coat yourself in blood, in the event you DO get lit on fire good luck putting yourself out, and it renders it extremely easy to trap yourself in various forms of ice.

Exploding Corpses

C

Enemies explode upon death.

In case you’re worried about friendly fire, relax- In my testing, it doesn’t appear that these explosions can harm you. Said explosions are fairly short range, but have a few potential advantages, like instantly blasting enemies into chunks of probably-flaming giblets upon death, and enemies that explode by default on death actually seem to always drop the accident gold bonus with this perk. (as the way it works, enemies linger for a split second before exploding, which appears to be long enough for the “death explosion” to trigger and technically be what killed the enemy before it died!)

Honestly, this perk is a lot less destructive than it sounds, which is both a relief and a mild disappointment. It won’t ruin your run if you grab it, though!

Essence of Light

F

Causes constant light projectiles to emit from the player that explode, destroy terrain, and can damage you.

Please note I haven’t actually found this one yet as it’s a secret Perk that spawns in a very specific location. Essence of Light isn’t really so much of a perk as it is a challenging modifier, and it’s quite likely it’s either related to a secret that’s already in the game/will be implemented, or that it’s an impractical reward from the devs for exploring. Essence of Light will kill lots of stuff around you, but the constant damage means you’ll have to rush through zones just to stay alive.