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Alchemy and Pixel Physics

By ScotPublished Updated Sources checked

Tactical Quick Answer

Every pixel in Noita is physically simulated, so materials mix, burn, melt, and freeze based on their real properties. Liquids leave stains on you that either help, like blood raising your critical hit chance, or kill you, like oil making you flammable. Water is your main tool because it washes off stains, converts toxic sludge, and turns lava into safe rock. Acid is the exception: it never stains you at all, it eats water instead of being diluted by it, and Purifying Powder is what neutralizes it.

Every pixel in Noita is physically simulated. Materials mix, react, burn, melt, and freeze based on their properties. Mastering these interactions is just as important as building a good wand.

Stains and Status Effects​

Walking through liquids or getting sprayed by enemies leaves a "stain" on your character, shown by a percentage icon on the right side of the screen.

  • Water (Wet): Prevents ignition and is depleted by contact with fire. Note that water is not special here: Bloody, Slimy and Toxic stains all prevent ignition too, and a stain is removed by submerging in any liquid that overwrites it, not by water specifically.
  • Toxic Sludge (Toxic): Deals 2% of your maximum health per second, and cannot kill you on its own, stopping at 2% health in a normal run. Also prevents ignition. Blocked outright by the Toxic Immunity and Gas Blood perks.
  • Blood (Bloody): Raises critical hit chance by +5% per Projectile, Static Projectile or Material spell cast together in the same casting state, applied to every projectile produced. It also protects you from fire. This is a submerge effect, so a light splash will not do it.
  • Oil (Oiled): You lose traction and slide down slopes, and you stay on fire much longer. Counterintuitively, submerging in oil while already burning extinguishes you, because fire needs air.

The game tracks around 100 status effects in total. Beyond these four you will meet On Fire, Slimy, Poisoned, Tripping, Polymorph, Charmed, Berserk, Levitation and Teleportitis constantly.

Basic Material Reactions​

Many materials react when they touch each other. Learning these reactions can save your life or open up new paths:

  • Water + Toxic Sludge = Water. Confirmed in the game's own reaction tables at rate 13, so it is gradual and not instant. The reaction only works top down, and sludge is less dense than water so it floats on top. That is the real reason stirring helps: shooting into the pool or dropping physics objects in mixes the layers so water sits above sludge. It has nothing to do with surface area, and the projectile does not need to be low damage. Mud and Swamp convert sludge to Swamp instead.
  • Water + Lava = Rock, at rate 80, and the resulting bridge is genuinely usable. One catch: plain Rock is meltable, so the bridge can re-melt. Use Blood + Lava for Volcanic Rock, which does not. Toxic Sludge and Poison make Toxic Rock and Poisonous Rock, which damage you on contact.
  • Fire + Wood/Coal = Fire. Fire spreads quickly. Do not stand near flammable materials when explosions happen.
  • Purifying Powder + anything impure = Water. Rate 80, and the single most useful cleanup reaction in the game.

Toxic Sludge vs. Acid​

Confusing these two is a common and fatal mistake, and the colors are the opposite of how they are usually described. Acid is the bright neon green one, sampling around #1EF340. Toxic Sludge is the murky yellow-olive one, in the #50630B to #779510 range.

  • Toxic Sludge: Applies a stain that damages over time. Washed off by submerging in water or any other liquid.
  • Acid: Deals 20 to 500 damage per second on contact and dissolves every corrodible material except Glass, Dense Rock and Extremely Dense Rock. Acid does not stain you at all, exactly like lava. It inflicts contact damage instead. Only an Ambrosia stain or the Stainless Armour perk reduce it.

That last point matters because there is no acid stain to wash off. The scenario you may have been warned about does not exist.

What is real is that water thrown at an acid pool gets eaten. Water is tagged corrodible, so Acid + water produces Flammable Gas at rate 50 without diluting the acid at all. The gas is called Flammable Gas and not "Flammable Green Gas", and it is described as non-toxic and safe to touch, so the danger is ignition and suffocation, not contact.

To actually neutralize an acid pool, use Purifying Powder, which turns it into water.

Fungal Shifts​

The trigger is accumulating more than 180 seconds of the Tripping status, not eating a set quantity. Weird Fungus gives 50 seconds per ingestion, and Mystery Fungus, Fungus Blood, Frog Meat and Glue all work too. Carrying the Vampirism perk blocks shifting entirely.

A shift replaces a whole row of materials, not one. Pick the water row and Water, Salt Water, Chilly Water and static water all convert together.

You get a maximum of 20 shifts per run, with a 5 minute cooldown between them. Fungal shifts are deterministic and pre-calculated from your world seed, so shift number N is fixed for a given seed and seed tools can show you the whole list in advance.

The flask roll is exactly 75%, and it splits evenly. Within that 75% a second coin flip decides which side of the equation your flask material lands on, so the real breakdown is 37.5% as the source, 37.5% as the destination, and 25% ignored. Two exceptions, both at 999 times out of 1000: a flask of Gold redirects the result into a greedy material such as Brass, Silver or Toxic Sludge, and a flask of Divine Ground redirects it into ordinary Grass instead. Separately, if the flask material has already been transformed the game uses its original identity.

In-flask alchemy is not safe. Epilogue 2 made materials react with each other inside flasks and Powder Pouches, so a flask holding two things is a reaction waiting to happen. The shift reads whichever material occupies the largest part of the container, so a reaction that changes the majority material changes what gets shifted. Players use this deliberately instead of fearing it.

Broken Shift Chains. Shift Water to Sludge, then Sludge to Diamond, and the Water stays Sludge. That much is right, but it is messier than a clean stop: the material inherits lifetime and some reactions from one step past the break, and stains compound. In the documented example, "Water" ends up looking like Poison, dealing Poison contact damage, and applying a Polymorphine stain. Order also reverses the outcome, since shifting Acid to Steam first and then Water to Acid resolves cleanly to Water becoming Steam.

Three traps worth naming: shifting Teleportatium deactivates every Holy Mountain portal, shifting Weird Fungus removes your ability to shift again, and shifting Water changes the stain from every wet source in the game, including Humid biomes.

danger

Fungal shifts are permanent for the run, there is no way to reverse one except by overriding it with another shift, and they carry over into New Game Plus. Turning all water into acid or lava will quickly end your game.

Recipes Worth Knowing​

The page would be incomplete without the reactions players actually use:

  • Concentrated Mana + Water = more Concentrated Mana. Renewable mana, and it melts Steel safely.
  • Silver + Copper + Blood = Diamond.
  • Brass + Diamond = Purifying Powder.
  • Diamond + Honey = Ambrosia, the Protection From All stain that gets you through Cursed Rock.
  • Whiskey + Frog Meat = Berserkium.
  • Vomit + Bone = Diminution.

Alchemic Precursor and Lively Concoction are both three-material recipes randomized per seed. Precursor plus any meat gives the Draught of Midas, and Lively Concoction grants Regeneration for as long as it stains you.

Frequently Asked Questions​

What do stains do in Noita?

Stains show as a percentage on the right side of the screen and change how your character behaves. Blood raises critical hit chance by 5 percent per spell in the casting state, toxic sludge deals 2 percent of your health per second but cannot kill you, and oil makes you slippery and long-burning. Note that water is not the only fire protection, since Bloody, Slimy and Toxic stains all prevent ignition too.

How do you get rid of toxic sludge in Noita?

Water converts it back into water, gradually and not instantly. The reaction only works top down and sludge floats on water, so stir the pool by shooting into it or dropping objects in to get water sitting above the sludge. That layering is the reason stirring works, not surface area.

Can you wash off acid with a water flask?

There is nothing to wash off, because acid never stains you. Like lava it deals contact damage instead, 20 to 500 per second. Throwing water at an acid pool does not help either, since water is corrodible and simply gets eaten and turned into Flammable Gas. Use Purifying Powder to neutralize acid into water.

What is the difference between toxic sludge and acid in Noita?

Acid is the bright neon green one and toxic sludge is the murky yellow-olive one, which is the opposite of how it usually gets described. Toxic sludge applies a damage-over-time stain you can wash off. Acid stains nothing, deals heavy contact damage, and dissolves almost every solid except Glass, Dense Rock and Extremely Dense Rock.

Does holding a flask guarantee a fungal shift uses that material?

No, and the 75 percent figure splits further than people expect. There is a 75 percent chance the flask matters, and within that an even coin flip decides which side of the equation it lands on, so it is 37.5 percent as the source, 37.5 percent as the destination, and 25 percent ignored.