At a glance: you start with 100 HP, and the heal you actually cast — Healing Bolt — restores 8.75 HP per charge across 20 charges, so 175 HP per spell. Circle of Vigour heals 1/4 to 2/3 of your max HP at 10% HP per second plus up to 21 extra. The heart pickups you see are mostly Extra Max HP (+25), not heals.
“How do I heal” is the most-searched Noita question because the game hides its healing and offers almost no potions. The truth is that Noita has four separate healing systems — spells, pickups, perks and liquids — and none of them are the “health potion” you are looking for. Here is every source with real numbers.
The trap: most “healing” pickups don’t heal you
The first thing to unlearn is that the heart icons restore health. Most of them do not:
| Pickup | Effect | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Extra Max HP | +25 max HP (no current heal) | Random HP Up spots, Dark Cave; ~10% in Treasure Chests, ~48% in Great Treasure Chests |
| Large Extra Max HP | +50 max HP | ~1.15% in Treasure Chests, ~9.4% in Great |
| Full Health Regeneration | Fully heals, plus +10 max HP in Holy Mountains | Every Holy Mountain and the Dark Cave; ~0.11% in Treasure Chests, ~1.1% in Great |
| Cursed Extra Max Health | +50 max HP, then 33.3s Poisoned | Parallel Worlds only |
So the only pickup that actually refills your bar is Full Health Regeneration, and the reliable one is in every Holy Mountain. Everything else is a max-HP bump. If you are bleeding out mid-biome, a heart pickup will not save you — it raises the ceiling, not the floor. Stronger Hearts multiplies the +25 by 2–4×, and Glass Cannon caps it.
Spell healing: your real health bar
Because pickups don’t heal, your actual healing comes from spells you put on a wand:
| Spell | Charges | Healing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Healing Bolt | 20 | 8.75 per cast (175 total) | The workhorse; can be made efficient with modifiers |
| Circle of Vigour | 2 | 1/4–2/3 max HP at 10%/sec + up to 21 | Scales with max HP, so it gets better late |
| Deadly Heal | — | Hurts you first, then heals ~Circle of Vigour | Needs Piercing Shot or Bloodlust to target you |
The math on Healing Bolt is the important one: 20 × 8.75 = 175 HP per full spell, almost double your starting health. A wand that just cycles Healing Bolt is a portable medkit. That is why “noita how to use healing bolt” and “noita how to heal” are the same question in practice. Wand construction is covered in wand building and spell mechanics.
The Hiisi Healer trick: free healing from an enemy
This is the most underrated source and the most counter-intuitive: an enemy heals you. Hiisi Healers (Parantajahiisi) are passive enemies found most often in the Hiisi Base. They fire Healing Bolts at other Hiisi — and those bolts heal whoever they hit, including you.
The exploit, straight from the wiki:
- Line up two healers and stand in the middle.
- If at least one is below full HP, the other fires, and the bolt heals you.
- Kick each once to keep them alive — do not let a spell kill their small HP pool.
Repair Drones (Korjausdrone) in The Vault work the same way but fire faster, and Masters of Returning will copy a Healing Bolt and heal you continuously if nothing else is cast after. That is why the honest answer to “how to heal” includes “find a healer and make it shoot you”. The full enemy list is in the enemy guide.
Perks that heal
If you are building a run around sustain, these perks are the healing:
| Perk | Healing |
|---|---|
| Vampirism | Up to 40 HP per flask of blood, 8 HP/sec under ideal conditions |
| Healthy Exploration | 60 HP each time you enter a new biome |
| Extra Life | Respawn at 100 HP once when you hit 0 |
| Extra Health | +50% max HP instantly |
| Trick Blood Money | 2 HP per small nugget, min 4 per trick kill |
Vampirism pairs with More Blood or the Blood spell; Trick Blood Money pairs with cheap trick-kill setups like Rock. Perk choices are run-defining, so plan them with the perk tier list rather than grabbing whatever appears.
Liquids: the strongest heals in the game
Three magical liquids and one gas heal you, and they beat most spells:
- Healthium — 1 HP per pixel poured and touched, or drunk for 7.5 seconds of Regeneration ≈ 75% of your health. Incredibly rare, found in flasks.
- Healium — a gas made when Healthium meets Lava (or Divine Ground meets Urine); applies a Regeneration stain removed by movement.
- Lively Concoction — the alchemical Rapid Healing stain, unique per seed.
- Hearty Porridge — 15 seconds of Regeneration ≈ 150% of your health, but only from the Eat Your Vegetables perk.
Drinking Healthium is the single biggest burst heal a normal run can access, which is why finding a Healthium flask is a run-saver. For staying alive around the healing, the survival guide and combat guide cover damage avoidance.
A healing plan that actually works
Put it together into a loadout, not a wish list:
- A Healing Bolt wand in a slot you can swap to — 175 HP per spell is your baseline sustain.
- Sweep every Holy Mountain for Full Health Regeneration; that is your guaranteed refill.
- Grab Vampirism or Trick Blood Money early if the run is going long.
- Treat Hiisi Base and The Vault as heal stations — find a healer, make it shoot you.
- Bank any Healthium flask for the moment your bar is nearly empty.
That plan assumes you are avoiding damage in the first place. Noita’s healing is slow and conditional by design; the common mistakes page covers the deaths that no amount of Healing Bolt will fix.
A note on version drift
Noita’s numbers are stable but patched. Every figure here — 100 starting HP, 25/50 max-HP pickups, 20×8.75 Healing Bolt, Circle of Vigour’s 10%/sec, the ~0.11%/~1.1% chest chances, and the 40/60/75%/150% perk and liquid heals — was read from the Official Noita Wiki in October 2026. If a value disagrees in-game after an update, recheck the Healing page before trusting this table.