Lightning rod

Version 0.11: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Type	Rod
Name	Lightning rod
Icon

Once, a wizard ignorant of the workings of mundane items misunderstood the purpose of lightning rods. Instead of making one that merely drew lightning, he made one that created it instead. This rod shoots continuous lightning: the discharge is sustained, and can be redirected to new targets by evoking the rod in subsequent turns (failing to do so will release the trigger). The rod takes a moment to warm up, making short bursts rather ineffective. Once the zap is active, one can wave the rod, creating impressive and damaging arcs of electricity.

The lightning rod is unique among rods, in that it only contains a single "spell." The first time you evoke it, it fires a weak, medium-range Lightning Bolt, almost as though you'd just evoked a less-powerful wand of lightning. However, if your next action is to evoke it a second time, the effect is different: targeting the same tile you attacked last time will create a more powerful bolt, while targeting a different tile will create a wide spray of lightning, damaging everything in between. Doing anything except for evoking the rod again will reset the rod, causing the next bolt you fire to be a single, low-power bolt. The damage and MP cost of firing this rod are very variable; targeting smaller areas tend to deal more damage and consume fewer MP. Training Evocations increases the damage output and reduces the hunger cost of evoking this rod.

Strategy

• Lightning rods are excellent for wiping out large packs of enemies, such as ugly things and slime creatures. To maximize damage, try to minimize the area you affect. Ignoring one monster that's several tiles away from the body of the pack may leave it unharmed, but you'll do much more damage to all the other monsters.

History

Lightning rods were added to Crawl in 0.11.