Lightning rod

Version 0.21: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Type	Miscellaneous item
Name	lightning rod
Icon

A rod that allows its wielder to fire blasts of lightning. By evoking the rod in consecutive turns, the discharge will be sustained and can be redirected to new targets. It takes a moment to warm up, making short bursts rather ineffective.

The lightning rod is a powerful source of area-of-effect electricity damage, though it requires multiple turns to use properly. The first time you evoke it, it fires a weak, medium-range, unavoidable Lightning Bolt. However, if your next action is to evoke it a second time, the effect is different: targeting the same tile you initially attacked will create a more powerful bolt, while targeting a different tile will create a wide spray of unavoidable lightning, damaging everything in between the two lines of fire. Doing anything except for evoking the rod again will reset the rod, causing the next bolt you fire to be another low-power bolt.

It comes with 4 charges, which, once used, replenish one-by-one as the player gains experience

The damage of this rod depends on three parameters: your Evocations skill, whether the rod is being used on consecutive turns, and the length of the current arc. The damage of this item is inversely proportional to the area covered; the larger the area you spray, the less damage dealt to each target.

Strategy

• Lightning rods can deal heavy damage to single targets, but are also 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

Prior to 0.20, this item was a rod, cost MP to use and had to be wielded prior to use. Added in 0.11.