Summon Lightning Spire

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Summon Lightning Spire
Level	4
School1	Air
School2	Summoning
Source(s)	Book of Iron Book of Storms
Casting noise	2
Spell noise	0
Power Cap	100

Constructs a lightning spire in a nearby location. It can fire bouncing bolts of electricity at the caster's foes, but is completely immobile. The strength of the spire depends on spell power.

Summon Lightning Spire is a level 4 Summoning/Air spell which summons a lightning spire. It can only maintain a single lightning spire at a time; casting the spell again will replace the old one.

Effect

An immobile lightning spire that shoots bolts of electricity will be placed in a random location within two tiles of the caster. The location must be empty and not deep water or lava.

The lightning spire has <spell power> / 10 hit dice (minimum of 1). Higher spell power increases the spire's damage, accuracy, and HP.

The construct lasts for around 18 turns, regardless of spell power.

Strategy

• A lightning spire can get doublezaps on monsters when its bolt reflects off a wall. If the spire isn't placed in a way that allows that to happen and you have MP to spare, consider summoning a new one to try to place it somewhere better.
• The spire will avoid shooting allies (including you) unless they are electricity resistant or invisible. So make sure to position yourself and your allies in a way that allows the spire to remain effective.
• The lightning spire cannot see invisible. If you or one of your allies in its line of fire is invisible, it will fire its bolts right through you. Additionally, a lightning spire is useless against monsters that are inherently invisible unless there is a visible monster behind them.
• You can use the spire to block line of fire for hostile hexers or to seal off a corridor when you need to retreat.
  • However, the random placement might mean that the spire blocks off your retreat path. You can attack it with ctrl-direction or v to make it dissipate instantly.
• The spire is immune to electricity, poison, and negative energy, so you can safely use area-of-effect spells of those elements without harming it.

History

• Prior to 0.25, the spire was summoned to a targeted location, instead of randomly. Lightning Spire was often considered one of the best spells before this change.
• This spell was added in 0.14.