Lightning rod

Lightning rod
Material	Metal
Stackable	64
Drops	Itself
Blocks

Lightning rods protect an area from lightning strikes during thunderstorms.

Crafting

A lightning rod is crafted from 3 copper rods in the crafting grid created by smithing .

Ingredients	Crafting Recipe
3x Copper rod

Usage

Lightning rods protect the nearby area from lightning in a cone starting from 5 blocks above their location, relocating the centre of the lightning strike and its damage radius to the rod, and preventing any fires that would have occurred. The block targeted by lightning always uses the height of the highest block in the column at those coordinates. Lightning rods do not have a limit to the number of lightning strikes they can absorb.

Tip: A lightning rod cannot function if there is anything placed above it.

Coverage Formula

A simple drawing depicting the lightning rod's coverage area.

Lightning rods use the following condition to determine if they should attract lightning as it strikes its target.

sqrt((rod.x - target.x)^2 + (rod.z - target.z)^2) <= min(40, (5 + rod.y - target.y) * 2)

The formula can be described as follows:

1. 5 is added to the vertical distance between the lightning rod and the target block.
2. The vertical distance is multiplied by 2.
3. If the vertical distance is greater than 40, it becomes 40.
4. If the horizontal distance using the Pythagorean theorem is less than or equal to the vertical distance, the lightning rod will attract the lightning strike.

Because the horizontal distance check uses Euclidean distance instead of Manhattan distance, the coverage at each y level appears as a circle rather than a square, making exact coverage difficult to visually estimate. The circle's radius increases by 2 for each vertical block, but anything lower than 15 blocks beneath the lightning rod will not gain any more horizontal coverage since (15 + 5) * 2 equals 40, the maximum vertical distance.