Narg Posted October 22, 2025 Report Posted October 22, 2025 Can't seem to find anything about this already in the forum, or if there's a way to summon lightning to test myself. Does only the block struck have a chance to ignite, or all flammable blocks in the damage radius? do I need to completely isolate my lightning rod from flammable blocks, including my ladders, or is a wood tower completely fine? 1
Professor Dragon Posted October 23, 2025 Report Posted October 23, 2025 (edited) Hello Narg, The key point that many people get wrong about lightning protection: Minecraft - place a lightning rod on a wooden house and you're right. Lightning gets attracted to it, and wooden structures immediately around are fine. Vintage Story - place your lightning rod on a non-burning block (eg stone wall, stone blocks) high above (or next to) your structure. It protects in a pyramid/cone (roughly) down. Putting a lightning rod immediately above your house is just asking for it to be burnt down. The cause will be the lightning striking a few blocks out horizontally to another wooden block. So you'll have a nicely protected lightning rod, and a burnt house. As a bonus, you'll be struck by lightning inside your house at the far end for half your health. (Every Vintarian has an opportunity to join special clubs "My house burnt down by a pit kiln", "My peat area burnt and consumed my house", "Lightning destroyed my home and/or killed my chickens" and "I got hit by lightning while in my underground cellar.") I'm not sure. I THINK (but could be wrong): * The fire damage is always against the block it strikes, and then can spread. * The lightning damage to players/animals is in the radius. But if you have a lightning rod, then you are protected if you are in its protection area (not above or to the side). I haven't found a way to summon lightning (doesn't mean there isn't one). If lightning does occur, it strikes at random in an area based off weather and height and some things. So calling to an individual block is unlikely. You can however go into Creative mode, force the weather to be stormy, build in a high place, make sure that the commands to allow lightning and fire damage are on, and test. Sorry it's not easier. For practical purposes, you may (for now) wish to put your lightning rod on stone wall blocks - they're like a pillar - high enough to get protections, as per here: https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Lightning_rod And this thread: Actually, for really practical purposes, I turn lightning and fire spread off with commands. After having them on for a while, it "Just Wasn't Worth It" YMMV /worldconfig lightningFires false /serverconfig allowfirespread false If you wish to dive into the code, start here and work out: https://github.com/anegostudios/vssurvivalmod/blob/ac9a0059d84ca3449f066f26b5ee6b47bc9ce76a/BlockEntityBehavior/BEBehaviorAttractsLightning.cs Hello @Christian Lewis - did you ever find out if this was possible to summon lightning to a specifc spot? My apologies that I don't have a direct answer. Professor Dragon. Edited October 23, 2025 by Professor Dragon
Narg Posted November 6, 2025 Author Report Posted November 6, 2025 (edited) On 10/23/2025 at 2:28 PM, Professor Dragon said: Hello @Christian Lewis - did you ever find out if this was possible to summon lightning to a specifc spot? My apologies that I don't have a direct answer. Professor Dragon. Thanks for the response, I kinda figured that a rod directly on my house was a bad idea, but definitely good to have it written out for anyone else to find. As for calling lightning, I found these 2 mods after my first post: Mjolnir and Lightning Hammer, both give a hammer that makes lightning strike the targeted block, although Mjolnir seems more finicky. Also, even with lightning fires turned on, neither started fires even with direct strikes to spawned trees. Not much of a head for code, but with a quick glance, seems like maybe lightning hammer just calls the lightning animation and "manually" breaks blocks? Edited November 6, 2025 by Narg 1
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