# Wand of lightning

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Name

lightning

Appearance

random

Abundance

4%

Base price

175 zm

Weight

7

Type

ray

Maximum charges

8

Monster use

May be used offensively by monsters.

The wand of lightning is a wand that appears in NetHack.

Contents

1 Generation
2 Description
3 Strategy
4 History
5 Messages
6 References

Generation
A Wizard may receive a wand of lightning as part of their starting inventory.
There is a 4% chance that a randomly-generated wand within the dungeon and its branches will be a wand of lightning. Monsters may generate with the wand as a random offensive item.
The Cyclops, the Healer quest nemesis, will always be generated with a wand of lightning on his square.[1]

Description
Zapping the wand in a given direction shoots a ray of lightning, dealing 6d6 damage to targets without shock resistance (including you if you are hit by one);[2][3] monsters hit by the ray are blinded for d50 turns, and the ray may destroy any rings and wands in the inventory of monsters that it hits (including you) unless they have reflection.[4] Monsters that the ray misses are not blinded, nor are those that reflect the ray.[5] The ray bounces when it hits walls or targets with reflection.
If a bolt of lightning passes through your square, you are blinded for 6d50 turns unless you are already blind or resistant to blindness, even if it misses you or you have reflection.[6][7] If you zap a wand of lightning directly at yourself, you are blinded for 1–100 turns unless you are already blind or resist blindness, and take 12d6 damage unless shock resistant.[8] Being hit by a bolt of lightning abuses constitution.
The wand of lightning is itself immune to destruction by lightning rays and sources of shock damage (e.g. chest traps, a returning Mjollnir, energy vortices or electric eels), and the ring of shock resistance is also immune to rays of lightning.[9]
Like a wand of fire, engraving with a wand of lightning will burn text into the ground and auto-identify it; however, doing so will blind you for d50 turns unless you are already blind or resist blindness.[10][11] You can avoid this by cancelling the prompt when asked what to engrave.[12]
Applying a wand of lightning to break it creates an explosion that deals quadruple the normal damage of applying other wands to yourself and all monsters on surrounding squares, and may destroy rings and wands.[13]

Strategy
Wands of lightning are a powerful offensive item through much of the game, since very few monsters resist shock; however, it is just as devastating to you should you encounter one in the hands of an early-game monster, and can prove to be an annoyance later on if a soldier or another monster surprises you with a bolt that destroys valuable rings such as slow digestion. Reflection is naturally the best defense after shock resistance against monsters with wands of lightning, but it also helps to have a means of curing blindness (e.g. a unicorn horn) and a way to safely stash your magical items.
A wand of lightning can be useful to blast apart annoying wands in a hostile monster's inventory, such as a wand of digging used by a constantly-fleeing opponent; conversely, avoid using the wand on monsters that have wands and rings you wish to preserve, such as a wand of death or rings of levitation and free action.
Breaking a wand of lightning can be powerful as a means of crowd control, but will also deal immense damage to you unless you are shock-resistant, and will also endanger valuable rings and wands in your inventory. If doing so, be sure to briefly stash whatever vulnerable items you have in a bag or other container, unless you either have none or are otherwise going to die soon.
The wand of lightning is also a very useful tool to engrave a durable Elbereth well into even the late-game, particularly for pacifist conduct where you will be reliant on such engravings to deter hostile monsters.

History
The wand of lightning first appears in NetHack 2.3e.

Messages
You are blinded by the flash!
You were blinded by a bolt of lightning.
Your arm tingles.
While blinded, a bolt of lightning was fired at you and missed.
References

↑ dat/Healer.des in NetHack 3.6.7, line 239

↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3065: nd is 6

↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3711

↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3716: in zhitm().  Despite code to add d50 turns of blindness capped at 127, no additional turns of blindness are actually added to already-blind monsters, because blinded monsters resist further blindness.

↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 4127: the code calls zhitm() only on a non-reflected hit

↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 4233

↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2646: flashburn(); note that it calls resists_blnd(), which returns TRUE if you are already blind or otherwise resist blindness.

↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2295

↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 5112

↑ src/engrave.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 791

↑ src/engrave.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1162

↑ src/engrave.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1034: cancelling the prompt causes doengrave() to return early

↑ src/apply.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3367