The Lightning Rod in Stardew is a great tool for players who are looking to make their first battery packs. Similarly, battery packs can become a great crafting ingredient for other items in the game, so it’s worthwhile to have one.
However, not many players pay attention to the Lightning Rod at first. They focus their attention on the animals, growing their plants, and fishing. Still, if you want to try out everything there is to try in the game and be as efficient as possible, trust us, you’re gonna need the Lightning Rod.
In this guide, you’ll find a plethora of information about the Stardew Lightning Rod. This, of course, includes the most important information: how to get a Lightning Rod and why to use one. Without further ado, let’s get into it!
What does the Lightning Rod do in Stardew Valley?
The Stardew Valley Lightning Rod is essentially the first step to creating a Battery Pack. It’s also a great tool for protecting your farm from lightning that occurs during a storm.
If you don’t have a Lightning Rod on your farm, chances are you’re finding random pieces of farm debris, destroyed trees (including fruit trees), or even dead crops. This is all caused by the lack of Lightning Rods to intercept the lightning striking your farm.
Not being on your farm doesn’t save your crops from lightning strikes, either. However, it also doesn’t stop the lightning from striking the Rods, imbuing them with lightning.
There is no other known use for the Lightning Rod in Stardew Valley.
Does a lightning rod’s location matter?
Many fans of the game have theorized that there’s a strategy to placing Lightning Rods on your farm. Some have even tested it out in various ways. Logically, it sort of makes sense. If you have multiple Lightning Rods spread out across the farm, you’re likely to cover more area where the lightning hits, right?
However, it’s a surprise to find out that no, the location of the Lightning Rod doesn’t matter. Lightning Rods don’t protect a specific area on the farm. The only thing that matters is how many Rods there are on your farm. There’s even a special formula to help you calculate the chances. We’ll talk about the details of this later, so keep reading to find out!
Does a lightning strike give you a battery pack each time?
No, a lightning strike doesn’t give you a battery pack immediately. When lightning strikes a Lightning Rod, the Rod goes into a processing state for the rest of the day. This means it can’t intercept any more lightning strikes and you cannot interact with it further.
After the Lightning Rod goes into a processing state, you’ll have to wait until the next day to pick up your battery pack from the Rod. This means you’ll need multiple Lightning Rods around your farm to get more than one battery pack per day. It also means that only having one Lightning Rod on your farm will only protect your crops, trees, and everything else once. You need to have more so you can redirect the lightning multiple times.
Other ways to get battery packs aside from the Lightning Rod
The Lightning Rod is not the only way to obtain a battery pack in Stardew Valley. There are several other ways to do so. While some of them may be easier than others, Lightning Rods are the easiest and most effortless way to get one. Still, if you’re not interested in having a farm, here are the other ways you can get a battery pack in Stardew.
The first is the Traveling Merchant cart. You can buy them from the lady for 1500-2000g. Another way to get the Lightning Rod is through the Skull Cavern, where you can break the boxes and crates. If you’re good friends with Kent or Pam, you may receive a battery pack from them through the mail. Finally, Iridium Bats have a 5% chance to drop a battery pack.
As a side note, completing the Children’s Bundle in the Community Center also gives you a battery pack!
Does the Lightning Rod actually protect from lightning?
Yes and no. The Lightning Rod protects you from lightning as long as you have an uncharged Lightning Rod on the farm.
The number of lightning strikes you get in a day has nothing to do with the amount of Lightning Rods on your farm, but rather with your daily Luck. The higher your Luck is on that day, the more lightning strikes you will get on your farm. This is another reason checking the TV as soon as you wake up in Stardew Valley is a good habit to form.
The game generally tries to generate a lightning strike every 10 minutes while the player character is awake and every hour when the player is asleep. However, the game doesn’t generate lightning strikes past 11:50 PM.
What are the chances a lightning strike will be intercepted
The chances of a Lightning Rod intercepting a lightning strike depend directly on the amount of Lightning Rods available on the farm. The chances go down as more Lightning Rods become charged.
There is a simple formula for this, and it goes as follows:
Chance to intercept = 1 – (number of charged lightning rods / total number of lightning rods).
If there are no charged lightning rods on the farm, there is a 100% chance the lightning strike will be intercepted.
If 90% of the Lightning Rods on the farm are charged, there is only a 19% chance the lightning strike will be intercepted.
It’s useful to place a bigger number of Lightning Rods to ensure the strikes don’t cause any damage to your farm.
Fun Fact: Infinite grass with Lightning Rod
If you’re tired of constantly buying grass starters from Pierre, look no further than the infinite grass glitch!
All you need to do is buy one grass starter from Pierre and place a Lightning Rod on it. As it grows and spreads, your farm animals will eat it. However, they will never be able to eat the patch of grass that’s on the Lightning Rod. This patch of grass can keep expanding for as long as you keep the Lightning Rod on it.
This essentially means you’ll never have to buy another grass starter again, as you can just keep regrowing grass from that same starter you bought from Pierre. That is if you don’t mind the aesthetics of having a Lightning Rod standing on some grass.
Two ways you can get a Lightning Rod | Stardew Valley
Now, let’s get to the juicy part: how to get a Stardew Lightning Rod.
There are only two ways to obtain this coveted farm tool for your own farm. It’s worth noting that one of them is so much easier than the other, though.
The easiest way to obtain a Lightning Rod is to craft it. You can get the recipe after leveling your Foraging skill to level 6. Once you’ve done that, all you need is one Iron Bar, one Refined Quartz, and five Bat Wings to craft it.
The other way to obtain a Lightning Rod in Stardew is to complete the 10,000 Bundle in the Vault. It seems fairly easy as you only have to press one button, but the hard part is accruing the 10,000g that will help you buy the bundle. The bundle provides you with one Lightning Rod.
