Channeling Overhaul

Channeling Overhaul

Русская версия

Channeling stops being “lightning in a thunderstorm” and becomes a charge mechanic. A stuck trident gathers electricity from the sky, copper and lightning rods amplify it, and the trident releases it into the mob it hits as a chain discharge. Higher Channeling levels (up to XXXI with Apothic Enchanting) give a larger gathering radius, more capacity and more chain hops.

Unofficial addon for Apothic Enchanting, not affiliated with or endorsed by Shadows_of_Fire.

Chain discharge through water

Requirements

Apothic Attributes 3.0.0 crashes on NeoForge 26.1.2.70-beta and newer when a mob is hit, regardless of this mod. Use 3.0.1 or newer there.

Install the mod on both the server and the client.

How it works

Charge

• The charge lives in the trident item. The tooltip shows it as Charge: X / Y.
• Outside of charging (in the inventory, in hand, in flight) the charge slowly leaks, with a half-life of 150 seconds. You can charge up at a station and then go fight.
• Only tridents with Channeling hold a charge.

Charging at a copper station

Charging station

The main charging happens while the trident is stuck in a block. Throw it into the ground and it starts gathering charge within its radius R, once every 10 ticks, without leaking.

Sky. Charge comes only from the sky, so the trident needs open sky above it. Without it nothing charges. Biomes without precipitation (desert, savanna) always count as clear.

What amplifies the inflow:

• Copper around the trident works as an antenna and multiplies the inflow. Closer blocks count more. Oxidation lowers conductivity: clean 1.0, exposed 0.75, weathered 0.5, oxidized 0.25. Waxed copper keeps its stage. All copper shapes count: blocks, cut, chiseled, grates, bulbs, doors, trapdoors and so on.
• Lightning rods add more: the closest one gives the most, each next one half as much.
• Water source blocks give a small bonus, at most +0.3.
• The total antenna multiplier is capped at ×3.

Lightning

Any lightning bolt striking within R of a stuck trident adds charge at once:

• +50% of Qmax if it strikes a lightning rod;
• +25% of Qmax anywhere else.

One bolt charges every stuck trident within range. This is the fastest way to fill high levels in a thunderstorm.

Windup

While you hold right click with the trident, it tops up at half the inflow at your position (open sky required). Windup never raises the charge above 30% of Qmax.

Discharge

• The charge is spent only when a thrown trident hits a mob and holds at least 3 charge. The whole charge goes into the discharge.
• A miss into a block keeps the charge. So does a hit blocked by a shield or one that deals no damage.
• Melee attacks never spend the charge.
• Damage to the target: D = 0.6 × Q × M, where M is the target’s vulnerability (below).
• A strong discharge (at least 50% of Qmax) strikes the target with a harmless visual lightning bolt and plays the trident’s thunder horn. A weak one only crackles.
• The vanilla Channeling effect (lightning on hit in a thunderstorm) still works as before.

The vulnerability M starts at 1 and is capped at 2:

• +0.15 per piece of gold or copper armor;
• +0.12 per piece of netherite;
• +0.10 per piece of iron or chainmail;
• +0.25 if the target is wet (in water or in rain);
• leather, diamond and turtle shell give 0.

Chain

After the primary target the discharge jumps to the nearest mob not yet hit:

• The reach is 4 blocks, or 6 to a conductive target (metal armor or wet).
• Each hop deals 0.6 of the previous one, multiplied by its own target’s M.
• There is a short delay between hops, so you can watch the chain.
• Number of hops: min(8, ⌊L / 3⌋).

The chain never hits you, your tamed animals, your team allies, or players when PvP is off. With PvP on it hits other players; you can turn that off in the server config.

Water

If the primary target stands in water, the discharge also hits every living entity in water within min(8, 3 + L / 5) blocks. The damage falls off with distance: 0.4 × 0.6 × Q × (1 − d / r) × M. Every entity is hit at most once per discharge, whether by the target hit, the water or the chain.

Loyalty and keeping the trident

• Loyalty in copper. A Loyalty + Channeling trident that hits copper or a lightning rod stays stuck and charges, instead of returning. Pick it up by hand. It returns as usual from any other block, or when the block under it is broken.
• Channeling tridents don’t despawn. A stuck trident with Channeling that you can pick up stays until you take it, so a station keeps working longer than a minute. Tridents thrown in creative mode or by mobs despawn as in vanilla.

Visuals and sound

• Sparks fly from copper, rods and the sky to a charging trident.
• The trident sprite glows in four steps as it fills (in the inventory, on the ground, in item frames and on shelves; not yet in hand).
• A full trident chimes once.
• Chains draw a zigzag of sparks between targets.

How to build a charging station

1. Pick a spot with open sky. Nothing above the trident, not even glass.
2. Lay a 6×6 platform of waxed copper. Waxed copper doesn’t oxidize, so it keeps its conductivity.
3. Put a lightning rod on a copper block in the platform’s second row from the near edge.
4. Optionally, put copper lanterns on the corners.
5. Throw the trident into the same row, 2 blocks from the rod, and wait, best of all for a thunderstorm.

Top view; the top row is the far edge in the screenshot:

  L # # # # L      #  waxed copper
  # # # # # #      x  trident
  # # # # # #      R  lightning rod on a copper block
  # # # # # #      L  copper lanterns (optional)
  # # x # R #
  L # # # # L

How this station charges, with the default config, an empty trident, a rain biome and no lightning strikes:

From level V up the platform alone reaches the ×3 cap, so more copper doesn’t help; the lanterns only matter at low levels. Under bare sky the same trident needs three times as long: 4 minutes for V and 13 minutes for XX in rain. A lightning strike into the rod adds another +50% Qmax at once.

Water source blocks nearby give a small bonus (up to +0.3 to A), but they aren’t required.

Use /channeling station next to a stuck trident to see what charges it.

Levels

Defaults of the server config.

Formulas: Qmax = 10 + 6·L, R = min(16, 2 + 2·√L), hops = min(8, ⌊L / 3⌋). For reference, a vanilla thrown trident deals 8 damage.

Commands

All commands need operator permission (level 2) and are meant for testing stations and balance. The charge commands act on the trident with Channeling in your main hand.

Configuration

All balance numbers and switches are in the server config, serverconfig/channeling_overhaul-server.toml inside the world folder. Put a copy into defaultconfigs/ to use it for new worlds. NeoForge syncs it to clients.

Switches worth knowing:

The client config, config/channeling_overhaul-client.toml, has one option: particles (ALL, REDUCED, MINIMAL), how many of the mod’s particles to draw.

The full list of options with defaults and ranges is in the README on GitHub.

Data packs

A data pack can change which blocks conduct, how much armor raises vulnerability, which mobs the chain and the water ignore, and the Channeling levels of the enchanting table. The formats and examples are in the README on GitHub.

Compatibility

• Lightning protection. The mod’s damage types are in the tag #minecraft:is_lightning, so mods that protect from lightning by that tag protect from discharges too.
• Attributes and crits. Discharges are dealt as the trident owner’s damage, so kills count for the player and armor reduces the damage. Apothic Attributes rolls critical strikes on discharges like on any damage from a living attacker. To turn that off, add channeling_overhaul:discharge, channeling_overhaul:discharge_chain and channeling_overhaul:discharge_water to #apothic_attributes:cannot_critically_strike. Apotheosis itself is optional and not tested yet.
• Apothic Enchanting table. Channeling goes up to XXXI. Up to XXV the power the table needs grows as 4·L, after that as 100 + 15·(L − 25). Rough guide: V — 20, X — 40, XX — 80, XXV — 100, XXX — 175 (maximum Eterna and a lucky Quanta), XXXI — 190, practically only on an anvil (XXX + XXX). Channeling from loot stays at level I.
• Riptide stays incompatible with Channeling, as in vanilla.

Balance status

This is a beta. All numbers are starting values from the design document and have not been tuned in a playtest yet. Balance tuning is deferred until there is feedback from players.

Please report what feels too strong, too weak or broken in Issues. Mention your Channeling level, your station setup and the weather.

Source code

Source code, the design document with all formulas and build instructions are on GitHub.

License and credits

MIT © 2026 equi.

• Shadows_of_Fire for Apothic Enchanting, Apothic Attributes and Placebo.
• thedarkcolour for Kotlin for Forge.
• The NeoForged team.

Developed with the help of Claude Code (AI coding assistant).