Channeling in Minecraft: Summon Lightning With a Trident

Channeling makes a thrown trident call down a lightning bolt on whatever it hits, as long as there’s a thunderstorm. It has one level, goes only on tridents, and conflicts with Riptide.

What it needs to work

• A thunderstorm. Plain rain isn’t enough to strike a mob. It works even in dry biomes like deserts during a storm.
• Open sky. No blocks of any kind can be above the target, not even glass or leaves.
• On Java, the target can’t be in water, lava, powder snow, cobweb, or standing on soul sand, honey or mud. Lightning that hits next to it still affects it, though.

On Bedrock, there’s one extra trick: hitting a lightning rod with a Channeling trident summons lightning during any rain, not just thunderstorms.

Turning mobs into other mobs

Lightning from Channeling works like any lightning strike, so you can use it to transform mobs:

Mob	Becomes
Creeper	Charged creeper
Pig	Zombified piglin
Villager	Witch
Red mooshroom	Brown mooshroom (and back)

Charged creepers are the useful one. Their explosion makes zombies, skeletons, creepers, wither skeletons and piglins drop their heads, which is the only way to farm most mob heads. Brown mooshrooms are handy too: feed one a flower, then milk it with a bowl, and you get suspicious stew with that flower’s effect.

Be careful near villages. One stray hit turns a villager into a witch for good.

Getting it

Channeling rolls on the enchanting table for tridents and comes on books from fishing and chests. Librarians sell it in default trading; the experimental Villager Trade Rebalance removes trident books.

Is it worth it?

On a Loyalty trident, yes. It costs nothing in normal weather and gives you lightning damage plus mob transformations during storms. It’s useless on a Riptide trident, which is why the two conflict. See the trident enchantment guide for the full build.