Lightning Spell/Home Village

For the Clan Capital counterpart, see Lightning Spell/Clan Capital.

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"Electrocute your enemies with a bolt of lightning!
Cast this spell at the enemy village to damage and stun buildings and units inside a small area."

Summary

• The Lightning Spell is the first Elixir spell unlocked in the Spell Factory, and is automatically unlocked once the Spell Factory has finished being built, requiring the Town Hall to be at level 5. The Lightning Spell does damage to Buildings and enemy Troops in a small radius, with the exception of resource storages, the Town Hall, and the Clan Castle. If a Defensive Building or troop is struck by the bolt, it is stunned briefly and retargets.

Strategy

Offensive

• Lightning Spells are often used to take out an enemy's strong defenses, such as Mortars, Wizard Towers, X-Bows, Eagle Artillery and Air Defenses, which paves the way for troops to attack. Three or four Lightning Spells will usually suffice against them, unless the building has very high health or the spell is low leveled. 10 level 9 Lightning Spells can take out a level 4 Eagle Artillery.
  • In combination with the Earthquake Spell, Lightning Spells can be used in large numbers to destroy high hitpoint buildings such as the Eagle Artillery or Scattershot directly; however, this is often not worth it unless you can destroy at least two such buildings, or otherwise get value (such as by defeating the enemy Archer Queen at the same time).
• A common use is to use lure Clan Castle troops near defenses and then drop a Lightning Spell to eliminate the troops if their health is low enough and simultaneously damage the defenses in its radius. Lightning Spells can be used to kill/damage Heroes directly too.
  • However, if one simply wants to take out enemy troops, Poison Spell does better since it does more damage and slows them. However, Poison doesn't affect structures.
• If you need to destroy just one more building to reach 50% destruction, Lightning Spells can be used to destroy a Builder's Hut or Hero Altars. This is even more useful when it is sufficiently upgraded (as you would only need one when upgraded to level 5 or higher).
  • While the Barbarian King, Archer Queen, and Royal Champion altars can be destroyed with no problem, the Grand Warden Altar can only be readily destroyed if the defending Grand Warden is inactive. Otherwise, the Grand Warden Altar will assume the Grand Warden's hitpoints on defense, which is too much for a single Lightning Spell to destroy.
  • Only unweaponized (level 1) Builder's Huts can be destroyed by a single Lightning Spell; if the Builder's Hut is weaponized (upgraded to level 2 or higher), at least two or three Lightning Spells will be needed to destroy it.
  • It is also possible to have the Lightning Spell as a Clan Castle spell to prevent always having to rebrew it each attack and using it in this specific occasion.
• Some farming strategies such as Barch or Super Barbarians often do not need spell support. Lightning Spells are useful to fill up the spell space, so that resource collectors that are out of reach of these strategies can be damaged and looted, or to achieve 50% as described above. Note that using the Lightning Spell on the Town Hall, Clan Castle or resource storages does no damage to them.
• Lightning Spells can also be used as pseudo-Wall Breakers if necessary. Often your troops will have partially damaged a Wall during a raid before being wiped out by the defenses. As a result, other troops may be targeting buildings other than the ones you intended, because a path wasn't opened for them. If the Wall is lower level or sufficiently damaged, you may be able to use one or more Lightning Spells to finish off the Wall and open the path.
  • However, beyond low-level gameplay, Walls often have too much hitpoints for this to be practical. Earthquake Spells and Jump Spells can be used instead.
• Lightning Spells can damage multiple buildings at once if they are sufficiently close together. Keep an eye out for grouped defenses (especially groups of defenses that complement each other), as they can often be severely damaged or destroyed with a few Lightning Spells.
  • When trying to damage multiple buildings at once with a Lightning Spell, there are several ways to visualize its area of effect. One easy visualization is as follows: if dropped at the center of a tile, it will affect exactly 21 tiles - a 5x5 area (centered on the tile where the Lightning Spell is dropped) with the four corners removed.
• At Town Hall 8, a level 6 Air Defense can be destroyed with 4 level 5 Lightning Spells if done properly, thus making room for an extra Rage Spell that will dramatically improve mass Dragon attacks.
  • If you have 4 level 4 Lightning Spells and can get an Earthquake Spell (from donation or yourself), that will also destroy a level 6 Air Defense.
• At Town Hall 10, new TH10's have a great disadvantage against other TH10s in mass Dragon attacks as they have no Inferno Towers and a level 7 (maxed TH9) Air Defense can be destroyed easily by 3 level 7 Lightning Spells. 11+1 Lightning Spells can take out all of the enemy's Air Defenses and depending on layout both X-Bows, rendering the enemy nearly defenceless (with only the Archer Queen, Archer Towers, Wizard Towers, Air Sweepers and possibly Clan Castle troops able to defend).
• Both the Lightning and Freeze Spells can disrupt the damage of a single-target Inferno Tower since it stuns. Lightning Spells are better used when Inferno Tower has low health, as the Inferno Tower is only left inactive for a short amount of time.

Defensive

• Separate important defenses. Having only one important defense (the defending Archer Queen, Eagle Artillery, Scattershot, etc.) in one area will prevent attackers from getting value from their massive amounts of Lightning Spells.
  • A good way to do this is to have multiple cores in your base, with maybe two or three sections. Separating these sections can also be a good idea, although not really doing anything against Lightning Spells themselves.
• Separate your Air Defenses from your Air Sweepers. Letting attackers destroy both your Air Defenses and at least one Air Sweeper is a death sentence from Dragon or Lavaloon attacks, as the Air Sweeper is also key in defending against them.

Statistics

Statistic Modifiers

Input values into these modifiers below to modify the statistics in the tables below accordingly

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Gold Pass modifiers

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Rocket Balloon Spotlight modifiers

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ApplyReset

Damage Radius	Stun Time	Housing Space	Spell Factory Level Required
2 tiles	0.1s*	1	1

Brewing Time of Lightning Spell
Spell Factory available	Spell Factory upgrading
3m	6m

Level	Damage	Research Cost	Research Time	Laboratory Level Required
1	150	N/A	N/A	N/A
2	180	50,000	4h	1
3	210	100,000	8h	2
4	240	200,000	12h	3
5	270	600,000	1d	6
6	320	1,500,000	3d	7
7	400	2,500,000	4d	8
8	480	4,200,000	6d	9
9	560	6,300,000	7d	10
10	600	16,000,000	12d 12h	13
11	640	18,500,000	14d	14

*This is an approximation; it is currently unknown how long the spell actually stuns for.

History

Patch	Type	Description
September 18, 2012	Sneak Peek	Supercell published a teaser of Lightning Spell on Facebook.
September 19, 2012	Update	Added the Lightning Spell, with 5 levels.
October 27, 2012	Update	Reduced brewing time from 14h to 2h.
February 5, 2013	Update	Reduced brewing time from 2h to 1h.
April 17, 2013	Update	Reduced brewing time from 1h to 30m.
June 17, 2013	Update	Added the level 6 Lightning Spell. The battle won't end automatically if player has unused Lightning Spells.
November 6, 2013	Update	The Lightning Spell, along with other spells, now cost Elixir instead of Gold to brew.
December 11, 2014	Update	Changed the level display from pink asterisk(s) to a number.
July 1, 2015	Update	Lightning Spells no longer damage storages. Reduced brewing time from 30m to 20m.
September 9, 2015	Update	Added the level 7 Lightning Spell. Increased damage at levels 5 and 6. Level 5: 420 -> 450 Level 6: 450 -> 510 Lightning Spell bolts now strike closer together to miss less often.
May 4, 2016	Balance Changes	Reduced brewing time from 20m to 10m.
October 12, 2016	Update	Reduced brewing time from 10m to 6m.
June 11, 2018	Update	Increased total damage at levels 2-7. Level 2: 330 -> 360 Level 3: 360 -> 420 Level 4: 390 -> 480 Level 5: 450 -> 540 Level 6: 510 -> 600 Level 7: 570 -> 660 Increased damage per strike at levels 2-7. Level 2: 55 -> 60 Level 3: 60 -> 70 Level 4: 65 -> 80 Level 5: 75 -> 90 Level 6: 85 -> 100 Level 7: 95 -> 110
June 26, 2018	Balance Changes	Reduced upgrade time at level 6 from 10d to 6d 12h.
April 2, 2019	Update	Reduced upgrade time at levels 6 and 7. Level 6: 6d 12h -> 6d Level 7: 14d -> 10d
June 22, 2020	Update	Added the levels 8 and 9 Lightning Spell. Reworked the Lightning Spell. Instead of striking randomly in a large radius, produces a single lightning bolt which strikes in a small radius and can stun briefly. Its housing space has also been reduced to 1 which affected the icon (damage, brewing cost and time were also adjusted accordingly). Prior to the update, Lightning took two housing spaces, struck randomly six times with less powerful bolts each within the AOE, did not have a stun effect, and did not produce particles after striking the ground. Lightning Spells no longer damage Town Halls.
December 7, 2020	Update	Lightning Spells no longer damage Clan Castles.
December 9, 2021	Update	Reduced upgrade costs and times at levels 2-8.
October 10, 2022	Update	Added the level 10 Lightning Spell.

Trivia

• Although the Lightning Spell can be upgraded to level 2 in the level 1 Laboratory, only Troops, and Spells that are already unlocked will appear in the Laboratory upgrade interface. The Lightning Spell will not appear in the Laboratory until the Spell Factory is built (which requires Town Hall level 5). Most players already have a level 3 Laboratory by that time; if so, the first three upgrades will be available as soon as construction of the Spell Factory finishes.
• Similar to the Bomb and Giant Bomb, the Lightning Spell leaves black scorch marks where the lightning hit, which remains for a few seconds.
• During the 2013, 2014, and 2015 Halloween event, the spark effect which the Lightning Spell normally produced was temporarily replaced with a swarm of bats.
• Out of all the spells, the Lightning Spell has the highest level, being 9.
• For a 2015 April fools prank Supercell said that Gem Boxes would be affected by Lightning Spells as well as other pranks.
• The Lightning Spell, Healing Spell, and Rage Spell were the first spells to be added to the game.
• Prior to the June 2020 update that changed the Lightning Spell, the old description was Electrocute your enemies with bolts of lightning!
  Cast this spell at the enemy village to damage Buildings and units inside a small area.
• The reworked Lightning bears resemblance to the Zap spell in Clash Royale instead, but it wasn't renamed. This, however, did not affect the Lightning spell in Clash Royale which keeps its appearance, and abilities, such as being able to stun buildings for a short amount of time.