Thunder Charge

lightning

Lightning Spells

Lightning Bolt

The primordial force of nature

Thunder Charge

A projectile with immense stored electricity

Ball Lightning

Summons three short range electrical orbs

Lightning Bounce

Makes a projectile release powerful lightning as it bounces

Thundercloud

Creates a thundercloud

Explosion of Thunder

An electric explosion

Spells which have one or more lightning effects. These are distinct from spells doing Electricity damage, having a Lightning Component.

Thunder Charge is a slow-moving projectile spell that resembles the attack used by Ukko. It carries huge destructive potential, inflicting both Electricity and Explosion damage from a large explosion, as well as 8 secondary bolts of Lightning. It also has the rare property of pulverising nearby terrain into powder.

Tips

The damage potential of this spell is not to be underestimated. Take extreme care when firing it as it can very easily kill you if you don't have the Electricity Immunity or Electricity perks (and preferably the Explosion Immunity or Exploding Corpses perk as well).
Liquids and steel conduct electricity, causing this spell to potentially shock enemies (or you) indirectly.
Wands containing electric damage spells like this one gain the same effect given by Electric Torch. This can shock you even if you aren't firing the wand. Avoid holding electric wands when submerged in liquid.
Due to the powder-creating effect of the explosion, you can use this spell to slowly scrape away from below at undiggable materials like Steel, or the brickwork of Holy Mountain. However, be aware that despite being turned into powder these materials retain their hardness, and so the powder can block passages it falls into.
The explosion effect will destroy liquids.

Effect sequence

While alive the unmodified projectile lives for up to 100 frames, or dies on collision with terrain or entities. It is unaffected by gravity.

Upon collision:

The projectile explodes, inflicting 45 Explosion damage and 37.5 Electricity damage to entities within an explosion radius of 50 pixels.
A short-lived secondary projectile is spawned, this lives only briefly before exploding, inflicting 62.5 Explosion damage. This explosion counts as a Trick kill.
Finally, 8 tertiary projectiles are spawned. These resemble Lightning Bolts but only do 25 Electricity damage each.

The primary explosion can be enhanced with one copy of Explosive Projectile, boosting its damage to 325. The secondary and tertiary projectiles cannot be modified. Only the primary and secondary projectiles cause the terrain crumbling effect.

Effect on Terrain

Rapidly turning the world to dust with Thunder Charge.

After the spell explodes, parts of the terrain near and above the explosion will erode and drip a powder version of the material it came from. Other than solidity, the material retains the exact same properties - Cursed Rock, for example, will continue to do contact damage.

The powdered materials cannot be picked up using a Powder Pouch, nor can they be vacuumed using Powder Vacuum Field. The powdered material falls under gravity and forms piles, spreading sideways as it rolls down the side of the growing pile. Motionless powdered materials will revert to their solid form after the chunk is unloaded (e.g. after you move a screen-width or two away and come back). This can be used along with a mold to cast materials such as Holy Mountain Brickwork and Extremely Dense Rock into intricate shapes. The re-solidified materials retain their original texture.

Be careful not to become buried! Since the powdered materials retain their original hardness (and resistence to spells), if you become buried in them digging yourself out will require the same digging strength as for the original material. Thunder Charge is unliekly to be able to help get you out when buried, unless there is a void beneath you and you can cast it remotely, e.g. using Long Distance Cast.

Falling, powdered, Dense and Extremely Dense Rock quickly generate large amounts of Moss, which becomes mixed into the piled material. The moss is easily removed with Powder Vacuum Field, and this is a good way to generate a large volume of Moss. If you remove the moss while the material is still powdered it will compact down to a solid, or to create a 'sponge' of rock, wait until it solidifies and then remove the moss.