Stardew Valley – Can Lightning Rods Prevent Trees from Being Hit by Lightning

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I had a fully mature fruit tree get hit by lightning one day, destroying the tree and leaving behind a useless stump.

Can placing lightning rods near trees prevent them from being hit by lightning? If so, how close does the rod have to be to the tree?

Best Answer

Originally, Lightning rods are for harvesting purposes only and have no ability to prevent lightning from damaging crops/trees. Source is from this Feb 4th tweet by ConcernedApe (the dev).

As of Patch 1.7, this was changed:

Lightning is more likely to strike trees and crops, but lightning rods now have a very good chance of intercepting lightning strikes (if they aren't already processing a lightning bolt)

So, Lighting Rods can now draw lightning strikes in assuming they aren't charging from a strike already. In this 1.7 patch beta thread, the developer Concerned Ape notes that rods can intercept from anywhere.