What is Channeling?

Channeling is an enchantment in Minecraft that’s unique to tridents. It allows the player to strike mobs, other players, and lightning rods with a lightning bolt upon the trident hitting them. It can also strike entities such as armor stands. This effect requires the thrown trident to make contact with an entity, and you can only activate the enchantment when there’s currently a thunderstorm occurring.

Uses for Channeling

Channeling has quite a few interesting uses.

One of the main uses for channeling is combat, as it’s actually quite effective at combat when it can be used. This makes it one of the best ranged weapons to use in the game when you’re in the niche situation of fighting in a thunderstorm.

Channeling is also great for turning mobs into their alternate versions. Such as turning creepers into charged creepers, villagers into witches, pigs into zombified piglins, and red mooshrooms into brown mooshrooms. You can turn brown mooshrooms into red ones as well, but brown mooshrooms do not naturally spawn in the game, so this is the only way to obtain them without natural lightning and luck.

Limits with Channeling

As stated before, channeling can only be used in thunderstorms, but there are additional restrictions when it comes to the enchantment.

In Java Edition, mobs cannot be struck with lightning when on certain types of blocks, such as soul sand, snow (with a snow layer of 8 or higher) on a honey block, or when they’re in a cobweb, lava, water, and powder snow. The enchantment also does not activate when they are inside a boat or minecart, unless they are a passive mob.

It is possible to still affect entities with the lightning near it if it happens to strike something else that meets the proper conditions. Which is useful for situations where you still need to turn a mob into something different once using lightning.

While the enchantment can covert mobs, it cannot convert or spawn a skeleton trap horse, despite summoning lightning, which is the usual requirement for one.

Enchantment Compatibility

Due to the enchantment needing a trident to be thrown, it’s completely incompatible with riptide. Even if you were to use commands to get both enchantments on the same item, it would simply ignore channeling, as it cannot be activated without being thrown. This is one of the only incompatibilities, and most other enchantments will work with the trident.

On the other hand, the loyalty enchantment works very well with channeling, as it allows you to strike your enemies multiple times with lightning while remaining distant. This is a very effective combination and should usually be paired together when possible.

Obtainable achievements using channeling.

There are a few achievements players can do quite easily by using a trident with channeling on it. While there are simple ones that can be done with any trident, such as the achievement throwaway joke, these specifically require a channeling trident to do easily. The two notable ones are surge protector and very very frightening.

Surge protector is quite easy, as it’s only required to save a villager from an undesired shock. You can simply place a lightning rod near a villager and use the trident on it. Be careful not to set anything nearby on fire, however.

For Very very frightening, you’ll simply need to use the trident on a villager directly, usually meaning you’ll create a witch in the process.

How do I obtain Channeling?

There are quite a few ways to obtain the channeling enchantment. It’s a rather rare enchantment, meaning that while there are multiple ways to obtain it, it’s generally quite uncommon.

Enchantment Table

A possible way to obtain the enchantment is through an enchanting table (though the enchantment is quite rare at enchanting tables). Using 1-3 lapis lazuli (depending on the enchantment level), you can obtain it by random chance at any level of the enchantment. You can either enchant the tool directly or enchant a book to see if you happen to get the enchantment. Then you can follow the directions below to apply the book to your tools.

Fishing

One of the possible ways is through fishing using a fishing pole, where you have a random chance to fish for the enchantment along with other enchantments. You can use the luck of the sea enchantment to increase this chance further. This is an important enchantment if you plan on using this method quite a bit.

Trading

Players can obtain the channeling enchantment from villager trades with librarian villagers. Due to the fact that channeling only has one level, you should easily be able to find the enchantment using this method. By breaking and placing down the librarian’s lectern, you can reset their trades. This can be done an infinite number of times by trapping the villager in a small space and constantly breaking and replacing the lectern. However, once you purchase anything from that librarian, the trade will be locked, regardless of whether it is reset.

Raids

Players can also obtain the enchantment from raid drops. Raids are called upon when a player walks into a village with a “bad omen” status effect. By killing the invaders, you can obtain different loot, including the enchantment. This is notable for only the Bedrock Edition of Minecraft.

Exploration

You can also find the channeling enchantment in different chest loot from different naturally spawned structures in Minecraft. While this isn’t a guaranteed way, it’s good to check these structures if you need the enchantment.

Applying the enchantment

Once you receive the enchanted book with channeling, you can use an anvil to apply the enchantment to your trident. It can be applied to both unenchanted items and items with other enchantments on them.

Game Commands

You can apply the channeling enchantment to your trident by using in-game commands as well. By using the command “/enchant @p channeling 1,” you can apply the enchantment to your tool. It does not matter if you try and use a higher number, as the enchantment does not change if you try and have a level higher than one.