Phoenix Rod

The Phoenix Rod is a powerful weapon from Heretic. This golden winged rod is powered by Flame Orbs. It launches fireballs that explode with splash damage which can hurt the player if he is too close. Each fireball does 20-160 points of damage, in round multiples of 20, plus a blast radius of 128 units (taking a direct hit automatically incurs the full 128 additional points). This mode is equivalent to Doom's rocket launcher. The Phoenix Rod can be chanced first in E2M3: The River of Fire where it is placed in a non-secret, albeit tricky, part of the lava river. By contrast, the following map, E2M4: The Ice Grotto, has the Rod sitting on an obvious position, allowing the player to finally grab the weapon if he missed it on the previous level.

When enhanced by a Tome of Power, the Phoenix Rod behaves like a flamethrower, pumping out a torrent of fire for 10 seconds that causes 2-16 damage per tic, or 70-560 damage per second. The Phoenix Rod's normal fireballs pass through ghosts without harming them. However, its splash damage and power mode flames will damage ghosts. Maximum capacity is 20 shots, or 40 with the Bag of Holding.

Appearance statistics
In the IWADs the Phoenix Rod is first encountered on these maps per skill level:

The IWADs contain the following numbers of Phoenix Rods per skill level: