Chill

Chill (ムース Mousse) is a Mercury Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Chill is the fifth Mercury Djinni in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Chill and all other Mercury Djinn introduced in The Lost Age before the seven Mercury Djinn from the original Golden Sun, most likely because all the Djinn from the original game can be gotten all at once late in The Lost Age. However, the original Djinn are ordered before all of the Djinn introduced in The Lost Age in the Djinn inventory screen while they are allocated to characters. By this order, Chill is the twelfth Mercury Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the fifth.

Chill is the first Mercury Djinni in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Basic description
When Set, Chill increases base HP by 10, base Psynergy Points by 3, and base Defense by 2.

When Chill is unleashed in battle, the user deals a Mercury-based attack equal in power to the user's normal physical attack with an additional 40 damage points added to the result. Then, there is a chance that the target will have its Defense rating lowered by 25% temporarily.

In The Lost Age, Chill's unleash animation visually resembles the user performing a normal attack, but stopping in place before the strike while a light blue image of a Mercury Djinni forms above the user and gathers blue energy orbs into itself. Then the image disappears into the strike, and a particularly thick gray mist is emitted on impact. In Dark Dawn, the 3D model of Chill is surrounded in front of the target, and Chill floats around as lobs of blue icy fluid appear and drop down on parts of the ground the target is standing on, before the target is hit from above by something invisible.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Chill use the damage dealt by the attacker's standard physical attack as the base damage to be later modified. The total amount of damage dealt by a normal physical attack is half the difference between the attacker's Attack statistic and the target's Defense statistic, as this equation shows:


 * ''base damage = (Attacker's Attack - Target's Defense) / 2

Chill's attack then takes this base damage value and uses it in the following equation:


 * ''final damage = (base damage + 40) * (1 + (Attacker's Mercury Power - Target's Mercury Resistance) / 400)

To word this in prose, Chill takes the base damage of the user's normal physical attack, adds 40 to it, and then this result is modified by how much higher or lower the user's Mercury Power is than the target's Mercury Resistance. The difference between the user's Mercury Power and the target's Mercury Resistance is divided by 400, then 1 is added to this, resulting in what can be called the "elemental damage multiplier". This number is what Chill's damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 200 and a Mercury Power of 130 unleashes Chill on a monster with a defense of 80 and a Mercury Resistance of 70:


 * damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 + 40) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((200 - 80) / 2 + 40) * (1 + (130 - 70) / 400)
 * damage = ( / 2 + 40) * (1 + / 400
 * damage = ( + 40) * (1 + )
 * damage = *
 * damage = 115

Therefore, Chill were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal 115 points of damage.

Locations
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Chill is a Djinni that is randomly encountered in a specific area of the overworld that otherwise appears to be pointless scenery. Thus, it is very often missed by players playing the game the first time without any outside information. The battle with Chill may ensue in place of a random battle in the pictured area in the bottom part of the central forested stretch of land area south of Naribwe, where it then must be defeated to be acquired. As it is listed after the Djinn Piers joins with, it is likely that Chill is meant to be obtained on the way back from Kibombo. See here for enemy statistics.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: In the town Carver's Camp, to the right of the exit leading south into the overworld map is a ladder under a tree leading into the depths below. Climb it all the way down to a special canyon screen where you can cast the Growth Psynergy on the nearby plant to create another ladder down, which you can use to grab the Djinni. If you do not get Chill now, it will be permanently missed once you have crossed through Konpa Ruins into the Ei-Jei region. It is technically possible to reach it near the end of the game with the Endless Wall glitch, though reaching the Goma region where Carver's Camp is located is difficult.

Analysis
General: Chill as an attacking Djinni has a satisfactory 40 damage bonus and chance to lower the enemy's Defense, which itself is an understandable and useful status condition that makes all subsequent physical hits on the enemy do more damage, sharply more depending on how much Defense the enemy has to begin with. It is usefully strong as an attacking Djinni when found at an early point in the games it appears in, but will ultimately be outclassed by attacking Djinn like Serac.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Despite it being numbered as the fifth Mercury Djinni, Chill can be easily gotten before Piers joins the party with his own two Mercury Djinn in tow. Therefore, it can be gotten somewhat early on in the game, and it is an immediate upgrade over the first attacking Mercury Djinni, Fog, because it deals 10 more added bonus damage and has a side effect that the player can easily take advantage of. While the party's attack damage ratings aren't so high due to being early in the game, set damage bonus Djinn like Chill are about as useful as damage-multiplying Djinn like Sour, though late in the game Sour and Gel are generally considered the best attacking Mercury Djinn due to their 1.5x damage multiplier, and Chill will be obsoleted by other attacking Djinn with better set damage bonuses. When Isaac's party joins Felix's party late in the game along with their returning Djinn, they can bring with them an identical counterpart in the Mercury Djinni Hail.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Chill has even more opportunity to prove itself useful in this game than the last because this time it is the very first Mercury Djinni the party can obtain. Not only is the 40 set damage bonus highly powerful at this point, but Chill is actually superior to the second Mercury Djinni, Sleet, with has both 10 less damage and a less useful side effect. Chill can be permanently missed, whereas Sleet is given to you as part of the new party member Rief, perhaps explaining why the stronger Chill can be found before Sleet.

Name Origin
A chill is a cold feeling you get, most noticeably when it snows, making it a good fit for a Mercury Djinni. Mousse is a sweet or savory dessert made from whipped cream and egg whites, usually served chilled, following along with the Japanese version's cold dessert theme for Mercury Djinn names.

Trivia

 * Prior to Dark Dawn, all Djinn of the same element shared the same design. Djinn were later given individualized appearances, but Chill retains the original Mercury Djinni design as its own appearance. Among the four Djinn that resemble their Djinn element's original design, Chill stands out; Flint, Fever, and Gust are the first attacking Djinn of their respective elements in the original Golden Sun, whereas Chill was chosen to be the "basic" attacking Mercury Djinni of Dark Dawn despite its debut being as the fifth Mercury Djinni of The Lost Age, and an easy-to-miss Mercury Djinni at that.