Rime

Rime (スプモニ Spumoni) is a Mercury Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Rime is the seventh Mercury Djinni in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Rime 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, Rime is the fourteenth Mercury Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the seventh.

Rime is the sixteenth Mercury Djinni in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Basic description
When Set, Rime increases base HP by 10 and base Psynergy Points by 6.

When Rime is unleashed in battle, the target is afflicted with the Psynergy Seal status condition, which prevents it from using Psynergy (i.e. an effect that would consume PP), just like the Bind Psynergy. Unlike the Bind Psynergy, which has very iffy accuracy, Rime is guaranteed to inflict Seal on the enemy it is used on.

In The Lost Age, Rime's unleash animation visually resembles the user summoning the glowing blue image of a Mercury Djinni above the target, and an intersecting pair of white-blue symbol effects rotate in opposite clock directions until they stop overlapped perfectly over each other at the enemy's position. In Dark Dawn, the 3D model of Rime appears in front of the target, then disappears after a moment. What follows is identical to the visual of the Bind Psynergy - the purple Psynery Seal symbol rotates at the enemy's place while it and the enemy are surrounded by a field of multiple, multi-colored rings that gather into the symbol.

Location
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Rime is found in Ancient Lemuria, the sublocation near the city of Lemuria reachable by the boat and the Grind Psynergy. It is hidden in the southwest-possible patch of grass that you can't even reach physically. Standing two tiles to the right of it, cast Cyclone, and Rime will suddenly appear and jump into the lone statue in the center of the screen. Then use the Tremor Psynergy while facing the now-shaking Statue to make Rime appear again, and you can now collect it.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Rime is found in Iceberg Outpost at the north end of the world map. When you arrive at the location by ship, once you hop your way to right outside the front door of the cabin, the game would require you to follow these steps in order to progress with the game: Hop right and up to a tree, climb up it and hop left, and cast Growth on the plan to turn it into ivy that is climbed like a ladder. Follow the short path around counterclockwise to the roof of the cabin. Here, you would normally jump into the open chimney of the cabin to get inside, but instead slide down southwest to where Rime is behind the fence and collect it. To return to the front of the cabin, cast Grip on the spire to your left, then hop southeast, and now you can make the trip back up to the roof to jump into the chimney.

Analysis
General: Rime and any of the Djinn identical to it - Luff in Golden Sun and The Lost Age, and the Mars Djinni Brand in Dark Dawn - automatically make the Bind Psynergy worthless because they inflict the status effect with full accuracy, compared to how often Bind misses. There are only specific cases in any game when this effect can be useful, though, since it only prevents an enemy from using Psynergy - any ability that uses up any PP from the user's PP meter - while not limiting its ability to attack and use Monster Skills.

Ability analysis
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Enemies with Psynergy abilities that would be worth using Rime and Luff on meaningfully are few. Before Isaac's party joins Felix's party along with their returning Djinn, however, it can neutralize some of Agatio's powerful psynergies at Jupiter Lighthouse - Meteor Blow and Rising Dragon, namely. Once Isaac's party joins and they bring Luff with them (assuming that Password data transfer is in effect), the two Djinn are interchangeable and differentiated only by element. Here, the two Djinn can be used for preventing the same Meteor Blow and Rising Dragon Psynergies of the larger Flame Dragon in Mars Lighthouse. Later, if used on Sentinel in Islet Cave, he would only be able to use his physical attack and Armor Crush; while a powerful single-target attack on its own, the effect of Armor Crush can be easily fixed with the defense-boosting Iron and Corona, and Sentinel would be unable to use the Break Psynergy to remove these buffs off your party because that would be sealed. Nonetheless, there are many ways where using one of these on an enemy would be the opposite of beneficial; on Dullahan, for example, you'd be preventing him from using his comparatively harmless Psynergy spells and forcing him to only use his extremely powerful monster skills like Formina Sage and the summon Charon.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: When Rime is found late in the game, it functions as a second Brand, a Mars Djinni found at the Passaj Mountain Climb before the trip north to Morgal begins. Naturally, in concept these Djinn are valuable for obsoleting the inaccurate Bind Psynergy, but at present it is not known whether there are boss enemies that get as successfully hindered as in previous games. Since Dullahan returns with all the same abilities, it can be presumed that Rime only serves to help Dullahan because it must use its powerful monster skills in place of its comparatively harmless status effect Psynergy.

Name Origin
Rime is white ice that forms when water droplets in fog freeze to the outer surfaces of objects, such as trees. Its name and location in The Lost Age may be a pun based on the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The Japanese name "Spumoni" is a reference to an Italian molded ice cream that incorporates nuts and fruits--the important part for the reference being the "ice".