Meld

Meld (コンボイ Convoy) is a Venus Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

Meld is the sixth Venus Djinni in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Meld and all other Venus Djinn   introduced in The Lost Age before the seven Venus 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, Meld is the thirteenth Venus Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the sixth.

Basic description

 * "Launch a powerful team strike."

When Set, Meld increases its Adept's base HP by 9, base Agility by 4, and base Luck by 1.

When Meld is unleashed in battle, if the user is the only party member in the current battling party that is not Downed, the user will simply deal a Venus-aligned attack equal to a normal physical attack with their attack rating treated as increased by 25%. If at least one other ally is alive, the effect is much different: the Adept other than the user that has the highest Attack rating of all current battling Adepts is the one who deals the Venus-aligned elemental physical attack, but they will deal the strike with extra Attack points equal to 25% of the Meld user's own Attack rating.

In The Lost Age,  Meld's unleash animation visually resembles the user first projecting a collection of orange energy orbs off the top of the screen, and then a transparent orange image of a Venus Djinni appears imposed over the other Adept selected for the attack and gathers into that Adept. Then the two Adepts will perform their normal physical attack movement simultaneously onto the same enemy.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Meld 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. Meld is unique because it has someone else in the party do the physical attack that is partially enhanced by the Meld user's own Attack rating. So, this different equation for determining base damage is to be used:


 * ''base damage = (Chosen ally's Attack + (user's Attack/4) - Target's Defense) / 2

Once the base damage value is arrived at, though, then the rest of the formula is simply modifying the result by how the user's Venus Power compares to the target's Venus Resistance:


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

To word this in prose, Meld comes up with a special Base Damage value by having the other ally's physical attack be the attack, but with extra attack rating equal to 1/4 of the Meld user's own attack rating, and then this result is modified by how  much higher or lower the user's Venus Power is than the target's Venus Resistance. The difference between the user's Venus Power and the target's Venus 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 Meld's damage is multiplied by.

For example, if Meld chooses an ally with an Attack rating of 300 and a Venus Power of 130, while the user has an Attack rating of 200, and the target monster has a defense rating of 120 and a Venus Resistance of 100:


 * damage = ((Ally's Attack + (User's Attack / 4) - Enemy Defense) / 2) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((300 + (200 / 4) - 120) / 2) * (1 + (130 - 100) / 400)
 * damage = ((300 + 50 - 120) / 2) * (1 + (130 - 100) / 400)
 * damage = ( / 2) * (1 + / 400
 * damage = * (1 + )
 * damage = *
 * damage = 123

Therefore, if Meld were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal    123 points of damage.

Locations
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Meld is found in Islet Cave, in the immediately accessible portion of it as opposed to the later portion accessible only with the Teleport Psynergy at the end of the game. Getting to the optional dungeon to begin with is complex in and of itself, making Meld  essentially the "main reward" for first reaching Islet Cave. In the right watery room with rolling logs, after you roll right, simply go  down to the horizontal log below and roll it up to Meld's position at  the top of the area. It must be battled. See here for enemy statistics.

Analysis
General: Meld has a damage formula unlike any other offense, but in various ways this is an underperforming gimmick because the only actual form of enhancement it offers is to add 25% of the own user's Attack rating to it. Since the general design of the Attack and Defense statistics in the series means that having, say, 140 Attack instead of 120 means the user's physical strikes always do around 10 more damage (because the attack rating difference is divided by 2), and because this uses only a quarter of the Meld user's Attack statistic, Meld can literally be thought of as making an ally deal their normal physical attack, but with 1/8th of the user's current Attack Rating added as extra damage. This is not a high bonus at all, though this does distinguish itself from essentially every other offense in the game, which always either adds a set bonus damage value and/or employs a damage multiplier - Meld actually uses the Attack statistic directly. One thing this means is that if the user using this alone is a 400-attack Adept that would ordinarily do something like 150 damage with a normal physical strike, Meld would add about 50 more damage in this case because 1/8th of 400 is 50.

Ultimately, Meld seems to achieve an obscure and specific value if the user is a low-attack caster-style Adept. If one of the user's partners is a warrior-style Adept with very high Attack in comparison, and it would be worth having the turn play out as though the warrior Adept attacks twice in a turn while the mage Adept does nothing, using Meld is the means to achieve this temporary substitution. This scenario is conceptually rare, though.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: There is probably no specific instance in the game where Meld's different form of offense can be made notably useful. However, as a Djinni, when the game is being played "perfectly", Meld would end up being the sixth Venus Djinni the party obtains (all four party members can have six Djinn of their respective element before they make the trip to Lemuria). This means that if everyone is being played in their mono-elemental classes, Felix will graduate to the Lord class, which is very useful to have against the boss Poseidon right before Lemuria. Felix will end up having the Odyssey Psynergy at this early point.

Name Origin
Meld's name likely refers to the fact that two characters "meld" their attacks into a single strike. Also, Meld may share the same origin as Mold's name. To convoy means to accompany or escort, which at least explains why Convoy causes two adepts to attack at once, but the name's relation to the Venus element isn't clear.