Hail

Hail (スウィズ Swizz) is a Mercury Djinni found in Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

Hail is the fifth Mercury Djinni in the original Golden Sun, and can also be acquired in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Although it is not the party's fifth Mercury Djinni in The Lost Age, Hail is still ordered as the fifth Mercury Djinni when equipped to characters. Because it is not available until after most other Mercury Djinn can be found, however, the separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Hail and all other Mercury Djinn from Golden Sun after all of the Djinn introduced in The Lost Age. According to this order, Hail is the sixteenth Mercury Djinni in The Lost Age rather than the fifth, but this order has no influence elsewhere in the game.

Basic description

 * "Freeze a foe to drop its defense."

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

When Hail 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 Golden Sun and The Lost Age, Hail's unleash animation visually resembles a glowing white image of a Mecury Djinni that floats above the party while the lower half of the screen quickly gets overtaken by a frozen "ocean" that rises from the ground in the instant, and the target is the only combatant on the field that gets knocked into the air by it.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Hail 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

Hail'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, Hail 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 Hail's damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 200 and a Mercury Power of 130 unleashes Hail 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, Hail were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal 115 points of damage.

Locations
Golden Sun: Hail 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 Hail may ensue in place of a random battle in the stretch of land to the southwest of Altmiller Cave, possibly as soon as the player crosses the bridge. See here for enemy statistics.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Players can transfer data from Golden Sun to The Lost Age, but even if they don't, Hail will be among the Djinn Isaac's party has with them when they join forces with Felix's party late in the game.

Analysis
General: Hail as an attacking Djinni has a satisfactory 40 damage bonus and chance to lower the enemy's Defense, which itself is good for making all subsequent physical hits on the enemy do more damage, sharply more depending on how much Defense the enemy has to begin with. But since it is gotten somewhat late in both of the games it appears in, it is not especially powerful for when it is usable in. Its identical counterpart Chill, which is introduced in The Lost Age, also features in Dark Dawn, unlike Hail itself.

By game
Golden Sun: Hail is a little stronger than Sleet, and if the defense-lowering secondary effect kicks in the target will become more easily damaged by the other Adepts' physical attacks, which is nice whenever it happens. It can perhaps be argued that lowering the enemy's defense is better than lowering the enemy's attack, which would make Hail better to Sleet in both damage and effect terms. Whether it is the most damaging Mercury attack Djinni in this game depends on the Adept using it - any Adept with a modest attack rating will be better benefited by Hail's straight 40 damage, but if the Adept has a very high attack rating, the relatively modest 1.3x damage multiplier of Mist may end up dealing more damage.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age: When Isaac's party joins Felix's party along with their returning Djinn, Hail's battle ability makes it a second Chill, a Djinni that can be fought in the wild and earned somewhat early in that game. In this case, Chill has the advantage because it is found much earlier in the game, so its 40 damage boost is more significant for a while. By the time Hail can be acquired, both it and Chill are not as preferable as the Mercury Djinn with the 1.5x damage multipliers, Sour and Gel.

Name Origin
Hail is large ice chunks that fall from the sky. Swizz is short for a swizzle, a type of alcoholic drink, usually frothy and made from rum or gin and bitters. It may also refer to a technique in figure skating.