Forge

Forge (バーン Burn) is a Mars Djinni found throughout the Golden Sun series.

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

Basic description
When Set, Forge increases its Adept's base HP by 10, base Attack by 2, base Agility by 2, and base Luck by 2.

When Forge is unleashed in battle, all currently active and alive Adepts get buffed with a 25% temporary increase to their respective attack ratings. This is twice as strong as High Impact/Angel Spear. All attack-boosting effects come in the form of 12.5% "stages", so therefore Forge boosts each Adept's attack rating by two stages, and the maximum amount of stages an Adept's attack can be boosted to is four, at +50%.

In Golden Sun and The Lost Age, Forge's unleash animation visually resembles the user summoning a glowing, transparent image of a Mars Djinni that briefly hovers above the party, as each Adept affected by the effect has a swirling array of white-red energy orbs gather into them, and a sword image briefly flashes at each Adept's position to indicate an attack boost. In Dark Dawn, the 3D model of Forge appears and floats above the party and off the screen while a brief fire effect occurs at the point in airspace where Forge was summoned, and each currently-active Adept has a pinkish-purple effect swirl from the ground into them while a purple Sword image flashes in front of them briefly to indicate an attack boost.

Locations
Golden Sun: Forge resides in Goma Cave, on an elevated ledge near a person bystanding on the ground level. Talking to the bystander indicates to first-time players that wild Djinn like Forge must be defeated in battle in order to add it to their Djinn collection, but they have the ability to flee the battle - but the Djinni will reappear in exactly the same position if one leaves and reenters the immediate area. An earth pillar near the bystander and the Djinni must be pushed right, then up onto the circular indentation in the ground where the pillar will stay permanently. Then the party continues to go through the dungeon, and will eventually make it to the elevated portion of the area where they can hop across the earth pillar and initiate the battle with Forge. Once it is successfully defeated and acquired, the bystander will be impressed and leave. 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, Forge will be among the Djinn Isaac's party has with them when they join forces with Felix's party late in the game.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Forge can be found on a ledge in the first town the player vists, Patcher's Place. There are several earth pillars located around a lone tree in the screen outside the Psynergy Training Grounds. Push them right around the tree so that three earth pillars in a row are arranged as a hoppable path from the tree to the cliff ledge to the right of that, then climb the tree and hop right across. Then climb down another tree at the right edge of the area, then cast the Growth Psynergy on a vine to create a "ladder" leading back down into the main town screen. Collect Forge nearby, which does not need to be battled. As Patcher's Place is one of the locations within the first region of the game, which gets locked off the moment you enter the Ei-Jei region, Forge can be permanently missed if not collected before then.

Analysis
General: The mass-attack-boosting effect that Forge and other Djinn have is easily one of the best buffing effects in any of the games because the party's damage outputs with any action based on their physical attack statistics will be significantly increased, highly justifying the turn an Adept takes to cast it. Forge is useful from when it is first found all the way to the endgame of each game it appears in. It is probably best to have it Set onto an Adept that has low attack rating and is dedicated to supporting the party to begin with, so that other, damage-dealing Adepts won't have to interrupt their attacking procedures in order to unleash Forge.

By game
Golden Sun: Forge is the one Djinni that is High Impact doubled in effectiveness, and since High Impact is a Psynergy that is not available to any Adept until level 21 while this Djinni is acquired close to the start of the game, this can be a very valuable battle effect to players who incorporate buffing all party members' attack ratings in their battling approaches. Technically, this Djinni only gets better as the game progresses and party members' attack ratings increase. Using the mindset of buff-then-battle, this has the capacity to be very useful as an upgraded High Impact substitute on an Adept that does not have the spell (i.e. Garet when in his mono-elemental Guard class series), even when another Adept in the same party does have the spell (i.e. Ivan when in his mono-elemental Wind Seer class series). Note that attack-buffing effects like these stack with each other up until all Adepts have +50% attack rating modifiers.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age: When Isaac's party joins Felix's party along with their returning Djinn, Forge's ability makes it a second Kindle, a Mars Djinni with the exact same effect that the TLA party finds relatively early on in that game, and these two together are the only Djinn whose effects are two High Impacts worth of attack buffing at once. Whether you find it useful for Adepts, with or without High Impact, to have one or both of these Djinn Set onto them ready for them to use is entirely up to you and whatever battling approach you deem worthy, though. It will be most beneficial to a party that has the Sol Blade and other weapons with damage-multiplying Unleash effects.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Forge is a powerful Djinni as always, for it and its identical equivalent in this game, Stoke, significantly increases the total damage of the whole party's physically-based offenses for several turns. As the boost to damage comes about from an increase to Attack rating, enemy Defense ratings end up being a less significant obstacle because they only decrease the damage of physical hits by a set value rather than some sort of percentage. This means that even Adepts that don't have high Attack, and score small amounts of damage when they physically hit certain enemies, will find the amount of damage they do with physical attacks to be much better than before, in relative terms. Since it boosts all four Adepts' Attack ratings, using it makes the Venus Djinni Chain, an attack based on the sum total of the physical hits of all currently-active party members, much more powerful than it already would be.

Name Origin
To forge something is to use extreme heat to melt raw materials. A fine name for a Djinni based on fire. To burn something is to set it on fire and cause it to combust. Also a fine name for a Djinni based on fire.