Steel

Steel (キッス Kiss) is a Venus Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Steel is the third Venus Djinni in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Steel 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, Steel is the tenth Venus Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the third.

Steel is the fourth Venus Djinni in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Basic description
When Set, Steel increases base HP by 9, base Attack by 4, base Defense by 2, and base Luck by 1.

When Steel is unleashed in battle, the user deals a Venus-based attack equal in power to the user's normal physical attack with an additional 50 damage points added to the result. Then the user's HP will be restored by an amount equal to 50% of the damage dealt to the target. If the target dies, the user's HP is restored by half of the target's health before the attack.

In The Lost Age, Steel's unleash animation visually resembles the user performing a fairly typical strong Venus attack, and then an array of glowing yellow energy orbs are siphoned out of the target and into the user. In Dark Dawn, the 3D model of Steel appears in front of the target enemy, and its lips suddenly enlarge and hit the enemy, while blue spheres are siphoned out of the enemy and gather into the user.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Steel 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

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


 * ''final damage = (base damage * 1.3) * (1 + (Attacker's Venus Power - Target's Venus Resistance) / 400)

To word this in prose, Steel takes the base damage of the user's normal physical attack, adds 50 to it, 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 Steel's damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 100 and a Venus Power of 120 unleashes Steel on a monster with a defense of 20 and a Venus Resistance of 70:


 * damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 * 1.3) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((100 - 20) / 2 * 1.3) * (1 + (120 - 70) / 400)
 * damage = ( / 2 * 1.3) * (1 + / 400
 * damage = ( * 1.3) * (1 + )
 * damage = *
 * damage = 58

Therefore, if Steel were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal 58 points of damage.

Locations
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Steel is located in the Gabomba Statue. Players playing through on their first time or without a guide, however, may find this Djinni somewhat difficult to acquire as it may not be immediately obvious what to do. First of all, reverse all gears in the dungeon - this is necessary to complete the dungeon to begin with. Then in one of the upper floors, there are two pink gears side by side rotating downward into what would seem to be an abyss, which is what's pictured. Step behind the left gear and press down to jump onto it and fall down to the floor below; you will land very near Steel, where it can then be battled to be acquired. See here for enemy statistics.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Steel is located in Kaocho's main town area. The "official" way of getting to it is to first exit off the top of the main town area where the area map displays the second green up arrow from the right, and enter the eastern part of the palace gate area immediately left of the river with the lily pads. Hop up across the lilypads, go up the small rock stairs, hop left onto the tiled surface, and stand to the left of the right red flag outside the palace gate. Cast Grip to bring yourself to the left flag. There is also an unofficial and easier way to Grip this left flag - simply stand on the stairs leading to the palace until your elevation matches the flag, and Grip the flag to transport yourself a short distance southwest. Once there, follow the linear path down the western hidden path back into the town area and hop to where Steel is. After getting it, hop to the left to exit the town.

Analysis
General: Steel's damage output does not come across as overly impressive because it only has a 1.3x damage multiplier, which will not cause anywhere near as significant a damage increase for much of the game as a Djinni that has a set damage bonus. The Venus Djinn it is compared to, Sap and Furrow, have the same occasionally useful chance to heal the user for half the damage inflicted, but they have a particularly high 50 added damage bonus, so Steel will only end up doing more bonus damage than Sap and Furrow by a primary warrior late in the game. Granted, by the end of a game Steel can amount to an okay attack that aims to restore the HP of the user in the same turn, if it is Set on one of the main Venus Adept warriors of the party.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Since Echo from the beginning of The Lost Age is the one attack Venus Djinni an Adept would need for the sake of dealing optimized damage throughout much of the game, the less damaging Steel would then only be used for the sake of its potential additional self-healing effect. It can be situationally useful for cases where your Adept would be helped out by a chance to be healed somewhat, but it is not a staple. Nonetheless, dealing enhanced damage based on a multiplier might make it the better of the two available HP-siphoning Venus attack Djinn from an endgame perspective (remember that when Isaac's party joins Felix's party late in the game, they can bring the Venus Djinni Sap along with them, so it is worth comparing Steel's 30% increase to Sap's 50 added damage, noting that both will even out when the user's normal physical attack reaches 166 damage).

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Since Flint from the beginning of Dark Dawn has a stronger 60% extra damage modifier, Steel's 30% damage modifier is not impressive when it can first be received. Much that can be said about Steel in The Lost Age also applies to Dark Dawn - it only becomes situationally useful when considered as an attack that also heals the user somewhat. While it does not have a high damage multiplier, it might be the better of the two available HP-siphoning Venus attack Djinn from an endgame perspective. Furrow adds 50 damage to the result in comparison to Steel's 30% additional damage multiplier, so an Adept with a low attack rating would find Furrow to be more helpful while an Adept with a high Attack rating will be better served by Steel's bonus.

=Name Origin= Steel is an alloy consisting primarily of Iron. The HP draining effect is a play on the fact that Steel has the same pronunciation as "Steal". Kiss states for the action of stealing with a kiss and makes reference with the new artwork in Dark Dawn.