Mars Lighthouse

Mars Lighthouse is the Elemental Lighthouse of Fire, a great tower located in Weyard's Northern Reaches north of Prox at the edge of the world, and it is the final dungeon of Golden Sun: The Lost Age. As a lighthouse, if the Mars Star is cast down into it, the Mars Beacon will be lit, and once the other three lighthouses throughout Weyard have their beacons lit, Alchemy will be returned to the world. The aerie of Mars Lighthouse is where the Golden Sun series' finale takes place.

Background
The Mars Lighthouse existed in Weyard's Ancient Past much like the other three Elemental Lighthouses as a source of its respective element in Psynergy and Alchemy. According to one modern-day villager in the town of Prox located near the Lighthouse, "Prox originally flourished because concerned Adepts lit the fires of the Mars Lighthouse." When the Mars Beacon was active, Prox and its people were famous across Weyard as the "people of the northern flame". When Alchemy was sealed away within Mt. Aleph in the ancient past because of the Alchemy and Psynergy-based wars, however, Mars and the other Lighthouses had their beacons extinguished, and they were set up so that each Lighthouse's Beacon could be revived by casting a corresponding jewel called an Elemental Star into the interior of each tower. Once the Mars Star has been used to rekindle the Mars Beacon like the other three Beacons with the other three Stars, the four Beacons would shoot out their energies into the airspace above Mt. Aleph and form a sphere of Alchemy-based energy called the Golden Sun, and it would in turn shoot a ray into Mt. Aleph below and cause the Stone of Sages to unleash Alchemy from within and across Weyard.

Mars Lighthouse is located close to a gigantic, bottomless rift. The rift is gradually increasing in size and approaching closer to the lighthouse and Prox because the world has been deprived of Alchemy as its sustenance. The citizens of Prox find that this will mean the gradual collapse of Weyard in the future, so they decide to send out their soldiers Saturos and Menardi on a quest to acquire the Elemental Stars and activate each of the four lighthouses to restore Alchemy. Interesting to note is that this is more of an urgent effort than it may seem; the Mars Lighthouse is located practically on the edge of the rift, so if Alchemy is not restored soon the Mars Lighthouse would collapse into the abyss and the ability to save the world would be lost forever. Saturos and Menardi activate Mercury and Venus Lighthouses before they lose their lives, and their comrade Felix continues on to activate the Jupiter Lighthouse. Only the Mars Lighthouse remains, and suddenly the need to activate the Mars Beacon becomes more urgent than ever: with the Lighthouse Beacons of Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter lit, the influence of the Mars (fire and heat) element over the world is becoming smothered, and the world is experiencing a global chill that is intensifying by the hour. It is up to Felix, his comrade Isaac, and the rest of their party of Adepts to activate the Mars Lighthouse and save both the world's life force and climate.

The guardian of Alchemy's seal, the Wise One, has been plotting, however. He had originally tasked Isaac to pursue Saturos and Felix across the world and prevent their objective to activate the Lighthouses and restore Alchemy as part of a grand test for the Adepts; since the wars of the ancient past were caused by those tempted by power, the Wise One wants to make sure that whoever activates the final Lighthouse carries the moral strength and virtue necessary to ensure that throughout the world history is not repeated. He deceived Isaac because when Isaac finds out the truth about Alchemy, if he can resolve to band together with those he has originally been sent to oppose, that would demonstrate part of the character necessary for Isaac to be able to uphold that great responsibility. And indeed, Isaac has joined forces with Felix in the final effort to restore Alchemy. The Wise One decides then to arrange a final test of will for the Adepts that would take place on top of Mars Lighthouse; he lures Kyle and Felix and Jenna's father and mother to the Mars Lighthouse and transforms them into the gigantic Doom Dragon, and will make use of them when the time comes.

Story
Two soldiers from Prox named Karst and Agatio have taken the Mars Star from Felix and have decided to use it to try and activate Mars Lighthouse by themselves, however. The Lighthouse's insides are frozen, so the two wander lost inside, trying to find the aerie. Then the Wise One appears before them, gauges their souls, and declares that they lack the will to go any farther, so he transforms Karst and Agatio into a pair of lumbering Flame Dragons and encases them in ice. Later, Felix's party enters Mars Lighthouse, intent on taking back the Mars Star from Karst and Agatio so they can light it themselves. They encounter and battle the Flame Dragons, and upon defeating them they transform back into Karst and Agatio, both near death. Agatio implores Felix to take the Mars Star and finish the effort to restore Alchemy. Felix inserts the Mars Star into a nearby dragon head statue and the Mars Lighthouse magically comes alive with fire, lava, and warmth.

Isaac, Felix, Kraden, and the rest of their party of Adepts make it to the aerie of Mars Lighthouse. Before Felix can cast the Mars Star into the Mars Lighthouse's throat, the Wise One appears before them, and he demands to know why Isaac and Garet have disobeyed his command to stop Alchemy's return and outright support the effort instead. Isaac and the rest of the adepts respond with how they have learned that Alchemy is what sustains the world, and the world will buckle in upon itself and collapse if it is not restored. In addition, Prox is in the most danger from this collapsing process because of its proximity with the edge of the world, so the lighthouse must be lit now, and the global chill will freeze Weyard if Mars is not rekindled in time. Kraden, in fact, says that it is the Wise One's duty to protect all of Weyard, and if Weyard is destroyed because of not activating the Mars Beacon, he will have failed that duty.

The Wise One responds with the foreboding warning that if Alchemy is unleashed, mankind may well bring about the destruction of Weyard itself with Alchemy's powers, much like what happened with humanity and Alchemy in Weyard's ancient past. He states that in time, one man will seek to rule over all with Alchemy's powers, as it is an inescapable facet of human nature. The Wise One then reveals a terrible revelation: the entire effort of the Adepts to restore Alchemy has been taken advantage of by the Water Adept, Alex, who is now at Mt. Aleph awaiting the restoration of Alchemy to occur there so that he can gain unimaginable power for himself. Everyone is thunderstruck; Mia, in particular, feels outright sick with disgust that her own clanmate of the Mercury Clan would employ such a base tactic for self-gain. But Isaac loses none of his resolve in declaring that the beacon must be lit in order to save Prox and Weyard. The Wise One decides it's time to put the Adepts through the ultimate test by summoning the Doom Dragon to battle them. This may seem to contradict the Wise One's divine restriction in that he is not allowed to interfere in the actions of mankind, but he uses a loophole in that code by referring to the dragon as a "miracle" that were to occur to prevent the Adepts from lighting that beacon, and he declares that if the Adepts can defeat a miracle, only then can they ignite the beacon's flame. The Wise One goes out of sight as the Adepts wage their final battle.

After an epic battle between the eight Adepts and the three-headed Doom Dragon, the creature is slain, and the three heads transform back into the three humans used in the creation of the dragon. The Adepts are aghast when they discover the true identities of the people they were deceived by the Wise One to destroy; Jenna in particular is completely grief-stricken by the fact she has murdered her own parents, the ones she hoped to reunite with after they saved Prox with Alchemy's return. When Piers and Mia are unable to revive them with their Psynergy, Garet, Sheba, and Piers lash out at and curse the Wise One's name for this cruel act of deceit. Isaac tells them to cease; he, in fact, knew exactly who they were fighting against the moment the battle started, but he decided to go through with it in the name of saving the world. His friends agree that this is a sacrifice worth taking in the entrance of saving the millions of lives on Weyard. Thus, Felix casts the Mars Star down the Mars Lighthouse's well, activating the Mars Beacon. All four beacons are now lit.

The Adepts soon receive telepathic communications from the Imilian kids Justin and Megan at the base of Mercury Lighthouse, who were told by the Wise One that they would be able to communicate with them over there, and the children relay advice given by the Wise One to the Adepts that everyone across Weyard should stay away from the Elemental Lighthouses and Mt. Aleph, as they will become quite dangerous locations as they will perform the process that restores Alchemy to Weyard. Garet wonders why the Wise One would try to save people after subjecting the Adepts to such cruelty, but they receive a similar telepathic communication from Master Hama at Jupiter Lighthouse, and she implies to the Adepts that what happened to them with their parents may only be an appearance, since the Wise One has a caring heart according to her. Therefore, they should listen to the Wise One's advice that they should evacute the lighthouse.

The Adepts know they must get out of the Mars Lighthouse, but are torn between whether to bring their parents' bodies with them or leave them behind, and Ivan implores Felix to make the decision. Regardless of what Felix decides, the process of Alchemy's return begins, and the Mars Star projects a ray of its energy into the sphere of energy above the tower that is known as the Mars Beacon, and the beacon begins to engulf the entire aerie in energy, and Garet makes some mysterious comments about some invisible entity grabbing him by the wrist, much to Isaac's agitation. Then the beacon shoots out its ray southwest into the airspace of Mt. Aleph, where it merges with the rays of the other three Lighthouse beacons to form the Golden Sun, and all four Lighthouses let loose an immense amount of raw elemental energy. The Adepts' bodies absorb much energy, and since their parents were adepts, their life forces are suddenly, miraculously rekindled. It is a lengthy journey down and out of the tower and across the Northern Reaches back to Prox for the Adepts with their parents in tow.

Description and Walkthrough
As the last major dungeon in The Lost Age, Mars Lighthouse is an immense location that will prove challenging. It can be said to take place in two halves: the first half is while the place is "dormant", with much ice and coldness in the atmosphere, and it ends with the boss battle with a pair of Flame Dragons. The second half is when the place has "come alive", with lit torches and flowing lava, and it encompasses four "elemental sub-dungeons" that must all be completed before the game's finale at the aerie of Mars Lighthouse, where the three-stage final boss battle pits the Adepts against the giant Doom Dragon.

Pre-Activation
When you first enter the location, before going indoors, climb up the ladder to the right and you will access a chest containing an Apple. Now, go indoors to a big "lobby" room with many hunks of ice, go to the lower right, and cast Pound on a pillar to reach a chest that is actually a Mimic which gives up a Cookie when defeated. Now go through the right-most door above in the "lobby" and follow the path. You should now be back in the lobby. Take the door to the left and follow the path past a room with twisting pipelines and a Poundable pillar, and you should get to a room with a Mars Djinni out of reach and a hunk of ice right next to you. Cast the Grind Psynergy on the ice. Now, either retrace your steps or cast Retreat to make it back to the main "lobby", enter a door on either side of the center stairwell door, and cast Burst on the wall of cracked ice to remove it.

In the lengthy room beyond, enter the leftmost door at the end to make it to a hallway with fire-spouting statues moving on the wall. This room can be tricky and tedious to make past; the idea is to use Move repeatedly on the Movable statue on the far upper left of the room to the right, while moving yourself along with it, so that the statue will shield you from the moving flame chutes that would otherwist hit you and send you to the lower level below, where you will have to go out the exit to the right and reenter the room through the door on the left to try again. There are two "safe spot" ledges across the way that may be helpful. It will also be helpful to assign the Move Psynergy to a shortcut shoulder button. Once the statue has been moved all the way to the right in front of the stationary flame spout near the stairway down, you can enter the stairway down and continue.

In the next room that forks left and down, go left across the ice and you'll come to a torch that can have the Blaze psynergy used on it. When done with that, backtrack back to the fork and head down, where another fork to the left and right lies. Go right, cast Blaze on the torch in the next room from the right to remove a lot of ice, and go down to exit the left door of a horizontal hallway with three doors total. Go in the center door and get an Orihalcon from a chest, then go out and enter the right door to a vertical hall where a statue at the end regularly launches fireballs to prevent you from going up. Use pound on the various pillars and you'll be able to run into safe gaps along where the fireballs shoot down, and you can enter the door exit at the north. You will soon come to a big sliding ice room where a Mercury Djinni is present. First, before even going onto the ice, cast Move on the statue to the left of your position to move it to the left. Then slide on the ice down, left, down, left, up, right, up, left, down, left, and down, and you will end up right next to the Djinni. Battle it and acquire it as Mercury Djinni Balm, then press up and you can exit the room. You can now access a chest containing the Teleport Lapis, a utility Psynergy item that contains the Teleport Psynergy, one of the most practical utility psynergies in the game. Use Teleport while standing on the teleport circle below to warp lower in the room.

With the Teleport Psynergy in hand, go left into the leftmost door, go through the hallway with the four flame chutes again, go downstairs, go southward, and at the fork going left and right, go left, cast Burch on the base of the ice wall to remove it. Go into the new door, cast the Reveal Psynergy in the middle of the circle to reveal a teleport circle, cast Teleport, then go down the nearby stairs. In this new complex-looking hallway, first go down to the lower right and walk along the bottom of the hall to a chest containing one of the game's best pieces of bodywear, the Valkyrie Mail. Retrace your steps back to where you entered the room, assign Pound to a shortcut, then slide down onto the button. The flame chute on the wall will now travel left, and you must now race it to the far left end of the hallway, and you must get into the door near the dragon head statue before the flame chute causes the statue to launch a fireball.

After that hallway race, pass by a teleport circle as you follow a winding hallway to a room with its companion teleport circle visible. Move the statue on the upper right in front of the flame chute, then retrace your steps back to the previous teleport circle, where you will warp to the second circle in the other room you were just in. You will not be sent into the pit by a fireball to the right if you Moved the statue, so you can climb the ladder and proceed to a room consisting of many platforms above a bottomless pit, and a chest is visible on one of the platforms. Hop onto the upper leftmost platform, hop down to the six-tile platform, hop to the two-tile platform to the upper left of that, hop right, then hop down-to-left-to-up repeatedly until you reach the chest. Open the chest to acquire the game's greatest weapon, the Sol Blade. After that, let yourself fall into the pit, go back up into the platform room, and hop down to the room's bottom exit.

Follow the lengthy series of hallways to a room where a pair of trememdous orange dragons are seen encased in ice. Cast Blaze on a nearby torch to crack the ice. Prepare your party for a boss battle, then cast Burst on the cracked ice to enter a boss battle with two Flame Dragon enemies. This is a long battle because both enemies have over 5000 hit points each. The larger Flame Dragon has many powerful Mars-based attacks while the smaller dragon has the Djinnfest ability to put one of each Adept's Djinn on standby; the movesets of these enemies are very similar to the movesets of Karst and Agatio when they were battled as bosses at Jupiter Lighthouse. It would be prudent to have several usages of the Eclipse summon sequence ready, for it would do about 2000 damage to the target dragon. Defeat the dragons, win a Psy Crystal, and a cutscene will occur where the Mars Star will come back into your possession. Insert the Mars Star into the mouth of the dragon statue as instructed and the Mars Lighthouse will seemingly come alive with fire and lava. You may now return to the entrance of Mars Lighthouse with the Retreat Psynergy, but you first might want to see an interesting visual glitch occur by casting Blaze on the torch again; the air itself will seem to form cracks.

Post-Activation
Back in the lighthouse lobby, first go left and cast Blaze on the torch to the left to launch a fireball at an ice wall, then cast Burst on the ice wall to remove it and reveal a door. Follow the hallways beyond to reach the Mars Djinni seen earlier, and defeat it in battle to acquire Mars Djinni Fugue. Return to the lobby and go up the center stairwell door, hop across a lava pit, and you'll emerge in a room where a dragon head statue telepathically tells you to "set the four spirits aflame". The four walls on either side of the statue feature hidden doorways that appear when you walk in front of them. Each of these represents a sub-dungeon particularly concerned with a corresponding element, and these sub-dungeons can be completed in any order. Each sub-dungeon takes place in a separate tower near the main lighthouse tower.


 * Mercury Tower "Fish": the lower left entrance. Follow the hallways and paths beyond until you get to a big sliding-ice room. Slide left, down, right, up, left, and up, and go downstairs to a room with rolling pipes similar to the rolling pipe puzzles seen in Mercury Lighthouse. There are three visibly rollable pipe pieces here: go down the left side of the room, roll the center pipe up, cast Frost on both puddles, and roll the center pipe down and the top pipe right before rolling the bottom pipe up to complete the circuit. Return above, get to the newly lit torch on the upper right of the ice room, cast blaze when the flame chute on the wall is closest, and a fireball will clear away much of the ice on the ice floor. Reenter the ice floor from the right and slide left, down, right, down, and left to progress to the end of the sub-tower dungeon, where a blue flame on a torch awaits. Cast Blaze on it to activate the Mercury Flame.


 * Venus Tower "Mankind": the upper right entrance. Follow the hallways and paths beyond until you get to a room with three statues. Move the right statue to reveal a door. In the room behind that, Move the leftmost statue and go behind its door. (Move any of the other statues noted and you will be damaged by hidden flame chutes.) You will come to a big room with three Carry-able blocks in a setup similar to Carry blocks in and around Venus Lighthouse. Carry the two blocks below to fill up the two gaps above so that the third block above can be pushed across it and block the stationary flame chute. Walk the tightrope, push the statue right so it drops down, then cast Sand on the tiles of sand regularly covered by the moving flame chutes so that you can make it past the chutes without being send downward off the path. Progress to the end of the sub-tower dungeon, where a yellow flame on a torch awaits. Cast Blaze on it to activate the Venus Flame.


 * Jupiter Tower "Bird": the upper left entrance. Follow the hallways beyond until you get to a forking room with circular patterns on the ground to the left and right; these are used for transportation with the Cyclone Psynergy like in Jupiter Lighthouse. The left Cyclone tile is an "entrance" and the right tile is an "exit" of sorts. Use the left Cyclone tile and you will get to a room with a choice of two more cyclone tiles; take the left one, and in the following big room cast Move on the nearby statue to the right to block a flame chute. Slide down and progress with Cyclone until you get back to the forking room via the "exit" tile noted earlier. Cyclone back up the "entrance tile", then this time take the right route, and you will end up in a different part of the big room. Get to the circle of tiles, cast Reveal to show a Cyclone tile, and take it to end up on a ledge in the big room. Go up and left to a Movable block below a Hover pattern on the wall and Move it left into the hole before a moving flame chute hits you. After that, let the fire hit you to go down, climb back up to the left and use the Hover Psynergy with the Hover tile to bypass a shifting flame chute. Use the next Cyclone tile to appear in front of a dragon head statue that regularly shoots fireballs, and immediately go left to get to a chest containing a Psy Crystal. The next part requires timing: right after the dragon head shoots a fireball, run down, cast Reveal to hop onto a platform above the pit, and hop right before the next fireball hits you. When successful, progress to the end of the sub-tower dungeon, where a purple flame on a torch awaits. Cast Blaze on it to activate the Jupiter Flame.


 * Mars Tower "Dragons": the lower right entrance. Follow the hallways beyond until you get to the tower, but before entering it, continue right to find a chest containing the Alastor's Hood. Enter the tower to get to two Burstable cracks in walls, and cast Burst on the left one and hop the lava to the button on the upper left of the room. Stepping on it will light a torch. Get to and Burst the other cracked wall and hop to the torch, and cast Blaze to launch a fireball from a dragon head statue that will create a third crack in the place with the two other cracks. Go back to that and Burst that, and you can now hop your way to an upstairs doorway. You are now in another room with rollable pipes like in the Mercury tower. Roll the pipe below your position upward, then at the fork go down and right and Move a statue left, then go back to the fork and turn right and make it to a position just above the statue you moved, and Move it left again to block a flame chute. Go back to the fork and go down again, and go through the path between pipes that was previously blocked by the flame chute. Past a second flame chute blowing right and blocking another path, you can roll the pipe you rolled earlier downward, and the second flame chute will turn off. You can now go through the newly unblocked path and progress to the end of the sub-tower dungeon, where a red flame on a torch awaits. Cast Blaze on it to activate the Mars Flame.

Once all four sub-dungeons are completed and the four Flames are lit, upon returning to the main room connecting the four entrances, the dragon head statue will now state, "You have proven your worth! The heavens await you!" It will then create a Teleport circle on the ground, which is used to teleport to the Mars Lighthouse Aerie. This teleporter can be considered the game's Point of No Return, though you can teleport yourself back and the actual PONR lies a short distance away from the teleporter's exit at the aerie. Prepare your party and do whatever else you want to do with your game cart before using the Teleport and hop your way to the opening where you would cast down the Mars Star. A lengthy, storyline-centric cutscene will trigger, and then you will engage in the Final Boss encounter of Golden Sun: The Lost Age, a three-stage battle with the Doom Dragon. See Doom Dragon for full details on the battle. If you can defeat it, you will have completed The Lost Age, and the remaining 30-or-so minutes of the game display the finale to the current Golden Sun series.

Items
Mars Djinni Fugue: A Mars Djinni found and battled after heating up the Lighthouse. Mercury Djinni Balm: A Mercury Djinni found and battled in a sliding ice room.

Teleport Lapis: Found relatively early in Mars Lighthouse. This is a utility psynergy item granting the Teleport Psynergy, which makes use of teleport circles on the ground in locations, and in the overworld it can be used to instantly warp to any town on the map.

Alastor's Hood: Found in a chest in an outside area right before the Mars-based sub-dungeon tower. Apple: Found in a chest in the outside area of Mars Lighthouse. Cookie: Found by battling a Mimic in the Lighthouse's "lobby." Orihalcon: Found in a chest in Mars Lighthouse before the Flame Dragon boss battle. Psy Crystal: A reward for winning the Flame Dragon boss battle. Psy Crystal: Found in a chest in the Jupiter-based sub-dungeon tower. Sol Blade: Found in a room with many platforms above a pit, shortly before the Flame Dragon boss battle. Valkyrie Mail: Found in a chest in a hallway before the Flame Dragon boss battle, a hallway where you must "race" against a flame chute on the wall moving to the left.