Iron


 * This Djinni appears as an enemy that can be battled.

Iron (アイアン Iron) is a Venus Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

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

Basic description

 * "Bolster the party's defense."

When Set, Iron increases its Adept's base HP by 11, base Defense by 2, and base Agility by 3.

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

In The Lost Age, Iron's unleash animation visually resembles the user summoning a glowing, transparent image of a Venus Djinni that briefly hovers above the party, as each Adept affected by the effect has a swirling array of whitish energy orbs gather into them, and a shield image briefly flashes at each Adept's position to indicate a defense boost.

Location
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Iron is the first Djinni players can come across in The Lost Age that is randomly encountered in a specific area of the overworld that otherwise appears to be featureless scenery. Compared to other Djinn found and fought like this, though, Iron is perhaps the only one that players without any form of outside help or guidance have a pretty good chance to stumble upon regardless; Iron is located in the green forest bordering the left of the town of Madra, so if a random battle occurs while you're crossing the forest on the way to Madra, you will most likely engage in the battle with Iron. However, this is not the only place that Iron may be encountered on Indra's overworld. If you are to explore southwestern Indra, near the approach towards the Gondowan Cliffs, you may run into Iron within this other green forest by the sea. In either case, it must be battled to be acquired. See here for enemy statistics.

Analysis
General: The mass-defense-boosting effect that Iron and other identical Djinn provide is a highly effective buffing effect in any of the games because many enemies' attacks are physically based and will be lowered a large amount, justifying the turn an Adept takes to cast it. However, the additional defense works bests against enemies without many offensive Psynergy or monster skills that are based on elemental power rather than elemental physical attacks.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Iron can be a very valuable battle effect to players who incorporate buffing all party members' physical defense ratings in their battling approaches. Until late in the game when Isaac's party joins, the Guard Psynergy series is not present on any of your four characters when they are in their respective mono-elemental class series, and require switching Djinn around to attain the class series that do have it. Because of this, Iron can be considered all the more valuable, providing the party a double-strength Protect option regardless of what classes the Adepts are in. Note that when Isaac's party joins, they can bring with them the Mars Djinni identical to Iron in effect, Corona. Technically, this Djinni only gets better as the game progresses and party members' defense ratings increase.

Name Origin
Iron is a type of transition metal, which is the most common metal in everyday use. It is very strong, fitting for a defense-boosting Djinni.