Mold

Mold (デク Deku) is a Venus Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

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

Basic description

 * "Strike a foe."

When Set, Mold increases its Adept's base HP by 9, base Attack by 4, base Agility by 2, and base Luck by 1.

When Mold is unleashed in battle, if at least 1 other foe aside from the target is present, that foe takes the hit, and the battle text reads "[Enemy] attacks an ally!". If two or more other enemies are present when Mold is used, the choice is made randomly. If the target is the only enemy in the battle, it takes the hit, and the battle text reads "[Enemy], stop hitting yourself!". Whatever target is hit with the attack, it is a Venus-aligned attack equal to the user's normal physical attack with 80 damage points added.

In Golden Sun and The Lost Age, Mold's unleash animation visually resembles an orange image of a Venus Djinni entering into the enemy's sprite. If the enemy is alone, it is then hit, but if there is at least one other enemy on the field to be hit instead, the affected enemy will appear to physically strike that other enemy on the field the same way they ordinarily physically strike your party members.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Mold use the damage dealt by the attacker's standard physical attack as the base damage to be later modified. Mold is only unique in how it targets enemies in battle, but otherwise there is nothing unusual about how its attack damage is calculated. 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

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


 * ''final damage = (base damage + 80) * (1 + (Attacker's Venus Power - Target's Venus Resistance) / 400)

To word this in prose, Mold takes the base damage of the user's normal physical attack, adds 80 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 Mold's damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 400 and a Venus Power of 150 unleashes Mold, and it ultimately hits a monster with a defense of 120 and a Venus Resistance of 100:


 * damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 + 80) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((400 - 120) / 2 + 80) * (1 + (150 - 100) / 400)
 * damage = ( / 2 + 80) * (1 + / 400)
 * damage = ( + 80) * (1 + )
 * damage = *
 * damage = 247

Therefore, if Mold were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal 247 points of damage.

Locations
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Mold is present in Prox, found near the end of the game. First, enter the frozen, snowed-upon river and go up to the next screen under a bridge. Mold will be right in front of you; when you bump into it on the sliding ice, it will slide back and get buried underneath a pile of snow. Simply slide up to where the snow is and cast Scoop to acquire Mold.

Analysis
General: In practical terms, all that is provided by Mold's unique trait of causing one of the other enemies on the field that is not the selected enemy to be the one that is hit is a small liability - that the move cannot be reliably targeted if it is used while three or more enemies are present. This can perhaps be thought of as a small counterbalance to what is otherwise a very noteworthy distinction - that Mold has the highest set damage bonus of all attacking Djinn in the GBA series, 80. This makes it especially considerable as an offense if it is Set on a low-attack caster Adept. It can be reliably targeted so long as there are only one or two enemies on the field - if you want to attack Enemy A, simply target Enemy B. In Dark Dawn, the Venus Djinni Gears is this Djinni's practically-identical equivalent (though a slightly different mechanic causes the target's Venus Power to be used, rather than the Gears user), and the Mercury Djinni Spout and the Mars Djinni Chili share the highest-of-the-high set damage bonus of 80.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Mold is found practically right before the endgame, so much of what would have been its enormously high-potential is lost. And while it is probably the best Djinni to attack with on any of the caster-style Adepts if they are in a class that involves set Venus Djinn like Mold, it is only somewhat useful on a high-attack warrior, but not preferable. There is the Djinni Geode and the Quick Strike Psynergy, with their high damage multipliers that work better off a high attack rating, not to mention the 99%-Unleashing Sol Blade equipment setup that far overpowers most everything else.

Name Origin
The name Mold is derived from the ability to mold clay, just as it molds the foe's mind into attacking its own allies. Clay is found in the earth.

Deku, on the other hand, refers to a wooden doll or puppet, just as it controls the foe like a puppet to attack its own allies. This is the same root as the well-known Legend of Zelda concept.