Cannon (Djinni)

Cannon (カノン Cannon) is a Mars Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

Cannon is the first Mars Djinni in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Cannon and all other Mars Djinn introduced in The Lost Age before the seven Mars 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, Cannon is the eighth Mars Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the first.

Basic description

 * "Strike with the power of Mars."

When Set, Cannon increases its Adept's base HP by 10 and base Attack by 3.

When Cannon is unleashed in battle, the user strikes the target with an elemental physical attack equal to a normal physical attack performed by the user, with 40 additional damage points. Being a Mars-based attack, Cannon's battle effect is also affected by the user's Mars Power and the target's Mars Resistance.

Visually, Cannon's unleash animation resembles the user summoning the glowing white image of a Mars Djinni right in front of them, and then with a swing of their weapon while remaining stationary, the user launches the Mars Djinni cloaked in a bright red aura at the target. There is a brief but moderately large explosion on impact.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Cannon 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

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


 * ''final damage = (base damage + 40) * (1 + (Attacker's Mars Power - Target's Mars Resistance) / 400)

To word this in prose, Cannon takes the base damage of the user's normal physical attack, adds 40 to it, and then this result is modified by how much higher or lower the user's Mars Power is than the target's Mars Resistance. The difference between the user's Mars Power and the target's Mars 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 Cannon's damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 80 and a Mars Power of 120 unleashes Cannon on a monster with a defense of 20 and a Mars Resistance of 70:


 * damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 + 40) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((80 - 20) / 2 + 40) * (1 + (120 - 70) / 400)
 * damage = ( / 2 + 40) * (1 + / 400
 * damage = ( + 40) * (1 + )
 * damage = *
 * damage = 78

Therefore, if Cannon were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal    78 points of damage.

Location
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Cannon is somewhat infamous for being found in the Dehkan Plateau, but only actually acquirable after being chased through the entire location by the player and forcing you to solve puzzles it inadvertently creates for you as you proceed after it. Refer to the article for a full walkthrough on how to go through Dehkan Plateau. Eventually, you corner it in a room where it can hop across two separate kinds of pillars if you approach it, but instead of doing that you should climb down and use your newly acquired Pound Psynergy to pound down the pillar to the left, then climb back up. Cannon can then be battled and acquired.

As an opponent (The Lost Age)
Statistically, Cannon has 203 HP, 18 PP, 43 Attack, 10 Defense, 32 Agility, and 7 Luck. Like all other Mars Djinn that are fought, in terms of resistance, it has a Mars Resistance rating of 193, Venus and Jupiter Resistance ratings of 100 each, and a Mercury Resistance rating of 25, and in regards to its abilities it uses its available Mars-based attacks with a Mars power rating of 125.

Cannon can use the following battle commands:
 * Flare: Used 129 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that causes a small patch of fire to go through multiple Adepts and deal a Mars-based attack with a power rating of 15 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 4 of its user's PP.
 * Blast: Used 76 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that causes a small explosion of vaguely liquid-ish fire to combust at the enemy's general position, dealing a Mars-based attack with a power rating of 25 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 5 of its user's PP.
 * Attack: Used 28 out of 256 times, this is this monster's standard physical attack, but for this monster it is counted as a Mars-based attack rather than a non-elemental attack.
 * Flee: Used 23 out of 256 times, this enemy has the ability to attempt to Flee the battle, thereby ending the battle if successful without rewarding you with the associated EXP, Coins, and the Djinni itself.

When defeated, Cannon yields 58 EXP and 93 Coins, and the Cannon Djinni is added to your party's Djinn collection. If you fell it with an offensive Mercury Djinni like Fog, its rewards increase to 75 EXP and 120 Coins.

You have limited options with which to pummel Cannon decisively for the sake of minimizing the risk of it fleeing. The Fog Djinni you can get from Kandorean Temple can make for a strong hit, and so would summoning the Mercury summon. Sheba should cast Ray and Felix should unleash Echo and then summon the Venus summon the next turn.

Analysis
General: This is a "basic" offensive Mars Djinni, for it has a modest set damage bonus and not even any additional side effect. These qualities make Cannon not a Djinni that you would use throughout most of the game because most other Mars Djinn are directly superior, but near the beginning of the game it appears in, its 40 damage bonus is significantly powerful and useful for any Adept that Unleashes it. Compared to the Mars Djinni Fever, which is the first Mars Djinni of both Golden Sun and Dark Dawn, Cannon trades a chance to deal the barely-useful Delusion status condition for 10 more damage, which is better.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Cannon is found near the beginning of the game, so the 40 extra damage that Unleashing this Djinni will provide will be an enormously useful bonus for any Adept that equips it, at least for a time. This is also the only offensive Mars Djinni that the party has for almost all of the first quarter of the game. Once the Mars Djinni Char is acquired from Madra after crossing back from lower Gondowan, though, Cannon will be obsoleted, because Char has both a higher set damage bonus and a chance to inflict the useful Stun status condition.

Name Origin
A cannon is a weapon that requires a flame in order to fire. The very element Mars is associated with fire.