Hail


 * "Freeze a foe to drop its defense."



Location
Hail is a Djinni that is randomly encountered in a specific area of the overworld that otherwise appears to be pointless scenery. Thus, it is very often missed by players playing the game the first time without any outside information. The battle with Hail may ensue in place of a random battle in the stretch of land to the southwest of Altmiller Cave, possible pretty much as soon as you cross the bridge.

As an opponent
Statistically, Hail has 466 HP, 46 PP, 207 Attack, 48 Defense, 116 Agility, and 16 Luck. Like all other Mercury Djinn that are fought, in terms of resistance, it has a Mercury Resistance rating of 193, Venus and Jupiter Resistance ratings of 100 each, and a Mars Resistance rating of 25, and in regards to its abilities it uses its available Mercury-based attacks with a Mercury power rating of 125.

Hail can use the following battle commands:
 * Tundra: Used 53 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that causes a moderate amount of ice shards to drop onto the party, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 45 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 8 of its user's PP.
 * Drench: Used 47 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that causes a moderately long array of watery spheres to drop out of the sky and onto the targeted Adepts, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 60 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 10 of its user's PP.
 * Froth Sphere: Used 41 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that projects a moderately large array of watery spheres that arc into the party, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 65 and a range of 5. This ability consumes 12 of its user's PP.
 * Ice Horn: Used 35 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that shoots a mass of ice spikes down onto multiple Adepts, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 70 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 11 of its user's PP.
 * Hail Prism: Used 29 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that causes four large ice spheres to slam into the party of Adepts and shatter in quick succession, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 90 and a range of 5. It consumes 16 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 Mercury-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, Hail yields 279 EXP and 340 Coins, and the Hail Djinni is added to your party's Djinn collection. If you fell it with an offensive Mars Djinni like Scorch, its rewards increase to 362 EXP and 442 Coins.

Hail is very easily defeated in one blow by four-djinn Summons such as Meteor, which deals over 400 damage in one blow.

Description
When Set, it increases base HP by 9, base Attack by 4, and base Luck by 1.

When Hail's battle effect is used, the lower half of the screen quickly gets overtaken by a frozen "ocean" of sort that bounces the enemy once, dealing a Mercury-based attack equal in power to the user's normal physical attack with an additional 40 damage points added to the result. There is then a chance that the target's Defense rating will be temporarily reduced by 25%. It is identical to the battle effect of the Mercury Djinni Chill in The Lost Age.

Ability analysis
In Golden Sun, Hail is a little stronger than Sleet, and if the defense-lowering secondary effect kicks in the target will become more easily damaged by the other Adepts' physical attacks, which is nice whenever it happens. It is not the most damaging Mercury attack Djinni, though - the 1.3x damage multiplier of Mist qualifies that for the honor from an endgame perspective. So, this is not the most impressive Djinn despite its visual.

In The Lost Age, when Isaac's party joins Felix's party along with their returning Djinn, Hail's battle ability makes it a second Chill, a Djinni that can be fought in the wild and earned somewhat early in that game. The same rules and merits (and/or the lack thereof) associated with Hail apply to Chill as well, for they both are not used much compared to the Mercury Djinn with higher damage multipliers than that of Mist, which are Sour and Gel.

Name Origin
Hail is large ice chunks that fall from the sky. Swizz is short for a swizzle, a type of alcoholic drink, usually frothy and made from rum or gin and bitters. It may also refer to a technique in figure skating.