Gears

Gears is a Venus Djinni found in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Gears is the seventh Venus Djinni in Dark Dawn.

Basic description
When Set, Gears increases its Adept's base HP by 8, base Psynergy Points by 3, and base Attack by 4.

When Gears 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 Gears 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] is under self-attack!". 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. This is identical to the Venus Djinni Mold in Golden Sun: The Lost Age, but with one difference: Gears actually uses the selected enemy's Venus Power rating, rather than the user's.

In Dark Dawn, Gear's unleash animation visually begins with the cluster of energy orbs that normally summons the 3D model of a Djinni to zero in and gather right into the enemy's position. If the enemy is alone, it is then hit by what appears to be an invisible attack, while at the same instant the 3D model of Gears will appear right above the enemy and float off the top of the screen in a glowing orange little "cloud" of sorts. If there is at least one other enemy on the field to be hit instead, then both the targeted enemy and the whole party disappear, and the enemy reappears where the party used to be. The enemy immediately performs its normal physical attack animation on the other enemy. Then the selected enemy will disappear and reappear at their original position on the enemy's side of the field just as the party reappears, and the 3D model of Gears makes its appearance at this point.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Gears use the damage dealt by the attacker's standard physical attack as the base damage to be later modified. Gears is unique in how it targets enemies in battle, and it also has a unique trait in which elemental power and resistance calculations are affected by the selected enemy's Venus Power where it would ordinarily be the Venus Power of the user unleashing the Djinni that would factor. First, 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

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


 * ''final damage = (base damage + 80) * (1 + (Selected enemy's Venus Power - Hit enemy's Venus Resistance) / 400)

To word this in prose, Gears 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 selected enemy's Venus Power is than the hit enemy's Venus Resistance. The difference between the selected enemy's Venus Power and the hit enemy'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 Gears' damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 300 unleashes Gears on an enemy with a Venus Power of 80, and it ultimately hits a monster with a defense of 100 and a Venus Resistance of 70:


 * damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 + 80) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((300 - 100) / 2 + 80) * (1 + (80 - 70) / 400)
 * damage = ( / 2 + 80) * (1 + / 400
 * damage = ( + 80) * (1 + )
 * damage = *
 * damage = 184

Therefore, if Gears were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal 184 points of damage.

Location
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Gears is one of the Djinn that is only found by being randomly encountered in a specific area of the overworld map that otherwise appears to be featureless scenery. It is at the top tip of the Morgal region of Angara that is reached if you follow the narrow stretch of land north from Border Town quite a distance. Gears then must be battled and defeated to be acquired. Because this Djinni is located in the Morgal region which no longer becomes accessible at a later point in the game, Gears can be permanently missed if one enters the final gate in the Belinsk Ruins dungeon. (Late in the game, it is possible to return to Morgal through the Endless Wall glitch. However, this runs the risk of getting trapped in Morgal with no way of returning other than to reset.)

Analysis
General: In practical terms, all that is provided by Gears'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 does not do all that much to mar what is otherwise an attacking Djinni with a very high 80 added bonus damage, which is 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. That the attack is based on the target's Venus Power basically amounts to a trivial detail because elemental power and resistance interactions do not affect damage results drastically, so even though enemies' Venus power ratings can differ drastically between different enemies, the damage will still be around 80 more damage points higher than a normal physical attack executed by the user. In The Lost Age, the Venus Djinni Mold is this Djinni's practically-identical equivalent (though Mold is slightly different in that it depends on the unleasher's Venus Power).

By game
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Gears can be found as soon as the Morgal region is entered. While having 80 set bonus damage makes it quite useful for an attacking Venus Djinni at that point, before then the Mars Djinni Fury and the Mercury Djinni Serac could have been found, which deal almost as much damage. Gears is generally not considered all that great an attacking Venus Djinni because it has a small liability in place of what would be a beneficial side effect on most other attacking Djinn - Serac is very useful in comparison because it has the powerful and useful side effect of instant death. This is not to mention the Mercury Djinni Spout, which can be found in the early part of Belinsk Ruins at the same time as Gears; it deals 80 bonus set damage and has the chance to Delude the target, a minor side effect that still makes Spout a superior package to a Djinni that deals 80 damage but cannot be reliably targeted when 3 or more enemies are present.

Nevertheless, there is still opportunity for Gears to be useful as a Venus Djinni to attack with, which is available throughout the segment of the game that takes place all the way through Morgal. The attacking Venus Djinni Pewter acquired later on in Kolima Forest will compete against it with its x1.5 damage multiplier and chance to ignore half of the enemy's Defense, but Gears (and most other attacking Venus Djinn, for that matter) can only be truly said to be obsoleted later in the Eastern Sea segment of the game, when the powerful Venus Djinni Chain can be found.