Gel

Gel is a Mercury Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

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

Basic description

 * "Weaken a foe's Attack."

When Set, Gel increases its Adept's base HP by 9, base Attack by 5, and base Agility by 2.

When Gel is unleashed in battle, the user deals a Mercury-based attack equal in power to the user's normal physical attack multiplied by 1.5x. Then there is a chance the target's Attack statistic will be lowered by 25% ("two stages" of 12.5%, the same amount as the Dull Psynergy. The most Attack can be lowered down by is -50%, as in "four stages".)

Visually, Gel's unleash animation resembles the user making a strong, Mercury-aligned hit, and after the hit the transparent-sword-shattering effect plays out at the enemy's position to indicate that the attempt to lower the target's Attack statistic has been made.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Gel 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

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


 * ''final damage = (base damage * 1.5) * (1 + (Attacker's Mercury Power - Target's Mercury. Resistance) / 400)

To word this in prose, Gel takes the base damage of the user's normal physical attack, multiplies it by 1.5, and then this result is modified by how much higher or lower the user's Mercury Power is than the target's Mercury Resistance. The difference between the user's Mercury Power and the target's Mercury 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 Gel's damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 300 and a Mercury Power of 140 unleashes Gel on a monster with a defense of 100 and a Mercury Resistance of 90:


 * damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 * 1.5) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((300 - 100) / 2 * 1.5) * (1 + (140 - 90) / 400)
 * damage = ( / 2 * 1.5) * (1 + / 400
 * damage = ( * 1.5) * (1 + )
 * damage = *
 * damage = 168

Therefore, if Gel were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal 168 points of damage.

Location
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Gel is located in Kalt Island, immediately visible as soon as you enter the location. To get to it, first enter the frozen river, slide left, down, right, up, left, up, right, up, left, up, right, up, left, down, and left. Climb up the ladder and cast Lash on the coiled rope, and you are led to Gel easily for collection.

Analysis
General: Gel is essentially an ideal attacking Mercury Djinni because it has a moderately strong damage multiplier of x1.5, which means it is likely to produce satisfactory damage results when Unleashed by an Adept with a high attack rating. Mercury Djinn do not get higher damage multipliers, so Gel will only become more usefully damaging as the game progresses all the way up to its end. Its side effect sharply lowers the damage output of any physically-based attack the target may use, which seems good in concept, though in practice it is more reliably useful for the side effect of an offense like this to decrease an enemy's defenses or resistances.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: As a Mercury Djinni with a x1.5 damage multiplier, Gel is one of the strongest offensive Mercury Djinn, though dealing damage based on a multiplier means this strength will only manifest on an Adept with a high attack rating - Piers primarily comes to mind. Gel is compared with the Mercury Djinni Sour, the one other Mercury Djinni with a x1.5 damage multiplier, which is found much earlier in the game. Gel's chance to drop the target's Attack rating, and therefore benefit party survivability, is generally not as preferred as the sharp drop to resistance that Sour offers because because it is much more likely take advantage of lowered enemy resistance - any attack aligned with an element will do increased damage to a resistance-dropped enemy. An attack-dropped enemy, on the other hand, won't always use an ability that will be hindered by the lowered attack rating. The Mercury Djinni Serac is perhaps preferable to Gel because it does a high amount of bonus set damage and has a chance to instantly kill the target.

Name Origin
A gel is an apparently solid, jelly-like material formed from a colloidal solution. Furthermore, in French, "gel" means "frost" (and gel too).