Blue Dragon enemy line

The Blue Dragon and Cruel Dragon are species of monsters randomly battled in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. These monsters, resembling hunched, squat dragons, are palette-swapped variants of each other that have differing levels of power and defense and are fought in different locations in the game. This monster line is notable because both of its variants can randomly drop a rare piece of equipment that cannot be found anywhere else.

Blue Dragon
A Blue Dragon is a variant with light-blue skin and orange-brown horns and wings. Statistically, this monster has 408 HP, 349 Attack, 121 Defense, 133 Agility, and 23 Luck. In terms of resistance, it has a Mercury Resistance rating of 175, 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 115.

The Blue Dragon uses the following battle commands:
 * Attack: Used 6 out of 8 times, this is this monster's standard physical attack.
 * Ice Breath: Used 2 out of 8 times, this Monster Skill has the monster generating a mass of air filled with pieces of ice at the party of Adepts, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 180 and a range of 3 (the Adepts at either side of the specifically targeted Adept will only take 50% of the attack's force, instead of the normal 80%, however).

Felling a Blue Dragon yields 490 Experience Points and 297 Coins, and there is a 1/64 chance that the monster will randomly drop a Rising Mace. If it is felled by the attack effect of an offensive Mars Djinni, its rewards increase to 637 EXP and 386 Coins, and the chance to drop its item becomes 1/16. The Blue Dragon appears throughout Jupiter Lighthouse.

The Blue Dragon is statistically the strongest of the monsters in Jupiter Lighthouse, with its Agility rating being the only stat that is not quite as high as another monster's, namely the almost-as-strong Wyvern. The Blue Dragon's rare and unique drop, the Rising Mace, is highly desirable at this point because it is a Jupiter-based weapon like the Phaeton's Blade you get from a chest, and is exactly as powerful. Also, compared to many other monsters that drop unique equipment, the Rising Mace is dropped not quite as rarely, so it is highly recommended to repeatedly fell Blue Dragons using Mars Djinn until you get one. The Rising Mace is a perfect fit for the Mace-wielding Jupiter Adept, Sheba.

Images from a beta version of the original Golden Sun reveal that Blue Dragons were originally coded as common enemies in that game, but were taken out to appear in the sequel.

Cruel Dragon
A Cruel Dragon is a variant with dark-purple skin and green horns and wings. Statistically, this monster has 636 HP, 65 PP, 539 Attack, 216 Defense, 162 Agility, and 26 Luck. In terms of resistance, it has a Mercury Resistance rating of 175, 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 115.

The Cruel Dragon uses the following battle commands:
 * Attack: Used 4 out of 8 times, this is this monster's standard physical attack.
 * Ice Breath: Used 2 out of 8 times, this Monster Skill has the monster generating a mass of air filled with pieces of ice at the party of Adepts, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 180 and a range of 3 (the Adepts at either side of the specifically targeted Adept will only take 50% of the attack's force, instead of the normal 80%, however).
 * Freeze Prism: Used 2 out of 8 times, this is a Psynergy spell that generates a repeated assault of huge ice chunks falling onto and shattering at the party of Adepts, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 190 and a range of 5. This consumes 31 of the user's PP.

Felling a Cruel Dragon yields 661 Experience Points and 358 Coins, and there is a 1/256 chance that the monster will randomly drop a Tisiphone Edge. If it is felled by the attack effect of an offensive Mars Djinni, its rewards increase to 859 EXP and 465 Coins, and the chance to drop its item becomes 1/64. The Cruel Dragon appears throughout the linear hallways of the later, deeper portion of Islet Cave accessible with Teleport.

The Cruel Dragon is close to being as strong as the Druj, but both are outranked in sheer threat (and EXP) value by the Wonder Bird. Nonetheless, like the Wonder Bird, this is one of the most worthwhile monsters to repeatedly fell, because it drops one of the best weapons in the series, the Tisiphone Edge. Also note, however, that this is one of the very few monsters in the games that drops its item at a 1/256 chance, meaning that even if you use offensive Mars Djinn to fell every Cruel Dragon you come across, it could take a long, long while to get one through a miracle of a 1/64 chance. Naturally, this is one of the most popular targets with which to abuse the Random Number Generator so as to guarantee that the dragon drops one of this weapon (and gathering multiple Tisiphone Edges is highly essential to making a "perfect" end-of-game party).

Dragon
Like with all other monster lines introduced in The Lost Age that seem to have only two variants, a third palette-swapped variant to this line exists in the code of the game cart and was even given its own name, but has none of its statistics and abilities coded beyond weak placeholder abilities. Had it been used it would have appeared as variant with light yellow-green skin and dark-purple horns and wings simply named Dragon.