Dragon Axe

A Dragon Axe is an Axe-class Artifact weapon found throughout the Golden Sun series.

Basic Description by Game
In all its appearances, the Dragon Axe increases the wielder's Attack by 100 points. It can be bought for 10300 coins and sold for 7725 coins.

In Golden Sun, it can be purchased in Lunpa, and equipped by Isaac and Garet. In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, it is sold at the Apojii Islands and can be equipped by Felix and Piers. Its Unleashed power is Heat Mirage, which adds another 21 damage points, converts the damage from physical to Mars, and attempts to delude the target. It has the standard base unleashing rate of 35%. Heat Mirage appears as a smoky cloud of Mars energy that forms on impact, causing the air around it to briefly ripple.

In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, it is sold in Tonfon, and can be equipped by Matthew, Tyrell, and Eoleo. Due to Dark Dawn's revisions to the Unleash system, the Dragon Axe now has three Unleashes: Critical Strike, Rolling Attack, and Heat Mirage. Each Unleash has a chance to be called up at random when an Unleash is triggered. Critical Strike is a non-elemental attack which multiplies the damage by 1.5. Rolling Attack is a Jupiter aligned attack that multiplies damage by 1.1 and has a range of three adjacent targets. Heat Mirage carries over from the first two games, and remains the signature Unleash.

Analysis
In Golden Sun, the Dragon Axe is effectively equal to the Shamshir in essentially being buyable "reward" artifacts for completing the optional Lunpa Fortress dungeon and its boss Toadonpa; their attack rating increases are effectively identical, they are both weapons that can only be equipped by Isaac and Garet, and they have Mars-based Unleash effects. However, while it might be up to taste whether the deluding aspect of the Dragon Axe's Unleash is preferable to the Attack-lowering aspect of the Shamshir's Unleash, the Shamshir's Unleash also packs an additional 13 bonus damage, making Dragon Axe unleashes noticeably less effective. While it might still be good as a weapon on whichever Adept is not equipped with Shamshir for a period of time, other weapons that can be found later near the end of the game are far preferable to it, including the Giant Axe.

In The Lost Age, the Dragon Axe is not a recommended purchase due to dungeons and forgeable materials delivering increasingly powerful weapons at a fairly regular rate. In addition, the main Mars Adept of the party, Jenna, is not able to equip heavy weapons, which makes the Dragon Axe's Unleash weaker due to the lower Mars Power of the other two Adepts.

In Dark Dawn, the Dragon Axe is not available until the player has obtained the Sailing Ship. However, once the player has the ship, the player can also obtain more powerful forged weapons and dungeon Artifacts for their party. Additionally, the three Unleashes of the Dragon Axe are fairly weak when compared to weapons of similar strength. Thus, the player can safely ignore the Dragon Axe with little worry.