Riot Gloves

Riot Gloves are a Glove-class piece of armor found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. They are noteworthy for significantly improving any party member's basic attacking capabilities with unsurpassed additive bonuses to the wearer's Unleash probability and Attack stats, and their acquisition as very rare random drops from the Minos Knight enemies in Yampi Desert Cave means the player can get as many copies as needed.

In
The earliest point in The Lost Age where Riot Gloves can be gotten is right after the Teleport Lapis is acquired in Mars Lighthouse close to the end of the game's main campaign. At any time, the party can use the Teleport Psynergy to warp to Alhafra, enter Yampi Desert from its northeast end nearby, and use the Sand Psynergy to enter Yampi Desert Cave at the northwest corner of the desert's large, eastern screen with the sandfalls. Once you have used Teleport on the circular Teleport pad in the cave, you can fight random battles with Minos Knights, each of which has a base 1/128 chance to drop a pair of Riot Gloves when felled. Since this enemy is most weak to the Jupiter element, felling it using a Jupiter Djinni with an attack as an unleashed effect, like Blitz, will quadruple the drop chance to 1/32 (and improve the EXP and coin rewards).

There is no disputing that Riot Gloves are the best-in-slot choice for hand-gear for Adepts who focus primarily on dealing physical attacks. They are a vastly superior version of the War Gloves bought much earlier in the game at Izumo, offering endgame-level defense and an even higher Attack rating boost in comparison. The additional 15 base points of Attack pulls its weight enhancing elemental physical attacks produced either by Psynergy like Odyssey, Djinn like Echo, or all kinds of weapon Unleashes, including the particular endgame-level weapons with Unleashes that outright double or even triple the damage done.

On top of this, the Riot Gloves increase the weapon Unleash rate of the equipped Adept by an astoundingly high additive value of 20%, making this strictly superior to the already useful Aegis Shield, which offers less defense and only 10% added Unleash chance. Unlike that item, Riot Gloves can be equipped even by "caster-style" Adepts who cannot equip heavy gear like shields and body armor. Riot Gloves can also be seen as a far superior version of the caster-exclusive Mythril Armlet, which only offers one more Defense point but only 10% additional Unleash chance. Neither the Mythril Armlet nor the Aegis Shield offer any sort of Attack boost.

The most popular way to use this is to equip it on whichever leading Venus Adept is wielding the Sol Blade, which has a "Megiddo" Unleash that always triples the resulting damage. Since the Sol Blade, like almost every other weapon, has a base Unleash rate of 35%, stacking up the Riot Gloves' 20% increase, the Valkyrie Mail's 20% increase, a Mythril Helm's 12% increase, and a pair of Hyper Boots' 12% increase on top of that will allow for Megiddo to be Unleashed with 99% probability.

Only in certain cases can the Riot Gloves be put off in favor of a hand-slot armor that fulfills a more niche purpose. The Cosmos Shield makes the equipped warrior-style Adept significantly tougher to take down because it adds 20 to all Resistances. While Jenna is an excellent wearer of Riot Gloves in general because she can equip Tisiphone Edge and Masamune, which have damage-multiplying Unleashes, she may prefer wearing Big Bang Gloves, which offers a powerful 40-point boost to her Mars Power and allows her to use her restorative Aura Psynergy series very well. Even the Riot Gloves might not be enough to turn the other caster-style Adepts — Ivan, Sheba, and Mia — into viable hitters, so hand-gear like Jester's Armlet, Aerial Gloves, and Titan Gloves might be better fits for Adepts focused on casting Psynergy.

RNG manipulation in

 * Main article: Random Number Generator

Given that the Riot Gloves can only be dropped by Minos Knight enemies in Yampi Desert at the "post-endgame" of Golden Sun at the very rare rate of 1/128, it is fairly hard to get one to drop even if you slay a Minos Knight with a Jupiter Djinni every time. However, by performing specific actions during a battle in a specific order, you can manipulate the game's Random Number Generator to ensure that the Riot Gloves are dropped at the end of the battle. One such method is detailed below.

To prepare for this, have your front party consist of Felix, Jenna, Sheba, and Piers in their respective mono-elemental class series. Save in Yampi Desert Cave, turn off the game and turn it back on, and reload the save. Fight a random battle, which will always be a preemptive attack in your favor; if it is not with exactly one Minos Knight and one Sand Scorpion, turn the game off and reload the file again. Once you enter a battle with a Minos Knight and Sand Scorpion:


 * Round 1: While targeting the Minos Knight with all attacks: Felix casts Clay Spire, Jenna casts Aura, Sheba casts Storm Ray, and Mia casts Tundra.
 * Round 2: Felix Defends, Jenna casts Aura, Sheba unleashes Whorl to fell the Minos Knight, and Piers Defends.

This should drop a pair of Riot Gloves. If you want to perform this method again right away, you must save and turn the game off and back on to refresh the internal RNG, and do so again if your next "first" battle is not with a Minos Knight and Sand Scorpion.