Sol Blade

The Sol Blade is a Long Sword-class Artifact weapon found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. Featuring both the second-highest base Attack of all weapons in the series and extremely powerful Unleash effects capitalizing on that, it easily fulfills the role of being each game's "ultimate weapon." Unlike all other weapons, this can only be equipped by the leading Venus Adepts of the games it appears in: Isaac and Felix in The Lost Age and Matthew in Dark Dawn. Despite its power, it is very easy to acquire in each game's respective final dungeon; in The Lost Age, it is found in a fairly non-descript chest in Mars Lighthouse, and in Dark Dawn, it is unavoidably granted shortly before the final battles in Apollo Sanctum.

General description
The Sol Blade increases the equipped Adept's base Attack statistic by 200 points, which is surpassed only by the 210 Attack increase of a Darksword in either game it appears in.

In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, it is found in a rather easily accessed treasure chest in a platform-and-ice-filled room in the lower reaches of Mars Lighthouse, shortly before the Flame Dragon boss battle takes place. It can be sold for 23400 coins, and it can be purchased back for 31200 coins. Unusually for any weapon, not all Adepts capable of equipping long swords can equip this; only the Venus Adepts Isaac and Felix can hold it, whereas the Mars Adept Garet and the Mercury Adept Piers are left out.

Its randomly "procced" Unleash effect, Megiddo, deals a Venus-aligned equivalent to a normal physical attack that then multiplies all of the resulting damage 3. The visual sequence for Megiddo appears as the user slowly leaping through the air in front of a red background while the sword sprite has a glowing effect overlaid upon it, and a large sphere of burning plasma appears from the top of the screen. As the user's sprite swings down the sword, the sun-like sphere is sent plummeting down onto the target, and the screen turns white from the explosion.

In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, the Sol Blade is a mandatory discovery in the final area of the final storyline dungeon, Apollo Sanctum. During the lengthy series of steps spent setting up the Apollo Lens using the Colored Orbs, the player is expected to approach the elevated altar from the northern edge of the area and interact with the Sol Blade embedded into it. Matthew will draw it out and obtain it as an item, which will allow him to go back down and insert it into a "lock" to continue setting up the lens.

This unlocking capability is a unique utility effect the weapon can be Used for, unlike any other weapon in the game. Whether the player does so by leaving Apollo Sanctum right away or by saving a postgame file following the final boss encounters, the Sol Blade can be brought to two other similarly sealed doors: one at Burning Island Cave, which brings the player to the optional battle with the Ogre Titans and the Daedalus summon, and one at Otka Island that grants access to a complex optional dungeon filled with treasures and the Ancient Devil boss battle.

As a weapon, the Sol Blade is similar to its The Lost Age appearance in that only the Venus Adept Matthew can equip it, leaving out Tyrell, and it retains its attack point increase and Megiddo unleash. However, it has been adjusted to account for the game's own Unleash system, which makes the Sol Blade randomly choose between up to four possible Unleash effects, and it requires Matthew collecting weapon mastery by attacking with the Sol Blade in order to collect them all. Megiddo is only attainable as the fourth and final of these Unleash effects.

The first Unleash that can be unlocked is Centurion, which deals a Jupiter-aligned physical attack with a very powerful x2.4 multiplier in its own right and a 50% base chance to ignore half of the target's Defense; this is separately featured as a prominent Unleash outcome on the Dark Dawn versions of Phaeton's Blade and Levatine.

The second Unleash is Radiant Fire, which is also found on the Levatine; this Mars-aligned physical attack instead applies 66 bonus damage points to the end result, and it also has the same potential for ignoring half the hit target's Defense statistic. Compared to its appearance on the original version of Levatine in The Lost Age, Radiant Fire has been improved by additionally hitting each adjacent foe off to either side for a somewhat smaller fraction of the damage, potentially striking up to 3 foes at once.

The third Unleash that needs to be unlocked before Megiddo can be unlocked is Purgatory, which is otherwise only featured as the third and final Unleash of the Dark Dawn version of the Fire Brand. This is a Mars-aligned physical attack that adds 67 bonus damage and applies a 45% base chance to inflict the Sleep status condition.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age
There is no doubt that the Sol Blade is the best-in-slot weapon for either Venus Adept you can give it to in The Lost Age. Though its 200-point Attack increase is technically beaten out by the 210-point increase of a Darksword, that weapon's own Acheron's Grief Unleash effect merely adds 76 bonus damage to the damage output, whereas Megiddo's consistent ability to triple all damage output will consistently crush opponents. At best, the Darksword can be made to produce similarly high damage multipliers at the expense of Psynergy Points by using either the Samurai class series' Quick Strike and the Dark Mage class series' Call Dullahan.

When it comes to other weapons in The Lost Age that might offer Unleash effects with powerful damage multipliers that can compete with the Sol Blade, the only available examples sport Unleashes that either may or may not proc the multiplier in question. The Excalibur long sword can produce the Jupiter-aligned Legend effect that will multiply the damage by either 1 or 3 at random; however, because Legend also applies a 73-point damage bonus that gets included in the damage-tripling effect, it can sometimes reach even higher damage values than Megiddo. It is a similar story with the light blades Tisiphone Edge and Masamune, which add bonus damage that can then be randomly multiplied; in the former case's Venus-aligned Vengeance unleash, it can multiply overall damage by either 1, 2, or 3, while the latter weapon's Mercury-aligned Rising Dragon unleash only chooses between a x1 and x2 multiplier. It should also be noted that Excalibur is very rarely acquired from getting Orihalcon forged, and that Tisiphone Edge is very rarely dropped from Cruel Dragons at Islet Cave, whereas the Sol Blade is practically given to players for free in a late-game chest.

Compared to all of the above-mentioned weapons, the Sol Blade is incredibly valuable for consistently tripling the damage with every unleash it procs, which makes increasing the base Unleash chance of the Venus Adept holding it an extremely powerful option. The equipment in The Lost Age that can raise Unleash rates beyond the default 35% chance can stack up in a way that makes it possible to raise the chance all the way up to 99%. The Valkyrie Mail easily found in another chest in the lower reaches of Mars Lighthouse adds a flat 20% to the Unleash chance, and the Riot Gloves very rarely dropped by Minos Knights in Yampi Desert Cave both add another flat 20% chance and add 15 bonus base Attack points to the equipped Adept. Equipping a Hyper Boots won with Game Tickets at the Lucky Wheels mini-game in Contigo adds a further 12% chance, and submitting a Mythril Silver to Sunshine the blacksmith in Yallam yields a 15% chance to get a Mythril Helm, which adds a further 12% chance. (Incidentally, were the Ninja Sandals item not dummied out, it would have provided 3% more additive Unleash rate than even the Hyper Boots, allowing a 102% Unleash Rate probability with every standard attack command.)

However, the Riot Gloves and Mythril Helm are particularly difficult to acquire and can take a lot of time and effort farming for, but there are viable placeholders for each item that can be used until the player manages to get them. The Aegis Shield is a random prize awarded at Lemuria's Lucky Medal Fountain for landing the medal in the center circle (though it should be noted that Golden Sun: The Lost Age only provides a total of 21 Lucky Medals in-game and that any more will have to be transferred over from Golden Sun via the password system). It offers a more modest but still usable 10% increased unleash rate, and so does the Warrior's Helm, which is only available via transfer from the first game. Since this 10% increase is very close to the Mythril Helm's 12% increase, and the Warrior's Helm also grants a 10-point Venus Power boost that can lightly improve Megiddo's damage output in its own way, getting Riot Gloves to replace the Aegis Shield should be seen as far more of a priority. With just the Aegis Shield and Warrior's Helm equipped alongside the Valkyrie Mail and Hyper Boots, the Venus Adept holding the Sol Blade will still end up with an 87% Unleash Rate chance.

Isaac or Felix being capable of unleashing a triply strong physical attack practically every turn will do a lot to make boss fights end much earlier, even in the case of the final boss, which has an extremely high Venus Resistance rating. Casting the Impact Psynergy to crank up the Venus Adept's Attack stat, reaching perhaps the 999-point attack stat cap, will more than justify spending the turn of the Adept casting the buff and make the Venus Adept capable of even one-shotting Mad Demons in Anemos Inner Sanctum. Having a Venus Adept capable of annihilating one enemy target per turn in this manner will also help make the Star Magician optional boss battle in Treasure Isle far more manageable because it will remove one of his more troublesome Ball minions whenever needed.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
The Dark Dawn version of the Sol Blade manages to retain its position as the overall best-in-slot weapon for Matthew, the sole Adept capable of equipping it, despite the modified Unleash system essentially saddling the majority of weapons in the game with weaker alternative Unleashes that can be randomly procced in place of their most powerful ones. Though the Sol Blade has a much lower chance to produce Megiddo because of it, it fares better than many other weapons because of the relative quality of its "lesser" Unleashes.

For one thing, its first unlocked Unleash is Centurion, which deals rather comparable damage to Megiddo because it uses a x2.4 damage multiplier that synergizes with its chance to ignore half the defense of the target. Ignoring half of the 229 Defense of the enemies randomly encountered shortly after acquiring the Sol Blade essentially causes around 57 bonus damage that then gets multiplied by 2.4 to become around 136 damage added on top of everything else. The closest thing to a downside is that the Jupiter alignment of Centurion will not be as strong on a Matthew whose class and Djinn setup prioritize his Venus power rating.

The Sol Blade temporarily "weakens" when its second Unleash is added to the pool of potential Unleash choices, Radiant Fire, because its damage bonus is merely an additive 66 points. That said, this is still a potentially useful effect in its own right because it retains Centurion's chance to ignore half of defense and also hits up to three enemies at a time, each enemy on the side taking less than the one in the center. The Sol Blade "weakens" further when it adds its third Unleash choice, Purgatory, which adds virtually the same Mars-aligned damage bonus as Radiant Fire but only attempts to inflict the Sleep status condition; this lacks the area functionality of Radiant Fire or any chance to ignore part of the enemy's defense.

It should be noted that the Mars alignment of both Radiant Fire and Purgatory is also a factor that Matthew is not initially set up to capitalize on with his Venus power focus if he remains in the mono-elemental Slayer class. All four Unleashes benefit if Mars Djinn are set on him to turn him into a very hard-hitting Chaos Lord, however; the significantly increased Attack power makes Centurion all the stronger, stacks up with the improved Mars Power values to help Radiant Fire and Purgatory "catch up" with the other two unleashes, and does more to improve the damage output of Megiddo than the missing Venus Power bonuses ever could.

The available equipment in Dark Dawn that can stack up Unleash rate bonuses differs from The Lost Age, but it is still possible to reach a 102% Unleash probability with every standard Attack command. The Warrior's Helm found in Teppe Ruins provides an additive 10% Unleash increase and 10 bonus Venus Power points for improving Megiddo itself; the Valkyrie Mail found in Apollo Ascent adds 20% more Unleash probability; the Aegis Shield found in Warrior's Hill adds 10% more; the Ninja Sandals now available in this game and found through the sidequest involving the Grandmother's Gift in Kaocho and the Grandchild's Gift in Tonfon add 15% more; and the Lord Sun's Ring found in Tonfon adds 12% more Unleash rate and 8 more bonus Attack points. On top of potentially removing the previous game's 1% chance not to unleash with the Sol Blade when attacking, these items are all acquired through methods that do not require grinding for rare drops or forge chances (though if you miss the easily missable opportunity to get the Ninja Sandals, the complete absence of Hyper Boots in this game will mean Matthew will only be capable of an 87% Unleash rate at best for the rest of the game). Nonetheless, there is no way to adjust the relative Unleash probabilities of the four possible Unleash effects once the initial Unleash check is passed.

That said, there is one other strategy that can be used to manipulate the Sol Blade's Unleash output, at least temporarily. Unless Matthew has garnered a lot of long sword weapon mastery from using weapons like Levatine and Fire Brand, he should start without any of the Sol Blade's four Unleashes unlocked. Because the highly powerful Centurion is the first unleash to be learned and can soon be unlocked by hitting the random enemies at the Apollo Lens with the sword, then so long as that remains the only unlocked Unleash, Matthew can be guaranteed to attack only with that effect whenever he passes the Unleash chance check. Matthew can then keep from accruing any further weapon mastery and adding Radiant Fire as an Unleash choice by using Psynergy such as Odyssey or Planetary to serve as his damage output, allowing him to reliably hit the Jupiter-weak final boss with Centurion several times throughout the final battle.

Trivia
A version of the Sol Blade exists in the code for the original Golden Sun, including its completed item icon and its parameters as a Long Sword-class weapon artifact. It can be speculated that the development team had envisioned the Sol Blade as an "ultimate weapon" at an early point but decided against making it obtainable in the first game once it was decided that the project would be split into two titles. The early form of the Sol Blade can be bestowed upon the party's inventory in the first game's Debug Rooms, which can only be gotten to with a hacking device (which, likewise, can be used to insert the weapon into the inventory directly, outside the debug rooms). In this version, the Sol Blade's item description is merely "???", it only adds 138 Attack points (which is technically higher than the first game's actual "ultimate weapon," the Gaia Blade), and it has no Unleash effect assigned to it. If the "beta" Sol Blade is present in the party's inventory in a Clear Data file that is used for transferring data into Golden Sun: The Lost Age, the weapon will adopt the updated stats and Unleash functionality of the final version that will still be found in Mars Lighthouse.

Infinite Sol Blade glitch
Early in The Lost Age, performing the "Retreat Glitch" in the interior of Air's Rock can grant you a free Sol Blade very easily, letting Felix destroy the rest of the game with the strongest weapon and letting both him and Isaac have Sol Blades. Repeating this to acquire multiple Sol Blades also lets you sell them off for massive wealth.

First, proceed through Air's Rock's interior until you can walk out the bottom floor's small entrance back outside, then walk back in and use the Moai whirlwind systems to ride back to the top floor. Make it back to the Psynergy Stone next to the stairwell that you originally climbed down through from the summit of Air's Rock's exterior. Now set Retreat to either shoulder button shortcut, and lower the PP of the Venus Adept with the Retreat spell down to 5 or less before attempting to use Retreat by pressing its shoulder button shortcut. Failing this on account of insufficient PP will temporarily scramble the game's inner workings so that interacting with the Psynergy Stone will grant you a Sol Blade instead of refill PP. If you want to get another Sol Blade from this Psynergy Stone, go downstairs and immediately back upstairs to return to this top floor, try and fail to shoulder-button-cast Retreat again on account of having too little PP to cast it, and then interact with the Psynergy Stone again. See this video on how to reproduce the glitch.

Part of the reason this application of the Retreat glitch rewards such a powerful late-game item so early is that the Sol Blade's position in the game's internal master list of items occupies a much earlier part of the list populated by the items introduced in the first game. This is an outcome of the fact the Sol Blade acquired in The Lost Age is the same item, albeit modified, as what exists in the code of the first Golden Sun and can be found in its respective Debug Room.

Etymology
is a tell (an ancient mound made up of what remains of older settlements) in northern Israel that is regarded for its geographical, historical, and theological significance. It was once the site of the ancient city of Megiddo, and its Greek name is, which is a transliteration of "Har Megiddo," Hebrew for "Mount of Megiddo". "Armageddon" has long since entered popular parlance as a byword for the end of the world, but it is formally described by the Book of Revelation as the site of an apocalyptic battle set to transpire.

Gallery of Dark Dawn unleashes