Short Sword

A Short Sword is the first Light Blade-class weapon available in both Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age. In both games it is bought in the earliest towns the player's newly formed party can enter and explore; namely, the towns Vale and Vault in Golden Sun and the towns Daila and Madra in The Lost Age. Being a Light Blade-class weapon, a Short Sword can be equipped on Isaac, Garet, and Ivan in the first game, together with Felix, Jenna, and Piers in the second. It increases the wielder's base Attack rating by 14 points. Its buy value is 200 coins and its sell value is 150 coins.

In Golden Sun after the prologue sequences, the player begins in present-day Vale with a level-1 party of Isaac and Garet each holding a Short Sword and Jenna as a guest character holding a Wooden Stick, and 307 coins in your inventory. Because the upcoming first dungeon in the game, Sol Sanctum, is filled with very easy monsters to defeat, it does not necessarily matter what you buy at the town's vendors just so long as you buy all you can with your money. If you decide to buy a more powerful Long Sword to replace one of your two warriors' Short Swords, you can either sell off the Short Sword to get 90 coins back with which to spend on more armor, or you can equip it on Jenna and sell off her weaker Wooden Stick for 30 coins.

In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, the Short Sword serves much the same role as the piece of equipment the warrior Adept in your party, Felix, starts out with, as well as being available as a shop item in the first town of Daila. However, the 200+ coins you start out with by the time you enter Daila for the first time is much better off spent on armor for the Adepts because much of the game's focus is on completing puzzles in the dungeon-style locations that provide as rewards weapon artifacts far superior to commonly bought weapons and even weapon artifacts that can normally be bought in vendors. So, you should not buy a long sword and equip the short sword on Jenna in place of buying defensive equipment unless you're willing to fight many battles outside Daila for many coins and EXP.