Waft

Waft is a Jupiter Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Waft is the fourth Jupiter Djinni in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Waft and all other Jupiter Djinn introduced in The Lost Age before the seven Jupiter Djinn from the original Golden Sun, most likely because all the Djinn from the original game can be gotten all at once late in The Lost Age. However, the original Djinn are ordered before all of the Djinn introduced in The Lost Age in the Djinn inventory screen while they are allocated to characters. By this order, Waft is the eleventh Jupiter Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the fourth.

Coincidentally, Waft is the eleventh Jupiter Djinni in Dark Dawn.

Basic description
When Set, Waft increases base HP by 11 and base Attack by 4.

When Waft is unleashed in battle, the user deals a Jupiter-aligned attack equal to their normal physical attack with 40 damage points added, and there is then a chance to inflict the target with the Sleep status condition.

In The Lost Age, Waft's unleash animation visually resembles user summoning the transparent purple image of a Jupiter Djinni above the target, and the Djinni causes the target below to be briefly encased in a pillar of purple-colored, spinning air currents that is thin at first and then spreads out white while losing its color. In Dark Dawn, the 3D model of Waft is summoned right in front of an enemy's face. Then the ground the enemy is standing on turns pink, and a subtle pink swirly effect surrounds the enemy's base. Then, after a small collection of flower petals appears from thin air to arc over the enemy's head, the enemy is suddenly engulfed in a pink puff of smoke that disappears very briefly.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Waft use the damage dealt by the attacker's standard physical attack as the base damage to be later modified. The total amount of damage dealt by a normal physical attack is half the difference between the attacker's Attack statistic and the target's Defense statistic, as this equation shows:


 * ''base damage = (Attacker's Attack - Target's Defense) / 2

Waft's attack then takes this base damage value and uses it in the following equation:


 * ''final damage = (base damage + 60) * (1 + (Attacker's Jupiter Power - Target's Jupiter Resistance) / 400)

To word this in prose, Waft takes the base damage of the user's normal physical attack, adds 40 to it, and then this result is modified by how much higher or lower the user's Jupiter Power is than the target's Jupiter Resistance. The difference between the user's Jupiter Power and the target's Jupiter Resistance is divided by 400, then 1 is added to this, resulting in what can be called the "elemental damage multiplier". This number is what Waft's damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 200 and a Jupiter Power of 140 unleashes Smog on a monster with a defense of 80 and a Jupiter Resistance of 100:


 * damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 + 40) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((200 - 80) / 2 + 40) * (1 + (140 - 100) / 400)
 * damage = ( / 2 + 40) * (1 + / 400
 * damage = ( + 40) * (1 + )
 * damage = *
 * damage = 110

Therefore, if Waft were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal 110 points of damage.

Locations
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Waft is located near the northwestern exit of Kibombo Mountains, but accessible only on your return trip back from Kibombo to the north when Piers has joined your party - only he can cast the Frost Psynergy needed to reach it. Climb up the first three sets of stairs, go down to Frost the puddle into an ice pillar, go up to climb up one more stairway, go right and down to hop across the ice pillar down and right, and cast Growth and climb up it to reach the Djinni. Waft must be battled to be acquired.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Waft is one of the five Jupiter Djinn that Sveta carries along with her, along with Fleet, Breeze, Bolt, and Haze. When she joins the party temporarily in Teppe Ruins in the middle of the game, these five Djinn can similarly be arranged and made use of by the party. Even if these Djinn are arranged among other Adepts by the time she leaves, though, these five Djinn will disappear, while the other Djinn that may have been assigned to Sveta will return to the other Adepts. Later in the game, during the long cutscenes that take place in early Belinsk Ruins, Sveta permanently joins your party again, and this time Waft and the other four Djinn are obtained and made usable for the rest of the game. Incidentally, the official game ordering of the Djinn assumes that these five Djinn are found in Belinsk Ruins, rather than earlier in Teppe Ruins, which is why the Jupiter Djinn that are found between Teppe Ruins and Belinsk Ruins - Sirocco, Wisp, and Puff - are ordered before Sveta's own five Jupiter Djinn.

As an opponent (The Lost Age)
Statistically, Waft has 440 HP, 40 PP, 134 Attack, 34 Defense, 104 Agility, and 13 Luck. Like all other Jupiter Djinn that are fought, in terms of resistance, it has a Jupiter Resistance rating of 193, Mercury and Mars Resistance ratings of 100 each, and a Venus Resistance rating of 25, and in regards to its abilities it uses its available Jupiter-based attacks with a Jupiter power rating of 125.

Waft can use the following battle commands:
 * Storm Ray: Used 53 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that causes a moderately large array of purple lightning bolts to thoroughly assault the party, dealing a Jupiter-based attack with a power rating of 65 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 10 of its user's PP.
 * Wind Slash: Used 47 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that shoots out a moderately large purple air swath at each Adept, dealing a Jupiter-based attack with a power rating of 50 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 9 of its user's PP.
 * Plasma: Used 41 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that causes a single, large bolt of purplish lightning bolts to strike at the party and explode on impact, dealing a Jupiter-based attack with a power rating of 45 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 8 of its user's PP.
 * Flash Bolt: Used 35 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that causes two purple lightning bolts to strike at the party briefly, dealing a Jupiter-based attack with a power rating of 40 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 7 of its user's PP.
 * Whirlwind: Used 29 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that causes a large whirlwind laced with electric charges to spin through the enemy party, dealing a Jupiter-based attack with a power rating of 20 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 5 of its user's PP.
 * Attack: Used 28 out of 256 times, this is this monster's standard physical attack, but for this monster it is counted as a Jupiter-based attack rather than a non-elemental attack.
 * Flee: Used 23 out of 256 times, this enemy has the ability to attempt to Flee the battle, thereby ending the battle if successful without rewarding you with the associated EXP, Coins, and the Djinni itself.

When defeated, Waft yields 255 EXP and 309 Coins, and the Waft Djinni is added to your party's Djinn collection. If you fell it with an offensive Venus Djinni like Echo, its rewards increase to 331 EXP and 401 Coins.

By this point you would ideally have the Djinn necessary to summon Cybele, Tiamat, and Boreas in one turn, so Waft should be bagged in one blow.

Analysis
Waft has an okay set damage bonus of 40 and a chance to inflict the powerful Sleep status condition, which renders the enemy unable to do anything for a period of time. It is essentially a "stepping stone" Djinni to tide the player over to later Jupiter Djinn that have both stronger damage bonuses and status conditions that are roughly the same in usefulness.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Waft can be thought of as a direct upgrade to the previous offensive Jupiter Djinni, Blitz, which has 10 less damage and can inflict the Stun status condition, which is roughly the same level of usefulness as Sleep. If the game is being played perfectly, earning this as the fourth Jupiter Djinni will allow an Adept to reach the third stage of their class series that requires Jupiter Djinn to be Set. This will be useful for the Aqua Hydra fight coming up. Following this, when the Great Eastern Sea can be sailed, the next offensive Jupiter Djinni can be found and earned far into Tundaria, Wheeze, which has 10 more HP and the chance to deal the usefully damaging Venom status condition. While Waft eventually gets outperformed in power power ratings by other Jupiter Djinn, particularly Whorl, Waft is one of only two Djinn in this game that can inflict Sleep, the other being the previous game's Mercury Djinni Mist.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Compared to members of other elements of Djinn that have incredibly high set damage bonuses yet can be found before entering Belinsk Ruins, Waft does not have a high damage bonus at all. The Jupiter Djinni Sirocco found earlier in Border Town has 20 more set damage bonus than this, but has the far less useful Delusion status condition. One might be tempted to assume Waft is equal to Sirocco in that some damage is removed to make a better status condition, but 20 damage points less is somewhat substantial, especially in a game where higher damage is more appreciated for going through monster battles faster. Waft is gotten for "free" as part of a new party member, and like in the previous game it and the Mercury Djinni Mist are the only attacking Djinn that can inflict Sleep, but those are the only things of particular note about it. The only attacking Jupiter Djinni that can be said to obsolete this with full certainty, though, is the strongest Jupiter Djinni, Simoom, which happens to be the final-numbered Jupiter Djinni in the game.

Name Origin
Waft is a term meaning to carry along gently as through the air. It can also be used to describe something that travels in this way, or simply to describe a light breeze.