Geode

Geode (ジオ Geo) is a Venus Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Geode is the ninth Venus Djinni in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Geode and all other Venus Djinn introduced in The Lost Age before the seven Venus 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, Geode is the sixteenth Venus Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the ninth. Interestingly enough, Geode is also the sixteenth Venus Djinni in Dark Dawn.

Basic description
When Set, Geode increases its Adept's base HP by 12 and base Attack by 6.

When Geode is unleashed in battle, the user deals a Venus-based attack equal in power to the user's normal physical attack increased by 90% - the highest consistent damage multiplier of all Djinn, and much greater than the damage multipliers of its otherwise similar counterparts Flint and Echo. The only Djinni that can do even slightly better is the Jupiter Djinni Gust, which can do 2x. But even so, it's only half of the time.

In The Lost Age, Geode's unleash animation visually resembles the entire background suddenly rolling itself up into a 3D-sphere, and a transparent orange image of a Venus Djinni  propels it into the target, where the sphere detonates in a humongous, 3D explosion before the background reappears. In Dark Dawn, the 3D model of Geode appears above the user and drops into the ground just in front of the enemy, making the ground ripple and wave steeply as though an object dropped into a pool of standing water. Suddenly, a sphere briefly flashes, the entire background goes dark, and the rolling sphere is now covered in the textures of the battle environment. It propels itself into the target and detonates in a large, circular, rotating explosion of fire that spreads out across the ground, and then the background reappears.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Geode 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

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


 * ''final damage = (base damage * 1.9) * (1 + (Attacker's Venus Power - Target's Venus Resistance) / 400)

To word this in prose, Geode takes the base damage of the user's normal physical attack, multiplies it by 1.9, and then this result is modified by how much higher or lower the user's Venus Power is than the target's Venus Resistance. The difference between the user's Venus Power and the target's Venus 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 Geode's damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an attack rating of 400 and a Venus Power of 150 unleashes Geode on a monster with a defense of 120 and a Venus Resistance of 100:


 * damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 * 1.9) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((400 - 120) / 2 * 1.9) * (1 + (150 - 100) / 400)
 * damage = ( / 2 * 1.9) * (1 + / 400)
 * damage = ( * 1.9) * (1 + )
 * damage = *
 * damage = 299

Therefore, if Geode were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal 299 points of damage.

Locations
Golden Sun: The Lost  Age: Geode is hidden within the lower left part of Atteka Inlet where the boulder is, and to have it appear you need to cast the Cyclone Psynergy - but to get to it, you need the Lift Psynergy, which you only get as part of the inventory of Isaac's party when they join Felix's party late in The Lost Age. In Geode's case in particular, though, it can be acquired very shortly after the reunion takes place because the game's plot progression dictates you go from Contigo to Atteka Inlet right away. So, before going to the screen where your ship is, fetch Geode in the pictured area.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Geode is automatically acquired in a cutscene late in the game. In the palace in Yamata City, when you approach the sleeping Himi while the Third Eye item from Warrior's Hill is in your inventory, story-relevant cutscenes transpire that result in Himi permanently joining your party. She brings with her this Djinni along with five other Djinn - Buckle, Clover, Magnet, Pepper, and Swift.

Analysis
General: Geode has an extremely strong yet reliable damage output. No other offensive Djinni has as high a damage multiplier as Geode, and of course the total damage of Geode is greatly increased by having the equipped Adept in a high-attack class and having a high-attack late-game weapon. When the equipped Adept is able to Unleash Geode without their class lowering one stage (e.g. having the maximum of nine Djinn Set, so that the Adept remains at the highest stage of their class series when they still have at least eight - this mainly only occurs with a mono-elemental class series like Squire class series), the equipped Adept has a powerful attack that can be used once in a given battle without significant drawbacks. Of course, there is the usual aspect of Geode allowing for a subsequent summon while on Standby. It is of equally high value in each game it appears in, though for different reasons per game.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Geode is one of the most well-known and often used Djinn in the game, both for extremely strong yet reliable damage output and for the elaborate visual attached to it. It should be used by a Venus Adept for optimized damage; however, don't have it attached to the Venus Adept equipped with the Sol Blade easily found at the end of the game, for that deals a consistent damage multiplier of x3 every time it is Unleashed, and the chance it can Unleash its effect when the user physically attacks can easily be optimized by equipment such as the Valkyrie Mail and Hyper Boots. Geode would never be used by an Adept that can deal a far stronger Megiddo unleash every turn, so it should instead go to the other Venus Adept where it can allow that Adept to deal bursts of damage relatively comparable to the Sol Blade-wielder.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Geode remains one of the most consistently powerful late-game attacks, and its value as an attack that always deals 90% additional damage is increased in Dark Dawn. This is because one of the main methods the party has otherwise for dealing strong damage to single targets, Unleashing with weapons, has become less consistent and more randomized due to the changes with the Unleash mechanics - even some of the strongest weapons end up having average damage multipliers lower than what Geode offers. Though, since Matthew's Sol Blade will still usually out-power Geode when it Unleashes, it may not be a good idea to have this Set on Matthew, because Geode would end up unused if Matthew is attacking with the Sol Blade and Unleashing the more powerful Megiddo and Centurion attacks. Geode can be a highly powerful offensive option on any of the other Adepts that can become the Chaos Lord, a high-attack-power class that requires Venus Djinn like Geode to be Set on them. Its damage will be optimized if it is set on Tyrell as a Chaos Lord with the Darksword equipped. The Darksword has the highest base attack rating increase of any weapon in the game, which Geode's damage multiplier will work well off of.

And yet, despite all this, Geode may no longer be the most powerful attack Djinni in the game. That honor probably belongs to the Venus Djinni Chain, whose attack is equivalent to the total of all of your currently active party members performing a normal physical attack on the target at the same time. With four party members alive, even if some of your party members are not powerful with their physical strikes, the four-strikes-in-one that Chain causes will most likely add up to be stronger than Geode by a potentially wide margin. How much stronger Chain will be than Geode depends on how high the total Attack ratings of all four currently battling Adepts are, of course.

=Name Origin= A Geode is a rock found deep within the earth.