Burning Sword

A Burning Sword is a Light Blade-class Artifact weapon found in.

In
The Burning Sword is first accessible late in game, when the party has progressed far enough into the Western Sea that the party's roster has doubled in size following the Reunion at Contigo. The Lift Psynergy that the party gains from this event immediately allows access to both locations in the game where Salamander Tails can be acquired. The Magma Rock dungeon contains the only two Salamander Tails in the game that are stored in chests, whereas the lower depths of the optional Treasure Isle dungeon allows the player to hunt Pyrodras to try to get more tails to drop.

As Salamander Tails are forgeable items, bringing one down to Sunshine the blacksmith in Yallam will cause him to randomly convert it into either this (with a 15% probability) or several other items: Apollo's Axe, Salamander Rod, Flame Shield, or Ardagh Robe. If a Burning Sword has ended up being crafted, you will have to pay the purchase price of 14600 coins (which is not shown to the player in localized versions of The Lost Age) before you can forge something else.

The Burning Sword is innately aligned with the Mars element, which means that even standard attacks dealt with it take Mars-based power and resistance values into account like elemental physical-attack Psynergy like Heat Wave. This essentially makes non-Unleashed attacks with this come across as lesser versions of the occasions where its Unleash effect, Blaze Rush, is procced; 54 extra points of damage is added to the end result before the elemental power and resistance modifiers are applied, and the attack also carries a 70% base chance to lower the target's Defense statistic by two 12.5%-sized "stages" for several turns. (A given enemy can maintain four such stages for a total of -50% Defense, so repeatedly hitting a target with Blaze Rush can strengthen the debuff up to the four-stage maximum threshold while refreshing the remaining time the target spends debuffed.) Blaze Rush visually resembles a series of large fireballs flying very quickly from the attacker's general direction and through the target.

The Burning Sword is a fairly powerful weapon that will benefit from the high Mars Power values that can be achieved by the Mars Adepts Garet and Jenna. It might be seen as a "placeholder" weapon that will eventually be sold off as the player finds easily acquired weapons like the Sol Blade, Masamune, and Fire Brand, the last of which is a "pure-Mars" weapon that offers an even higher Attack increase and can proc a stronger Unleash that might inflict Sleep. Unlike the Fire Brand, which is a Long Sword-class weapon, this Light Blade-class weapon can additionally be wielded by Jenna and Ivan, making the Burning Sword potentially useful in the hands of a late-game Jenna in either the Justice or Chaos Lord classes.

The Burning Sword is not usually considered as a worthwhile "best-in-slot" option for end-game party and class builds largely because the randomly dropped Tisiphone Edge has a far greater potential for piling damage onto the target. When evaluated as a weapon that a casual player might incidentally receive on their way to beating the main game, however, it is the only weapon other than the Huge Sword that has offensive capability fitting for those late stages while having an Unleash attack that attempts to debuff the target's Defense. Since the Huge Sword is Venus-aligned and is a Long Sword with more restrictions on who can equip it, the Burning Sword occupies a potentially useful niche, allowing Jenna and Ivan to attempt to debuff a tough target's Defense stat even while dealing satisfactory damage in the same turn. The defense debuff is fairly likely to happen because Defense-lowering effects have a naturally high rate of successful application compared to most other secondary effects.