Valukar

Valukar (Balrog in the Japanese version) is an optional boss monster located and fought at the end of the optional dungeon Yampi Desert Cave in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Valukar awaits players willing for a battling challenge and guards the summon tablet containing the Daedalus summon sequence.

Background and story
Valukar, resembling a hulking large, pink-skinned demon with blue horns and wings and wielding a gold mallet, does not have any bearing on the game's actual story, nor is any background information provided. It is a powerful creature standing guard within the deepest depths of the Yampi Desert Cave, the secret cave-dungeon complex within the Yampi Desert located near Alhafra. For an indeterminable amount of time the Valukar has stood watch over a summon tablet containing a power being of fire (the Daedalus summon sequence, in other words).

Should any group of intrepid and capable Adepts battle their way through the cave to reach Valukar's chamber, Valukar and the summon tablet await on an area of grond elevated above a cavernous chasm. Valukar will speak to his challengers to introduce himself before attacking and using his powers to beat up the opposition:


 * “I am the guardian of fire. If you want my power, prove yourself in my crucible of flame.”

In The Lost Age, as Isaac and Felix's combined party of capable Adepts nears the end of its quest, they may decide to return to Yampi Desert and explore the desert cave as they have so many other dungeons if they have all the Psynergy powers necessary to do so. Their encounter with Valukar will be a fierce and spectacular battle, but if they defeat him, they will gain the ability to summon a gargantuan embodiment of military firepower, the animated missle-laden statue Daedalus, in future battles.

As a boss
Valukar is one of four "superbosses" located throughout Weyard in The Lost Age, the others being Sentinel, Star Magician, and Dullahan. All of these bosses fight using unique battling setups and are very tough, but Valukar can easily be viewed as the easiest of them to fight. Valukar is encountered at the end of the optional Yampi Desert Cave dungeon, which can only be entered and explored with the Teleport Psynergy found in Mars Lighthouse. Specifically, the battle will automatically begin as soon as you visibly approach Valukar and he steps towards you to attack.

Valukar, statistically, has the second highest average overall stat rating in the Golden Sun series, surpassed only by Dullahan. He has the second highest HP rating in the game at 12960 HP. He has 550 Attack, 175 Defense, 206 Agility, and 46 Luck. Valukar acts twice per turn as well. Valukar's resistances are are very lopsided; he is very resistant against the Mars element and very weak against the Mercury element. If Valukar is defeated in battle, you are awarded 8702 EXP, 4980 coins, and can gain the summon tablet Valukar was guarding, the Daedalus summon.

Arsenal
Valukar's collection of abilities is pretty straightforward:
 * Attack: Strike a single party member with a single physical attack.
 * Stun Jip: A monster skill where Valukar powerfully strikes a single party member and potentially inflicting Stun.
 * Djinn Stun: A monster skill where Valukar steals glowing orbs of rainbow energy out of each Adept, putting one of each Adept's Set Djinn On Standby. While this makes them weaker statistically, this move can easily be turned around on Valukar because Adepts can perform more summoning with more On Standby Djinn, but Valukar uses this move in conjunction with Crucible:
 * Crucible: One of the most unique monster skills in all the games: Valukar uses your own Standby Djinn to perform your own summons against you, and your Standby Djinn would be put in recovery mode as if it was you that used them. Potentially very powerful depending on how many On Standby Djinn Valukar can use because he will always attempt to use the strongest summons your Djinn make available for him. He won't use summons you haven't collected yet, however.

Strategies
Valukar, though one of the four "superbosses" of The Lost Age, is considered fairly easy as a boss and certainly the most manageable of the four. This is because Summon spells in Golden Sun games deal damage proportional to the size of each struck opponent's maximum HP meter, and because Valukar has the second highest HP rating in the games, summon spells of pretty much every level will always do massive damage on him. And because his Djinn Stun effectively puts your Djinn On Standby for summoning for you, Valukar is practically helping you make his HP meter dwindle quickly. You would basically try to summon whenever possible so that Valukar cannot use your summons against you, which shouldn't be hard if everyone has high agility ratings.

There are certain things to remember about this battle that will ensure you have a relatively easy time conducting it. First of all, summons using many Djinn such as Eclipse and Haures will be trouble if Valukar is allowed to use them against you, but summons using only a few djinn will actually do seemingly low damage to each of your Adepts, and healing Psynergy like the Aura Psynergy series and Wish Psynergy series are extremely useful for the fight. These same low-level summons do very nice damage against Valukar when you use them (Zagan will do over 700 damage, for example), so always try to be using relatively low-level summons to combat Valukar than wait to use high-level summons and risk Valukar using that against you.

Since Djinn Stun always puts one Set Djinn On Standby for each Adept alive in the current battling party, you can come up with a very safe battle if your party has one Venus Adept, two Mars Adepts, and one Jupiter Adept in the front row, with their Djinn arranged so they are all in their respective mono-elemental classes. That way, whenever Djinn Stun is used, the Djinn that are put on Standby will instantly allow for one Zagan summoning and one Megaera summoning. Both are quite good for you to use against Valukar and both are quite non-damaging for Valukar to use against you; you can go through the entire battle using only these two summons and four Adepts.

Whatever summon-based strategy you use for the battle, if you collected the regenerating summon Coatlicue, make sure never to let there be enough Jupiter and Mercury Djinn On Standby for Valukar to use Coatlicue on himself. Even if he is near the end of his HP meter, if he uses it his HP will be completely cured after a few turns, since Coatlicue causes its user to regenerate 60% of its maximum HP each turn for five turns.