Arctic Blade

The Arctic Blade is a Long Sword-class Artifact weapon introduced in Golden Sun.

In
In Golden Sun, the Arctic Blade is found in an easily accessible treasure chest in the side-dungeon Fuchin Falls Cave, which is hardly off the beaten path. Its Unleash effect is Blizzard, which is a Mercury-aligned physical attack with 18 points of damage added and a 60% base chance to reduce the target's Attack stat by two 12.5% "stages" for several turns (down to a maximum of four stages totaling -50%). Blizzard visually resembles a stream of ice shards flying from the wielder's sword and cutting through the enemy.

The Arctic Blade is the strongest weapon for when it can be first found. However, its Unleash effect being aligned with Mercury means that it will not be as damaging as it can potentially be in the hands of the only two warrior-style Adepts that can wield it in the first game, the Venus Adept Isaac and the Mars Adept Garet. The Unleash's damage can be increased somewhat if one of these warriors has Mercury Djinn set onto him to increase his Mercury elemental power rating, which will also put them in the Swordsman class series. Those series happen to have access to the Cutting Edge Psynergy, which is its own Mercury-elemental physical attack that deals more bonus damage than Blizzard. Since that costs 5PP to cast, however, you can opt to let the equipped warrior save PP and try to unleash Blizzard for its less damaging but potentially attack-lowering strike.

The weapon's usefulness beyond this point is limited, however, since it can be overpowered by even a Claymore, which can be purchased as early as Altin. However, those who have this weapon will find it useful against the Killer Ape in Mogall Forest for its Attack-decreasing effect. Furthermore, if this weapon is still equipped by the time the party passes Altin into Lamakan Desert, the Blizzard unleash can be effective against the Manticore boss, who is weak to Mercury attacks and is capable of using Impair.

There is little point in having this in the party's inventory when it comes time to transfer password data into Golden Sun: The Lost Age, since this is functionally a slightly weaker duplicate of the second game's Storm Brand — a weapon gotten "early" in that game. There is no purpose to having either Felix or Piers equip this by the very late point in the second game Isaac's party joins.