Fire Brand

A Fire Brand (ほのおのつるぎ, Honō no tsurugi^?, lit. Flaming Sword) is a Long Sword-class weapon Artifact found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

In Golden Sun: The Lost Age

Fire Brand (TLA)
Visual effect of Purgatory
In-Game Description
"Long Sword: Unleashes Purgatory" (TLA)
Trade Info
Weapon class	Long Sword
Buy value	23400
Sell value	17550
Artifact?	Yes
Statistic Boosts
Attack Boost	176
Unleash effect
Effect name	Purgatory
Extra damage	67
Side effect	May put the target to Sleep
Acquisition
• Chest in lower Treasure Isle (TLA)

In The Lost Age, the lower depths of Treasure Isle become explorable as soon as the Reunion takes place and the previous game's Lifting Gem becomes available to the party. The main puzzle chamber in this area can be solved with the help of the Lift Psynergy, though it initially gives the impression that you will have to reset it and solve it in different ways to get all three of its rewards: the Fire Brand in the chest, the Jupiter Djinni Gale, and the exit further into the dungeon. However, going through the exit first and reentering the puzzle room back through that route lets you collect the sword and the Djinni more easily.

The Fire Brand, though not a contender for one of the game's "ultimate" weapons, is a very solid attack increase for one of your party members if you go out of your way to get it as early as you can. All physical attacks it deals, not just when it Unleashes, will be aligned with Mars. When it does Unleash, it produces Purgatory (ひけんれんごく, Hiken Rengoku^?, lit. Secret Sword Purgatory), which adds a strong 67 flat damage and adds a 45% starting chance to inflict Sleep on the target. This potentially incapacitates the enemy for up to seven turns, though the enemy has a 50% chance to shake it off at the end of each turn (and also a 25% chance to awaken prematurely if it takes damage from the third turn onward). The Purgatory sequence resembles the user casting a huge column of structured fire that emits from the target's position and briefly expands to cover the screen before contracting.

If you find additional weapons with damage-multiplying Unleashes like Tisiphone Edge and Excalibur, those will largely be the best-in-slot weapon choices for any Adepts capable of wielding them. Until you find one for Garet, the Fire Brand serves as a quality endgame-tier weapon for him, particularly since he is the only warrior-style Mars Adept and will be able to wield this with extra damage coming from his Mars power. (However, his Guard class series is lacking in Attack, so putting him into the Brute class series will drive up his base Attack much higher and ultimately serve to make the Fire Brand more damaging with a given hit.)

The Fire Brand is roughly equal in performance to the Levatine, a rare outcome of having the Blacksmith in Yallam use a hard-to-find Mythril Silver for crafting. The Levatine offers 3 less Attack and 1 less point of added damage to its Unleash, and its basic strikes do not automatically align with Mars. On the other hand, its Unleash has a chance to ignore half the target's Defense, making it sometimes hit a fair bit harder when procced. Since you only have a total of four warrior-style Adepts (Isaac, Felix, and Piers in addition to Garet) and can easily find the Sol Blade and Masamune for two of them, you may only need to use the Fire Brand to shore up the Attack stat of one of the other two.

Ideally, the party would have all of its weapon-based damage dealers sporting weapons with damage-multiplying Unleashes, with perhaps one warrior wielding a Darksword and the Cleric's Ring to optimize damage with more reliable forms of physical-attack-based offense like Liquefier and Quick Strike. In this scenario, both the Fire Brand and the Levatine may end up not being equipped.

In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

Fire Brand (DD)
The DS model of the Fire Brand
In-Game Description
"Weapon: Long Sword" (DD)
Trade Info
Weapon class	Long Sword
Buy value	23400
Sell value	17550
Artifact?	Yes
Statistic Boosts
Attack Boost	176
First Unleash effect
Effect name	Power Charge
Extra damage	x1.4
Side effect	May drop target's defense by 25%
Second Unleash effect
Effect name	Fearless Attack
Extra damage	x1.7
Side effect	May reduce target's HP to 1
Third Unleash effect
Effect name	Purgatory
Extra damage	67
Side effect	May inflict Sleep
Acquisition
• Random drop from Pyrodra (DD)

In Dark Dawn, the Fire Brand can randomly drop from Pyrodras in Burning Island Cave, which can only be opened up once Himi joins in Yamata City following the Warrior's Hill dungeon. The base chance is a rare 1/128, which can only be quadrupled to 1/32 by felling it with the attack of an offensive Mercury Djinni. (Since Dark Dawn has no known RNG-manipulation methods, obtaining a Fire Brand is now unavoidably a matter of chance.) Like with all other weapons in Dark Dawn, the Fire Brand now randomly chooses between two earlier, more "generic" Unleashes and its signature Purgatory Unleash.

The first Unleash is Power Charge (パワーチャージ, Power Charge^?), which is another Mars-aligned physical attack that deals 40% more damage and adds a 60% base chance to reduce the target's Defense stat by two 12.5% "stages" for several turns (out of a possible of four stages total). The second, Fearless Attack (すてみのいちげき, Sutemi no Ichigeki^?, lit. Desperate Blow), deals 70% more damage and adds a 35% chance to lower the target's HP to 1 if that survives the blow; unlike most other weapons this appears on, where it will carry out as a non-elemental attack, the Fire Brand will carry it out as a Mars-aligned attack because of the weapon's own innate Mars alignment. As for Purgatory, it being the third Unleash means it will have to be unlocked by using the Fire Brand in battle, but will also trigger slightly more often once the Fire Brand is mastered. (Purgatory, incidentally, also appears as one of the "lesser Unleashes" of the Sol Blade.)

If you can get a Fire Brand to drop while searching Burning Island Cave for the plot-critical Umbra Knuckles, it should be a good stopgap weapon for one of your only two Adepts capable of wielding long swords, Matthew and Tyrell, until you can get the best weapons for the endgame. Tyrell can especially benefit because he will have the extra Mars power needed to capitalize on the Fire Brand always dealing fire-aligned damage. These consistently fiery attacks will always strike the lowest Resistance value of the optional Star Magician boss on the Lost Ship, making it a good weapon for that particular battle. (The final boss of the game is very resistant to Mars, however.)

The Fire Brand can only function as a solid weapon to play through the Eastern Sea arc of the game with if you have not yet gotten the Blacksmith in Champa to forge a Levatine, easily one of the best weapons in the game thanks to vastly superior Unleashes. Eventually, while progressing through the final dungeon of the game's story, Matthew will unavoidably gain the game's ultimate weapon, the Sol Blade, and you should consider a Levatine to be Tyrell's best-in-slot weapon by that point.

Gallery of Dark Dawn unleashes

• 

  Power Charge

• 

  Fearless Attack

• 

  Purgatory

Cultural references

The word "purgatory" derives from "purgere", which in Latin means "to clean". As a proper noun, Roman Catholicism uses it to refer to a state after death where a soul that would otherwise remain in God's grace and ascend to heaven must first be cleansed of lingering faults that are not severe enough to condemn them to hell. The process is interpreted as painful and fiery, but a mercy nonetheless.