Scorch

Scorch
Scorch being unleashed in the original Golden Sun
Element	Mars
Battle Effect	An elemental physical attack equal to a normal attack with 50 added damage, and may inflict Stun.
Set Bonuses
HP	+ 8
Attack	+ 3
Locations
Golden Sun *	Kalay Tunnel

Scorch (ダイナ Dyna) is a Mars Djinni found in Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

Scorch is the fourth Mars Djinni in the original Golden Sun, and can also be acquired in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Although it is not the party's fourth Mars Djinni in The Lost Age, Scorch is still ordered as the fourth Mars Djinni when equipped to characters. Because it is not available until after most other Mars Djinn can be found, however, the separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Scorch and all other Mars Djinn from Golden Sun after all of the Djinn introduced in The Lost Age. According to this order, Scorch is the fifteenth Mars Djinni in The Lost Age rather than the fourth, but this order has no influence elsewhere in the game.

Basic description

"Stun a foe with a blast attack."

When Set, Scorch increases its Adept's base HP by 8 and base Attack by 3.

When Scorch is unleashed in battle, the user deals a Mars-based attack equal in power to the user's normal physical attack with an additional 50 damage points added to the result. Then, there is a chance that the target will be inflicted with the Stun status condition, causing them to not be able to take actions for potentially a few turns.

In Golden Sun and The Lost Age, Scorch's unleash animation visually resembles a normal physical attack that generates a fiery explosion on impact.

Damage calculation example

Elemental physical attacks such as Scorch 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 Scorch's attack then takes this base damage value and uses it in the following equation: final damage = (base damage + 50) * (1 + (Attacker's Mars Power - Target's Mars Resistance) / 400) To word this in prose, Scorch takes the base damage of the user's normal physical attack, adds 50 to it, and then this result is modified by how much higher or lower the user's Mars Power is than the target's Mars Resistance. The difference between the user's Mars Power and the target's Mars 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 Scorch's damage is multiplied by. For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 200 and a Mars Power of 140 unleashes Scorch on a monster with a defense of 80 and a Mars Resistance of 100: damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 + 50) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400) damage = ((200 - 80) / 2 + 50) * (1 + (140 - 100) / 400) damage = (120 / 2 + 50) * (1 + 40 / 400) damage = (60 + 50) * (1 + 0.1) damage = 110 * 1.1 damage = 121 Therefore, if Scorch were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal approximately 121 points of damage.

Locations

Scorch is reached by moving this statue in front of the waterflow.

Golden Sun: Scorch is present in the portion of Kalay Tunnel accessible from the upper right cave entrance in the main town area of Kalay as soon as you arrive to Kalay for the first time. Upon entering the tunnel through the cave entrance concealed by a statue at the upper right of the town area, you are immediately in Scorch's vicinity. Push the nearby statue all the way left so that it blocks the water flowing out of the wall, and simply climb to Scorch and collect it.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Players can transfer data from Golden Sun to The Lost Age, but even if they don't, Scorch will be among the Djinn Isaac's party has with them when they join forces with Felix's party late in the game.

Analysis

General: The GBA games do not have any Mars Djinn that increase damage based on a multiplier, so Scorch is one of the only and "best" offensive Mars Djinn that the player has, having a relatively strong 50 set damage bonus and the chance to inflict the useful Stun status condition. In Dark Dawn, Chili and Pepper are also offensive Mars Djinn that can Stun, but Chili has a set damage bonus of 80 while Pepper has a damage multiplier of 1.5.

By game

Golden Sun: In Golden Sun, Scorch has a higher added damage value than the other two offensive Mars Djinn, Fever and Torch, and since there are no Mars Djinn in either GBA game that have damage multipliers, for the first game Scorch is as strong as you're going to get in terms of reliable Mars damage. (Torch, however, has a chance to ignore half of the enemy's defense rating, letting it deal sharply more damage to the target than Scorch on occasion.) Stun is always an excellent secondary effect, which most likely places it as better even than Torch for the purposes of winning battles. 50 additional points of damage is somewhat substantial for when Scorch can be first acquired in the middle of the game.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age: When Isaac's party joins Felix's party along with their returning Djinn, Scorch's ability makes it a second Char, a Mars Djinni found in TLA that is numerically that game's fourth Mars Djinni and is identical in effect. As before, Scorch and Char can be equally practical for the Stun chance backed up by satisfactory power ratings, though the Mars Djinni with the highest added damage rating is Fury with 70 points (though its secondary effect is Haunt, oft viewed to be far less beneficial).

Name Origin

To be scorched is to be burned by extreme heat. Heat is relevant in all Mars Djinn.

Dyna comes from dynamite, an explosive, or possibly from the Greek word dynamis, meaning power. A third origin could be the word dynamo, which relates the possible Japanese name origin for Ember, generator.