Sunshine
| Sunshine | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Hometown | Yallam |
| Age | unknown |
| Relatives | a wife a son |
| Hair color | Black |
| Eye color | Brown |
| Japanese name | (スンパワ Sunpower) |
Sunshine (スンパワ Sunpower) is a blacksmith in Yallam. After Yepp's death, Yallam loses access to his pearls, and hence their prosperity. This leaves Sunshine as the village's next biggest income source, as his skills with the forge are considered to be second to none. His skills are so great that the other vendors in Yallam openly call their goods inferior to Sunshine's works. To most of the citizens, he appears very temperamental, and will do strange things, such as disappearing into the nearby Taopo Swamp for long periods of time and refusing to work when it is not raining. This causes people to believe he is stubborn and eccentric, so many of the townspeople criticise him for wasting his talents. In fact, the real reason is that Taopo Swamp dries up when it does not rain for lengthy periods, meaning that he cannot properly access the area, which contains special raw materials. Without these materials, he lacks the ability to properly work.
Role in gameplay
If Felix brings him either a Rusty item or a forgeable material, he will be inspired and set to work, forging the item into a powerful new weapon or armor. He does charge the player upon delivery of the new equipment, with the price being equal to the buy price of the item that has been forged. Once an item has been given to him, in order for him to complete his work, it is necessary for the player to either leave town and come back, visit the Sanctum, or stay the night at the town's Inn; the Sanctum approach saves the most time.
The greatest drawback for players wanting a rare item from Sunshine is that he will forge one of several different items from one material (except rusty items, which are always the same when re-forged), chosen at random. A good example of this working against the player is the Stellar Axe, which is inferior in most ways to Excalibur, despite both of them being forged from the same material, Orihalcon. Since the item that will be forged is chosen once the player commits to a material, resetting the console and reloading a save to get a specific item out of a material will only work with a save in which Sunshine is lying on the bed awaiting work. Otherwise, reloading a save while he is standing at his blacksmith, or is lying back down on the bed while his wife is waiting to sell you the completed item, will result in the same item every time.
As the items he forges include the most powerful weapons in the game, from a player's standpoint, Sunshine is arguably the most important NPC in the series, with only the fortune teller in Naribwe's ability to locate Djinn being comparable in terms of usefulness.
Trivia
- It is not known whether "Sunshine" is his real name or merely his nickname.
- The equivalent in the Japanese version, スンパワ (pronounced Sunpawa), is most likely meant to suggest "Sun-power", though the imported standalone Katakana term for "Power" is normally written as "パワー" (Pawaa). The extra chōonpu mark at the end is normally used to draw out the vowel sound preceding it, in this case for the purpose of conveying the "-wer" syllable of "Power" instead of a shorter "-wa" sound.
- A canoe can be found at the entrance to Taopo Swamp. Presumably this belongs to Sunshine, and is his mode of transport within the swamp, which is why he can't work when it isn't raining- there is no water to travel on.
- In the English version of the game, despite alerting the player to the fact that Sunshine charges a fee for his work, Sunshine's wife does not tell you the actual price of the item you are buying. This appears to be a mistranslation, as the price was present in the Japanese version.
