Tisiphone Edge

A Tisiphone Edge (ティシフォンソード, Tisiphone Sword^?) is a Light Blade-class weapon that can be rarely found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. It is one of the best weapons in the series because it is capable of an Unleash that can multiply the damage dealt by two or even three times.

In Golden Sun: The Lost Age

Tisiphone Edge (TLA)
Visual effect of Vengeance
In-Game Description
"Light Blade: Unleashes Vengeance" (TLA)
Trade Info
Weapon class	Light Blade
Buy value	23000
Sell value	17250
Artifact?	Yes
Statistic Boosts
Attack Boost	178
Unleash effect
Effect name	Vengeance
Extra damage	71
Side effect	May multiply the resulting damage by 2 or 3.
Acquisition
• Rare drop from Cruel Dragon (TLA)

In The Lost Age, the Tisiphone Edge can only be dropped from the randomly-appearing Cruel Dragons in the endgame-exclusive area of Islet Cave, which can only be reached with the Teleport Lapis from Mars Lighthouse. However, its base 1/256 chance to drop the blade is very rare, and it can only be increased to 1/64 whenever you fell a Cruel Dragon with the attack of an offensive Mars Djinni.

The Tisiphone Edge offers one of the strongest Attack ratings in the game, which synergizes extremely well with its Unleash effect, Vengeance (ヘブンベンジェンス, Heaven Vengeance^?). It adds 71 flat damage and aligns the damage of the physical strike to Venus, and it also randomly deals double or even triple damage (with the probabilities for each of the three outcomes, in order of increasing damage, being 30%, 20%, and 50%). The visual effect of Vengeance depicts a large, horned woman appearing in place of the party and shooting a flurry of seven arrows through the target's position in a row, and the number of arrows that connect with the target corresponds with which damage multiplier was landed on: two arrows will only hit if Vengeance hits for normal damage; four arrows will hit if the damage is doubled; and all seven arrows will hit if the damage is tripled.

A Tisiphone Edge is very comparable to an Excalibur (which can be randomly forged from Orihalcon) because of both its extremely similar base Attack increase and its incredible potential for damage whenever it happens to Unleash, which can surpass even the damage of the Sol Blade's Megiddo despite that sword having even higher base Attack to work off of. While Megiddo will always triple the resulting damage, Vengeance and the Legend Unleash of Excalibur only have a chance to apply that high of a multiplier whenever they carry out – but in both cases, the Unleashes also add over 70 flat damage that is subject to the multiplication. Vengeance and Legend use different probability models: Legend has a 60% chance to triple its damage, with its potential failure to do occupying the remaining 40% of the probability. While this means Vengeance's 50% chance to triple its own damage is lower, its 30% chance to only deal single-strike damage is also lower, and the remaining 20% probability amounts to a middle-of-the-road multiplier that does not exist on Legend.

Any of the Adepts capable of wielding this can consider this one of the best weapons possible for them to have if it is infeasible to give them either an Excalibur or the Sol Blade. Its categorization as a Light Blade makes it equippable by a total of six of the eight Adepts, including Jenna and Ivan, whereas only the other four Adepts can equip Long Swords like the Excalibur: Felix, Piers, Isaac, and Garet, collectively the four "warrior-style" Adepts. (The Sol Blade, meanwhile, can only be equipped by Felix and Isaac.) This makes the Tisiphone Edge likely the best-in-slot weapon for Jenna and Ivan, performing even better than the easier-to-find Masamune (at least in a password-enhanced game file), another Light Blade with an Unleash that "only" has a chance to double the resulting damage.

If a warrior-style Adept equips a Tisiphone Edge, enough Unleash-increasing armor is available that the weapon's 35% base chance to Unleash (common to almost all weapons) can be elevated to over 90% on every Adept you plan to have this equipped to. By adding Riot Gloves (+20%), Mythril Helm (+12%), Mythril Clothes (+15%), and Hyper Boots (+12%), the Unleash rate a given warrior Adept will have with any weapon can be brought up to 94%. The one-of-a-kind Valkyrie Mail provides 5% more Unleash rate than the Mythril Clothes, though that is best saved for whichever Venus Adept is using the Sol Blade. (The Warrior's Helm, if transferred from the last game, can be used in place of a Mythril Helm for offering a very comparable 10% Unleash rate and 10 Venus power, which is relevant to Vengeance's Venus-aligned Unleash. If you don't have Riot Gloves available, you will have to make due with an Aegis Shield, which only provides 10% Unleash rate – which is only half as much – and also lacks the gloves' bonus Attack.)

Some of the above-mentioned pieces of gear can only be equipped by the warrior-style Adepts, making Jenna and Ivan occasionally fail to unleash Vengeance when they perform a normal physical attack with a Tisiphone Edge. While Hyper Boots, Riot Gloves, and Mythril Clothes will remain on hand to bring their Unleash rate with Tisiphone Edge up to 82%, they only have two niche choices for head items that can fill up the Unleash rate further: the midgame-tier Lucky Cap (+8%) transferred from the first game, and a Demon Circlet (+15%) forged from a Dark Matter. While the Demon Circlet is capable of bringing one of these particular Adepts all the way to a 97% Unleash rate, its equipment curse will make them fail to carry out their command on occasion unless they are wearing the Cleric's Ring (another item that can only be transferred from the first game).

As with most weapons, any Venus or Mars Adept wielding this will enjoy a hefty bonus to their Attack rating if matching Djinn are exchanged between them so that they are both in the Brute class series, which will give more base damage for Vengeance's multipliers to work with. Both Garet and Jenna will especially benefit from this arrangement because their respective mono-elemental class series (Guard and Flame User) feature lower Attack than the Squire class series normally used by both Isaac and Felix. On the other hand, while Vengeance will still hit the endgame-tier bosses hard when it scores triple-damage, the final boss is very resistant to Venus attacks and will take significantly more damage from the Excalibur's Jupiter-aligned Legend Unleash.

The sheer desirability of the Tisiphone Edge, as well as how rarely it drops from Cruel Dragons, makes it one of the most popular targets to abuse the game's easily manipulated Random Number Generator to get without any hassle. By following these steps, you can guarantee it will drop:

RNG manipulation methods

Make sure no one is wearing cursed equipment (since that would throw off the RNG manipulation), and save inside any of Islet Cave's later, linear hallways where the Cruel Dragon can spawn. Hard-reset the game, reload the save, and enter one battle; if a Cruel Dragon is not part of the enemy group, hard-reset again and try again. (However, if a Wonder Bird also spawns, that will throw off the RNG with its multiple turns and high speed, so you are better off slaying it for EXP, then saving, and then performing the hard reset.) Once you get a random battle with at least one Cruel Dragon in it as your first battle in that play session, have Felix, Sheba, and Piers respectively cast Clay Spire, Destruct Ray, and Glacier, all with the arrow centered on the Cruel Dragon you're trying to get the drop from, and have Jenna cast Aura. The enemies will not attack because it is the first turn of the current play session and no screen transitions have occurred in the field yet. Then, in the second turn, have Sheba cast Destruct Ray again on the Cruel Dragon, and have Felix and Piers attack a different monster. Jenna must finish the Cruel Dragon off by unleashing an offensive Mars Djinni like Core or Shine. If you are playing on the Hard Mode, the Cruel Dragon will have 50% more HP and 25% more Defense, so the party will instead have to use lots of high-tier Psynergy that can only be gotten at high levels to bring it down in two turns. In the first turn, have Sheba cast Tempest, Felix cast Clay Spire, Jenna cast Cycle Beam, and Piers cast Glacier. In the second turn, have Sheba cast Tempest again, Felix cast Clay Spire again, and Jenna finish off with Shine or Core, leaving Piers to attack the other monster.

In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

Tisiphone Edge (DD)
The DS model of the Tisiphone Edge
In-Game Description
"Weapon: Light Blade" (DD)
Trade Info
Weapon class	Light Blade
Buy value	23000
Sell value	17250
Artifact?	Yes
Statistic Boosts
Attack Boost	178
First Unleash effect
Effect name	Vorpal Slash
Extra damage	16
Side effect	Hits each adjacent foe
Second Unleash effect
Effect name	Combat Dance
Extra damage	x1.5
Third Unleash effect
Effect name	Light Surge
Extra damage	51
Side effect	May inflict Delusion
Fourth Unleash effect
Effect name	Vengeance
Extra damage	71
Side effect	May multiply the resulting damage by 2 or 3
Acquisition
• Rare drop from Great Dragon (DD)

In Dark Dawn, the Tisiphone Edge is even more elusive because it can only randomly drop within the game's own incarnation of Crossbone Isle, which can only be accessed in the postgame (meaning that you will have had to defeat the final boss at least once already). Furthermore, the enemy that drops it, the Great Dragon, has a much higher HP rating than any other monster in the game (2,108), meaning you will have to carefully keep mental tabs on how much damage you deal to it before you decide when to unleash an offensive Mercury Djinni. Finally, there is no RNG manipulation available in Dark Dawn, so you will have no choice but to keep on slaying Great Dragons with Mercury Djinn until you get it. (Fortunately, its base drop rate is at a more reasonable 1/128, which becomes 1/32 whenever a Mercury Djinni is successfully used as the knockout blow.)

Like with all other weapons, the already inconsistent Tisiphone Edge becomes markedly more so because there is now a good chance that it will instead perform one of three other, weaker Unleashes chosen at random instead of its signature Vengeance Unleash. The one it starts out with, Vorpal Slash (ウインドウィーゼル, Wind Weasel^?), is a Jupiter-aligned attack that adds 16 damage, and it hits each enemy adjacent to the target for 80% of the attack's overall force. The second, Combat Dance (らんぶこうげき, Boisterous Dance Attack^?), is identical to the basic Critical Strike of many early weapons, only dealing 50% more damage than a normal physical attack. The third, Light Surge (ライトミラージュ, Light Mirage^?), is a Jupiter-aligned single-target attack that adds 51 damage and carries a 65% base chance to inflict the target with Delusion (which gives one's odds of landing with a regular physical attack a 60% chance to miss; this can last up to seven turns, though it can be shaken off with a 30% probability at the end of each turn). The particular Adept wielding this will have to attack with this a number of times to unlock Vengeance as its fourth and final unleash, and bringing Tisiphone Edge's Mastery to full will both make Vengeance occur slightly more often and give a slight Attack increase to the blade itself.

Since Unleashing the Tisiphone Edge to the best of its ability now requires you to randomly land on both the Vengeance Unleash itself and its 50% chance to do triple damage (or, when viewed another way, its 70% chance to do at least double damage), landing the Tisiphone Edge's most powerful Unleash outcome is particularly uncommon. Exacerbating matters is that Dark Dawn's collection of Unleash-increasing armor pieces comes in vastly more limited quantities, with the only Ninja Sandals (+15%), Valkyrie Mail (+20%), Aegis Shield (+10%), Warrior's Helm (+10%), and Lord Sun's Ring (+12%) all being better off used to make sure Matthew unleashes with the Sol Blade every time he attacks. Whichever Adept is holding a Tisiphone Edge will have to make due with a Mythril Clothes (+15%), and the one Lucky Cap from Harun Channel can also provide 8% Unleash rate.

However, one marked advantage the Tisiphone Edge has over the Excalibur is that it being a Light Blade allows it to be equipped not only by Matthew and Tyrell but also by Karis, Amiti, Eoleo, and Himi, whereas Long Swords like Excalibur can only be equipped by Matthew and Tyrell. Most of these other Adepts may well consider Tisiphone Edges to be best-in-slot weapons for them; Himi, in particular, has access to both a lot of Venus Elemental Power and the Weapon Grace Psynergy in her default Miko class series. The Miko series' Attack modifiers, though, are so low that casting Weapon Grace on herself will be required to bring her potential usage of Vengeance up to speed with the others. (On the other hand, Tyrell is probably not the best choice to give a Tisiphone Edge to, despite his warrior-like focus; he tends to score more consistent damage with the Levatine's relative focus on the powerful Centurion Unleash).

Since Karis, Amiti, and Himi are "caster-style" Adepts, they can additionally equip Mythril Armlets to add 10% more Unleash rate, and one of them can equip the Cleric's Ring from Crossbone Isle to be able to safely use the forgeable Demon Circlet for its respective 15% Unleash rate increase. Taken together, a caster Adept with Mythril Clothes, a Mythril Armlet, and a Demon Circlet reaches up to 75% Unleash rate with most weapons. Some of the weapons these and the other more warrior-like Adepts are capable of having before the final story dungeon, though, are at least as competitive as the Tisiphone Edge despite it having higher Attack than most and being capable of a damage-multiplying Unleash.

The findable Phaeton's Blade, for example, is also decently likely to perform the same Centurion Unleash as the Levatine. For Eoleo, he can wield the Herculean Axe, which has 186 Attack and the Olympus Rage Unleash, which always doubles the resulting damage and can even apply instant death. For Karis, the heavily Jupiter-aligned Verdant Sword has the Emerald Blitz Unleash, which also doubles the resulting damage and can apply a Psynergy Seal. For Amiti, the Masamune (rather easily found in Yamata Ruins) is comparatively likely to unleash Rising Dragon, which is not only capable of doubling its damage but also strikes adjacent targets in Dark Dawn. Finally, the Sagittarius Bow – which is also exclusively found in Crossbone Isle – has a relatively consistent damage multiplyier between its three Unleashes and is decently likely to unleash Blue Comet, which both more-than-doubles the damage and may debuff the target's Resistances.

Gallery of Dark Dawn unleashes

• 

  Vorpal Slash

• 

  Combat Dance

• 

  Light Surge

• 

  Vengeance

• 

  Concept art of Vengeance unleash from Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

Cultural references

In Greek mythology, Tisiphone is one of the three "Erinyes", or Furies, along with Alecto and Megaera (the namesake of the Megaera summon). Tisiphone's purpose was to avenge murder by inciting suicidal madness in the guilty. She was once in love with Cithaeron, who apparently committed a mortal crime. Cithaeron implored her to execute him herself, which she did by having him be bitten by one of the poisonous snakes that served as her hair.

Trivia

• In both The Lost Age and Dark Dawn, the Tisiphone Edge is the only weapon randomly dropped by a monster that has a Venus-aligned signature unleash.