Living Statue monster line

The Living Statue and Hydros Statue are species of monsters battled in Golden Sun. These monsters, resembling large dragon-like statues that are self-animating, are palette-swapped variants of each other that have differing levels of power and defense. This monster line comes in limited quantities and includes one boss.

Living Statue

A Living Statue is a comparatively small variant that is turquoise, with yellow wings and tail. Statistically, this monster has 540HP, 34 PP, 149 Attack, 44 Defense, 56 Agility, and 20 Luck. In terms of resistance, it has a Mercury Resistance rating of 193, Venus and Jupiter Resistance ratings of 100 each, and a Mars Resistance rating of 25, and in regards to its abilities it uses its available Mercury-based attacks with a power rating of 125. Furthermore, this monster is counted as purely of the Mercury element, meaning that even its normally non-elemental offenses are counted as Mercury-element attacks.

The Living Statue uses these battle commands:

• Attack: Used 4 out of 8 times, this is this monster's standard physical attack, but for this monster it is counted as a Mercury-based attack rather than a non-elemental attack.
• Tundra: Used 2 out of 8 times, this is a Psynergy spell that drops shards of ice into the opposition, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 45 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 8 of its user's PP.
• Water Breath ("Water Blessing" in the first game): Used 2 out of 8 times, this is a Monster Skill where the monster generates a blue mass of watery yet gaseous matter at the party of Adepts, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 25 and a range of 3 (the Adepts at either side of the specifically targeted Adept will only take 50% of the attack's force, instead of the normal 80%, however).

Felling a Living Statue yields 377 Experience Points and 900 Coins, and the monster is guaranteed to drop a Vial. If it is felled by the attack effect of an offensive Mars Djinni, its rewards increase to 490 EXP and 1170 Coins. In Golden Sun it does not appear as parts of random battles; it appears in limited quantities as scripted battles that occur throughout Altin Peak, with only one ever fought at a time. The Living Statues originally reside in the mines of Altin and are viewed as the town's "guardian statues", but when Mt. Aleph erupts, Psynergy stones are showered all over the world, and the stones that land in Altin cause the statues to magically come to life, whereupon they take it upon themselves to use their mind-boggling water-spouting skills to flood Altin completely. When Isaac's party comes to Altin, they battle the living statues one by one, and each time they defeat one the water level of the flood zone recedes, allowing them to explore more of the mines. Eventually, all the statues are defeated and the town is dried off.

Because what few of these enemies there are in the game are only featured as separate encounters always alone, in scripted encounters you may trigger after preparing, these enemies should never be actual threats to a party of 4 Adepts. They may take quite a few hits and their attacks generally hard hitting, but oftentimes merely having everyone physically attack is enough.

Hydros Statue

The Hydros Statue is a giant-sized variant that is blue, with violet wings and tail, and is a boss in Golden Sun. Statistically, this monster has 1300 HP, 80 PP, 156 Attack, 53 Defense, 62 Agility, and 30 Luck. In terms of resistance, it has a Mercury Resistance rating of 193, Venus and Jupiter Resistance ratings of 100 each, and a Mars Resistance rating of 25, and in regards to its abilities it uses its available Mercury-based attacks with a power rating of 125. Furthermore, this monster is counted as purely of the Mercury element, meaning that even its normally non-elemental offenses are counted as Mercury-element attacks.

The Hydros Statue uses these battle commands:

• Froth Sphere: Used 53 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that summons an array of watery orbs that gather into the party, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 65 and a range of 5. This ability consumes 12 of its user's PP.
• Restore: Used 47 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that removes the Sleep, Stun, Delusion, and Death Curse from either itself or one unit on its side of the field. This consumes 3 of its user's PP.
• Tundra: Used 41 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that drops shards of ice into the opposition, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 45 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 8 of its user's PP.
• Attack: Used 40 out of 256 times, this is this monster's standard physical attack.
• Water Breath ("Water Blessing" in the first game): Used 35 out of 256 times, this is a Monster Skill where the monster generates a blue mass of watery yet gaseous matter at the party of Adepts, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 50 and a range of 3 (the Adepts at either side of the specifically targeted Adept will only take 50% of the attack's force, instead of the normal 80%, however).
• Drench: Used 23 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that drops moderately large spheres of water onto the opposition, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 60 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 10 of its user's PP, meaning that it is able to use Drench exactly eight times throughout the battle.
• Ice Horn: Used 17 out of 256 times, this is a Psynergy spell that shoots a mass of ice spikes down onto multiple Adepts, dealing a Mercury-based attack with a power rating of 70 and a range of 3. This ability consumes 11 of its user's PP.

Felling the Hydros Statue yields 496 Experience Points and 2400 Coins, and the boss is guaranteed to drop a Lucky Medal. If the player manages to land the finishing blow on the Boss using an offensive Mars Djinni, its rewards increase to 644 EXP and 3120 Coins. In Golden Sun it is a mandatory boss battle that takes place at the end of the Altin Peak dungeon, in a room you uncover after a sequence involving a large rolling boulder chases after you and crashes to make a hole in the ground. The party, having already defeated the lesser Living Statues by this point, climb down into the hole, reach a tiled room, and the massive Hydros Statue advances towards them and automatically begins the battle. Following it, the characters comment about how strange it was that these statues came to life in the first place, and the existence of a tiled room below the mines, before collecting another reward from the chest behind the Hydros Statue, the Lifting Gem.

This boss encounter, though seemingly overflowing with water-based group attacks against your party, is especially manageable if by this point you collected all the possible Djinn. This includes four Mercury Djinn, which when all Set onto Mia puts her into the Cleric class, which gives her access to the extremely practical Wish Psynergy series of group-healing spells. And if the three Mars Djinn are all On Standby on Garet, he can summon Tiamat for one particularly helpful burst of massive damage, and the boost to his own Mars Power rating he gets from using a summon helps his damage output with his other Mars-based offenses for the following turns. It is worth noting that this boss only has 100 more hit points than Saturos, who was fought at least two boss battles earlier in the game, which is quite a lot earlier.

The "Hydros" in this monster's name may be interpreted as possibly representing more than the term "hydropower" (power derived from the force or energy of moving water); in Golden Sun: The Lost Age, one important NPC is named King Hydros, who is the ancient king of the Mercury-based civilization of Lemuria and apparently has been since the ancient past. The statues in Altin could possibly have a long-lost connection to Lemuria considering the Hydros Statue's name and Mercury abilities, and it can subsequently be speculated that the tiled room the statue is fought in indicates a connection between Lemuria and the modern-day area of Altin.

Extended gallery

The animated Living Statue sprite.

The animated Hydros Statue sprite.