Vault

Vault is a small town situated at the heart of Angara's western region, and is usually the first town players in Golden Sun encounter after departing from the starting town of Vale. It is where Isaac and Garet first meet and join with Ivan, and it is also where one can find the optional Vault Cave dungeon.

Description
Vault, located a short distance southeast of Vale on the overworld map, should be the first town the player's party of Isaac and Garet enters after departing from Vale for the first time, and right after getting Flint the Venus Djinni. Through the story that occurs here, the player is introduced to Ivan.

After Vale
When you first enter the town, a cutscene triggers involving Master Hammet and his merchant caravan leaving the town. Inside the town, you can explore and shop around, then you would go to the larger house at the town's upper-left end, talk with Ivan, and offer to help him retrieve a special rod, the Shaman's Rod. He joins your party, and you can outfit him as well if you like. If you try to leave Vault, however, he will stay behind, giving you your Djinni back if you set it on him, and the next time you reenter the town he will immediately join. With Ivan, enter the Inn at the center of town and go upstairs and try to approach the shady characters; they will jump back from you. A short cutscene will occur when you try to go away, then when you come back to the bandits a sort of "mini-game" sequence takes place, where a computer-controlled Ivan and the two computer-controlled bandits will wander around seemingly aimlessly around the bedroom, and you as Isaac should walk around until at least one of the bandits is surrounded by you and Ivan with no way out. After the next cutscene occurs, step back out of the Inn, and the nearby ladder into the hole in the roof of the inn will now be open for you to climb.

Climb into the roof of the Inn, cast the Move psynergy on the giant crate to move it left, and hop the gap and enter the next room. Talk to the tied-up man and the next cutscene that occurs will lead to the game's first real boss battle, against one Bandit and two Thieves. In this battle, Psynergy that hits multiple targets like Ray and Earthquake is very powerful and useful, and it shouldn't be too hard a battle.

After winning it, you get the Bandit's Sword, and the lengthy cutscene that occurs ends with Ivan leaving your party. At this point, your next destination is out of town and towards Goma Cave Entrance, and there is where Ivan joins right back up and permanently, and when you get him you can travel back to Vault to use Mind Read on everyone. Talk to the mayor of Vault and he will give you a Water of Life. (This can be extremely useful for the massive amount of coins you can get for selling it, which will help you buy strong equipment in later towns - and since Water of Life counts as an artifact, you can always buy it back at a later date.) Go into the inn and a woman will give you a Bone if you ask for one, and when you give that bone to the dog at the elevated bottom of town around the cemetery and Mind Read it, it will give you some clues about the existence of a dungeon underneath where you stand. This would be Vault Cave, an optional dungeon that can only be accessed with the Reveal Psynergy; you can only access this cave the next time you visit Vault after traveling around the entire continent, crossing Mogall Forest and Lamakan Desert. Now is when you should leave Vault.

After exploring Angara
When you enter Kalay, Vault and Vale will update, and immediately after crossing Lamakan Desert, you'll be able to reenter Vault. When you return to Vault, speak to the mayor to learn that the bandits have escaped from the town's jail. Speaking to the mayor about this is important because if your current game file will eventually be used for password data transfer, then the Bandits will make a return cameo in Golden Sun: The Lost Age; they won't appear in that game if you don't speak with the mayor in this game.

With the Reveal Psynergy now in your possession, you can now explore the optional Vault Cave dungeon underneath this town. It's entrance is in the circle of cemetery headstones elevated at the bottom of town, hidden and can only be shown and entered by using the Reveal Psynergy. Before entering the cave, however, walk counter-clockwise to the wooden tower with the bell at the town's top end. Press A at the bell to ring it; this will cause a Venus Djinni to jump out of a nearby tree to an elevated cave exit of sorts. It is this exit you will come out of when you travel through Vault Cave, and ringing the bell will ensure that you get your Venus Djinni reward upon completing it. With the bell rung, you can now enter the hidden entrance. Upon completing the dungeon and nabbing the Djinni, nothing remains to be done at Vault.

Vendors
The town's inn service is provided in the town's lower center building for 4 coins per person.

Collectibles

 * [[Image:Bone.gif]] Bone: Acquired by talking to a woman to the left inside the inn after defeating the Bandits. Give this to the dog below town.
 * [[Image:Coin.gif]] 4 Coins: Found in a barrel to the right of the bed inside the house to the right of the inn.
 * [[Image:Coin.gif]] 7 Coins: Found in a jar in the house directly in front of the southern entrance.
 * [[Image:Mint.gif]] Mint: Found in the leftmost wooden box in the first floor of the inn.
 * [[Image:Nut.gif]] Nut: Found in the wooden box to the left of the mayor's house where you first meet Ivan.
 * [[Image:Sleep Bomb.gif]] Sleep Bomb: Found in the rightmost barrel in the item shop.
 * [[Image:Water of Life.gif]] Water of Life: Automatically received in a cutscene after defeating the Bandits and talking with the town's mayor.

Story
Vault is not given any background information in the games, being depicted merely as a small town in the heart of Angara. The town itself consists of several houses, surrounded by a wall-like cliff, with a prison inside a cliff cave. It is the only town to have a prison, though, it has not been used for a long time. Right before the eruption of Mt.Aleph a short distance to the northwest, the wealthy landowner, merchant, and lord of Kalay to the south, Hammet, comes here to Vault with their caravan on a business trip of sorts, and he is accompanied by his young servant, Ivan (a Jupiter Adept), who carries for him a special rod that was entrusted to Hammet by someone long ago, the Shaman's Rod. Apparently at around the same time, a trio of bandits comes to Vault on the lookout for goods to pilfer.

Then everyone in Vault witnesses the eruption of Mt.Aleph, whose clear and visible explosion causes Psynergy stones and other hunks of rock to rain all over the world, and the rocks destroy the bridge that lies between Vault and Kalay and normally allows for travel between the two town. Some rocks also fall into the town itself, blowing a hole into the roof of the inn, allowing access into the loft. In the ensuing chaos, the thieves make their move, pilfering among other things the urn of the mayor's family, the gold statue at the town's sanctum, and the Shaman's Rod, and store all that in the loft of the inn. They also steal the better equipment from the town's vendors and bury it into the cemetery (perhaps the Vambrace found in Vault Cave, which the cemetery is an entrance to, was one such item stolen and hidden by the bandits). Meanwhile, passing through and making a pit stop at Vault is the group of travelers from Vale consisting of Saturos, Menardi, Alex, Felix, Jenna, and Kraden, and they depart in the direction of Goma Cave to the northeast shortly after. Obviously the people of Vault do not suspect that Saturos' group actually caused the eruption of Mt.Aleph, though they do suspect that the other three newcomers to the town are the thieves that have been taking all their stuff.

Clearly the town of Vault is proving to be a dangerous place, and Hammet and his caravan want to leave Vault when it seems the eruptions have subsided. Hammet is quite upset with Ivan over losing his Shaman's rod, however, enough that after the eruptions have subsided the next day, Hammet and his caravan leave Ivan behind at Vault when they depart for the direction of Kalay. Hammet relies on Ivan making use of his strange powers to help him find the rod, and Ivan can return to Kalay once he had retrieved it. This is quite a precarious predicament for Ivan to find himself in, but Hammet soon finds himself in a far worse situation. After finding out the bridge south to Kalay is broken, he decides he has no choice but to go north to Lunpa, based on various merchant maxims that you should always try to trade with townspeople regardless of any unpleasant circumstances going on in that town. Practically as expected, he is captured by the empire of thieves situated behind Lunpa.

Right as Hammet leaves Vault, Isaac and Garet enter the town, on a quest in pursuit of Saturos' group from earlier. They meet Ivan and offer to help him find the Shaman's Rod, and he shows them his power to read the minds of people and animals. They attempt to use this power to investigate the shady characters in town, and they soon find the hoard of what the thieves stole inside the loft of the inn, climbing into the hole in the roof. They find a man tied up in there by the thieves because he had recently gone in there to see them and would have notified the town otherwise. Isaac, Garet, and Ivan are then confronted by the trio of thieves, noting how Ivan is being persistent in trying to get his possession back, and a three-on-three brawl ensues. When Isaac's side wins, the mayor arrives with others, detains the bandits, and locks them up in their jail for what should be a long time. The mayor thanks Isaac and Ivan for putting the town at ease, and the town retrieves their missing treasures, the Urn and the Gold Statue. Ivan retrieves the Shaman's Rod, then says he will now try to get to Hammet, so he says goodbye to Isaac and Garet and departs for Lunpa up north. Isaac and Garet proceed to leave Vault as well, departing in the direction of Goma Cave, where Saturos was last headed.

The town remains in relative tranquility following the thief incident. During the time Isaac is gone, the thieves conspire to break out of the jail, seek out Isaac, and exact revenge fostered by hatred for him for having put them in the slammer. They also would like to break out in time to see the upcoming Colosso competition in Tolbi. So that they do, breaking out of the jail and fleeing Vault, with nobody able to figure out how they did it. If Isaac returns to Vault much later in his quest and speaks with the mayor, he will learn of the breakout, though for the duration of the Golden Sun series he will not actually reencounter the bandits. Felix might come across them at some point in The Lost Age, however.

Vault serves no further purpose in the events of the Golden Sun series after this. At the epilogue of The Lost Age, all of the townspeople of Vale evacuate their town before it is destroyed. Later, Isaac and Felix's combined party return to Vale to find it destroyed, and grieve under the belief that all the townspeople have died as well. Felix in particular suggests they go to Vault to rest there and think. But that's before they learn that all the townspeople survived. The Lost Age ends at that point, and it is widely believed that all the townspeople have come over to Vault after losing Vale. It is possible that the residents of Vale are now living at Vault and maybe other towns in Angara as well, and with Alchemy restored to the world, Vault may now suddenly become a very big and populated settlement.

Vault