Carver's Camp

Carver's Camp as seen from the overworld when leaving it.

Carver's Camp (ウードマン Woodman) is a small, mandatory location passed through early in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. It was founded by Carver, a refugee from Vale who has headed a local Lumberjack Association in the decades since the Golden Sun event wiped Vale off the map. The Goma Highlands Road must be traversed to reach the camp, and both halves of the camp itself are situated on either side of a chasm that separates Angara's western Goma region from its Bilibin region. Travelers from Goma who wish to enter Bilibin must cross a bridge that the camp maintains.

However, when Matthew's party arrive at Carver's Camp on a training quest that requires them to travel past Bilibin into the Morgal region, they find that a Psynergy Vortex has destroyed the bridge. They follow instructions left behind by Kraden to detour southeast into the ancient Konpa Ruins so that they can reach Konpa Cave, where there is presumably an underground route that leads near Bilibin.

In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

For all NPC gossip, see Side Scripts.

The player is able to head south from Patcher's Place as soon as they meet Patcher, though ideally they would have completed the Psynergy Training Grounds first to win the Gate Card, which is important for later. The linear route the player takes will force the party through the dungeon-like Goma Highlands Road, the last main screen of which directly leads east into Carver's Camp.

A Psynergy Vortex has destroyed the bridge the party was planning to take to reach the camp's Bilibin side, forcing the party to head south toward Konpa Ruins.

As soon as the party enters the camp, a cutscene will establish that a child is precariously hanging at the east end of the broken bridge above a chasm. Humorously, the party does not have to save him by remotely casting Karis' Whirlwind Psynergy on the Wind Blossom that will lift him up to safety, and there is no mechanical incentive for doing so. Whether or not you help the child, either talking to head lumberjack Carver or attempting to head west past the gathered lumberjacks will trigger a long series of cutscenes that will establish that the party cannot take their original planned route east from the camp and through the kingdom of Bilibin. The party will be told that they must instead head south and find the Konpa Ruins, which connects to the underground cave trail that allegedly leads to the Morgal region east of Bilibin.

The party is free to leave in the direction of Konpa Ruins, though there are several worthwhile collectibles to gather. The party can buy a Battle Axe, multiple Travel Vests, and a Circlet at the general store, and the Magic Rod is automatically added to the Artifacts menu shared between weapon vendors. By walking left of the general store's front door and past a small stump, you can roll a log onto another pair of logs, allowing you to hop onto a locked house's roof and enter it by jumping down its chimney. The small, bright-colored pot you land next to contains one of the game's eight Lucky Peppers.

At the south end of the village, you can hop east across the gap just northeast of a woman in a lavender dress and climb down a ladder near a tree and a man in an orange headband. This will bring you down to a small canyon-like screen, where you can cast Growth on a small sapling to turn it into a ladder that lets you collect the Mercury Djinni Chill.

Hop east across a short gap from near the camp's south exit to climb down into the canyon, where the Mercury Djinni Chill is waiting.

Finally, you can wind counter-clockwise around the northwest house and head south past a stack of logs to stop at the bottom-most edge of a grass-covered ledge, with an earth pillar off to your left. Your Move Psynergy has enough range to latch onto the pillar from this position, letting you shift it right twice in a row so that it drops into the gap in front of you. This lets you jump onto the earth pillar and head back west into the last main screen of Goma Highlands Road along an elevated ledge, where you can use Tyrell's Fireball Psynergy to operate a gondola that will help you eventually reach the Jupiter Djinni Gust.

Upon taking the south exit from Carver's Camp back into the overworld, you can follow southwest and enter the overworld model representing the east screen of Carver's Lumberyard. There, you can reach the Zagan summon tablet, find a Hard Nut under a Wind Blossom, and open the Lumberyard as a shortcut back to the overworld area south of Patcher's Place that lets you skip having to travel all the way back through Carver's Camp and Goma Highlands Road. This will be useful if you reach Konpa Gate further south and are turned back because you didn't win the Gate Card at the Psynergy Training Grounds yet.

At the end of the party's time in the Konpa Ruins dungeon, you will have to win a very hard boss battle in Konpa Cave underneath it. Then, once you progress south past a puzzle screen involving rolling pillars, a cutscene will cause a cave-in behind you, permanently locking the party out of the Goma region for the rest of the game and trapping them in the continent's southern Ei-Jei region. Any significant collectible in the Goma region will be permanently missed, including both aforementioned Djinn and the Lucky Pepper at Carver's Camp.

Vendors

The inn at Carver's Camp shares the same building as the general store and Sanctum service: the purple-roofed building just to the upper-left of the south exit out of the camp. It costs 4 coins per party member to stay at, which amounts to 12 coins total for three members.

General Store
Name	Class	Cost	Effect
Long Sword	Long Sword	200	Attack +14, Unleashes Critical Strike and Spin Strike
Battle Axe	Axe	280	Attack +24, Unleashes Critical Strike
Short Bow	Bow	300	Attack +11, Unleashes Double Shot
Travel Vest	Clothing	50	Defense +7
Wooden Shield	Shield	40	Defense +6
Padded Gloves	Gloves	10	Defense +2
Circlet	Circlet	120	Defense +6
Herb	Consumable Item	10	Restores 50 HP to one Adept
Antidote	Consumable Item	20	Cures Poison and Venom from one Adept
Artifacts
Magic Rod	Staff	380	Attack +16, Unleashes Gale Force and Murk

Collectibles

• Chill: Reached by hopping right across the gap just to the upper-right of the south exit and climbing down a ladder to a separate canyon-like screen. Cast Growth on the sapling down there to turn it into a ladder so that you can reach the Djinni.
• Lucky Pepper: Found inside the white pot in the southwest residence whose front door is locked. Roll the log left of the shop and inn, then hop across it to the roof and walk onto the chimney to fall into it.
• Sleep Bomb: Found inside the barrel at the bottom-left corner of the lower floor of the inn, near where the Great Healer provides Sanctum services.
• Herb: Found inside the upper of the two barrels to your immediate right when you enter the north residence.

History

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Carver trusts his life to an ancient, structurally compromised gondola when trying to reach the east side of his camp.

Carver's Camp was once of several settlements founded by refugees of Vale following the Golden Sun event. The residents of the town mostly consist of lumberjacks who cut wood from the nearby lumberyard. The Camp serves as one of only two passages through the Goma Mountains to the country of Bilibin; Carver's Camp was built next to a deep rift between the two sides, with a long bridge being suspended over the valley.

When Matthew's party of Adepts is tasked with retrieving a Mountain Roc feather, Matthew's father Isaac instructs the group to meet Kraden here before beginning the trek through Bilibin. However, when they arrive, they are met with an interesting quandary: A Psynergy Vortex has blown up the bridge and a child hangs on for dear life to a wind blossom attached to the rubble. Luckily, Karis's Whirlwind Psynergy helps the child land on the Bilibin side of the bridge.

The group meets with Carver, who is intent on traveling to the other side of the camp to check for damage. Eventually, Carver is able to cross the chasm via a combination of their only available gondola and the Grip Psynergy of two of his friends. However, the effort destroys the gondola, leaving the Adept's with no apparent way to Bilibin. However, the Adepts are given a message from Kraden, informing them of a second route through the Konpa Ruins, which will serve as the new meeting point.

Its Encyclopedia entry updates between the following two versions once the party comes across the camp to find that the bridge has been destroyed:

This lumberjack camp stands at one end of a valley that leads through the Goma Mountains to Bilibin and the rest of the continent beyond.

This camp stands at one end of a valley that leads through the Goma Mountains to the continent beyond. But its bridge to Bilibin has been destroyed.

Trivia

• The eastern side of Carver's Camp over the broken bridge is fully modeled and textured despite most of it not being shown on-screen; at most, the scene where Carver is sent flying across the chasm shows the purple roof of a house on the other side. If a walk-through-walls code applied via an external method is used to deposit the party onto the other side, the player will find that some pieces of relevant collision detection are missing, such as the house being able to be walked through. On the other hand, there is a functioning puzzle with a wooden log that can be rolled, and the front door of the house can be entered normally, leading to a room that is every bit as furnished as any other house in-game. Examining a particular pot will give you a Lucky Pepper, and examining the stove will show the system message "It is translating." This is a very common placeholder text string populating many areas' individual text string files in the ROM.
• The signs throughout the nearby highlands and lumberyards are signed by Carver in the English-language version of the game. However, in the Japanese-language version, it is the ウードマン木こり組合 or Woodman Lumberjack Association that set up the signs throughout the hills.
• When the introductory cutscene asks the player to use their Whirlwind Psynergy to save the child hanging helplessly at the east end of the broken bridge, there is nothing stopping the player from just heading back and starting the mandatory cutscene with Carver. Nothing about the cutscene will change, even though both the child and his father will remain in distress over the situation. Any notion that this is a development oversight is then disproven when a different NPC then gives similar instructions pertaining to Kraden and the Konpa Ruins, taking up the father's usual role in doling this information out. The NPC will also confirm that Kraden was flustered at first to see the child in danger but decided it was okay for him to leave after determining that the child was being securely held, reasoning that Matthew would be coming by soon enough.
  • Like with many locations in areas that permanently become inaccessible after certain points in the story, nothing about Carver's Camp will change if the player reaches it late in the game using the Endless Wall glitch or the like. If the child was never rescued, he will still be hanging at the east end of the bridge, and rescuing him will trigger the cutscene with his father as if no time had passed.