Kaocho

Kaocho's appearance in the overworld of Dark Dawn, west of its home realm of Sana.

Kaocho (カオチョ) is a prominent settlement featured in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. It is located at roughly the northeastern edge of the southern Ei-Jei region of Angara. It was founded by King Wo, a militant monarch who acted on behalf of the warlike Emperor Ko to expand into Ei-Jei on behalf of their homeland, the eastern Sana region. When Ko died and was succeeded by the far more peaceable Unan, Wo was cut off and began plotting a campaign to retake Sana. However, a mysterious foreigner in his court seems to be what spurs his current interest in waging war on two ancient kingdoms in Ei-Jei, Passaj and Ayuthay, both of which contain ancient Alchemy Machines.

Matthew's party of Adepts, seeking to revive Passaj's Alchemy Machine in order to use the Clouds of Passaj to travel north into the Morgal region, are directed to retrieve the Sol Mask hidden in the ancient Ouroboros dungeon, which Wo had directly founded Kaocho's palace atop of. They must visit the palace and pose as Adepts who can help Wo complete his campaign against Ayuthay in order to receive the king's letter of introduction allowing them to explore surface-level Ayuthay, which will let them sneak into Ayuthay's underground shelter. Once the Ayuthay prince Amiti has joined the party's ranks, they must return to Kaocho and explore the Ouroboros with his help.

During the game's final arc, taking place across the Eastern Sea, Matthew's party can revisit Kaocho and the other settlements in the Ei-Jei region while the continent is beset by much darker circumstances.

In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

For all NPC gossip, see Side Scripts.

Inside the residential and commercial district of Kaocho.

When the party exits east from Harapa and is free to explore the greater Ei-Jei region occupying the southern swath of Angara, the official route begins by progressing through Passaj Mountain Climb and engaging in several long cutscenes in Passaj. The player will be oriented around the military affairs of Ei-Jei, mainly that its ally to the south, Ayuthay, is being occupied on the surface by soldiers from the hostile city of Kaocho far to the northeast. The party will be tasked with retrieving the Sol Mask from the Ouroboros dungeon underneath Kaocho, which can only be accomplished with the help of Amiti in Ayuthay; the player will be given the Tree Flute needed to enter the underground shelter at Ayuthay and meet Amiti.

However, the player would then find that the Kaocho soldiers will not let Matthew explore the surface grounds at Ayuthay without permission from Kaocho's King Wo, so the player would logically head to Kaocho next. It is entirely possible to head to Kaocho as the first settlement visited in Ei-Jei following Harapa, putting off Passaj temporarily, and the king will give the the party Wo's Letter through a series of cutscenes that will not be any different either way. However, because both Wo's Letter and the Tree Flute are needed to reach Ayuthay's underground shelter, the party would have to then climb up to Passaj and get the flute before returning to Ayuthay.

Initial visit

When the party enters the throne room in Kaocho Palace, they are driven out of hiding by Chalis, King Wo's mysterious advisor, and given Wo's Letter so that they can enter the occupied city of Ayuthay.

If you walk straight north through the town into the screen above with the palace, approaching the palace door will cause you to be momentarily stopped by the guards, but they will let you walk in freely if you say "Yes" to affirm that your party are Adepts. This is the only time in the game you will be able to walk inside what is called Kaocho Palace in-game, and your access to its rooms will end the moment you walk through the double-doors, which will automatically trigger a long cutscene in the throne chamber. You can talk to all NPCs and read all bookcases for the sake of engaging with worldbuilding before you enter the throne chamber. During the cutscene with King Wo and his advisors, you will be given the key item Wo's Letter and instructions to show it to the soldiers occupying Ayuthay.

At the end of the cutscene in Kaocho Palace, you will have been ejected through a trap door into the bottom floor of the future dungeon, the Ouroboros. Specifically, you will be deposited into a segregated, monster-free portion of the Ouroboros that only offers one linear route back outside (during which you will have to push a snake statue left to hop south, then remotely Move another snake statue off to the side so that you can enter the glowing doorway behind it). You will reach a cave trail leading to a sapling that you must turn into a vine ladder with Growth, and climbing one floor up will let you slide down onto the ground level of the cave at the northeast corner of Kaocho's outdoor screen with the palace. You can walk out of the cave and head south along the east, grassy perimeter to return to Kaocho's main village screen. For future reference, the room with the bowl and pool in this northeast cave is the entrance into the true "dungeon" of the Ouroboros and cannot be opened with your Psynergy abilities at present.

The Venus Djinni Steel is reached by casting Grip on the left flagpole outside the palace in the screen north of the town.

Before heading off to Ayuthay, you can find various useful collectibles in Kaocho. You can buy the Broad Sword at the armory if you don't have both the Elven Rapier and Blow Mace for both Matthew and Tyrell, and you can buy the Blessed Ankh artifact that can only be equipped by Rief. The Bronze Shield is introduced here, and the Leather Gloves and Wooden Cap are only sold here, potentially giving an additional layer of defense for all four party members. The item shop, meanwhile, adds one each of Psy Crystal and Water of Life to the Artifacts menu.

The doorway west of the currently closed dumpling shop leads to an empty residence that contains one of the game's eight Mints. This will remain in the stove even if you skip it but come back to Kaocho very late in the game, but the same cannot be said for the Grandmother's Gift that is given to you by the grandmother in the residence at the northwest corner of town. You can pick up this optional key item either now or during the second required visit to Kaocho later in the Ei-Jei arc, but crossing into the Clouds of Passaj will render the item permanently missed. It is relevant to a late-game sidequest, which means it will occupy your party's inventory for most of the game. Finally, you can hop west across the southeast lilypad to get to the chest directly west from it, which contains the Sanan Dress.

There are two Djinn visible in separate, enclosed areas in the town's southwest quadrant, but only the Venus Djinni can be gotten at the moment. Officially, you must walk the narrow, stone-paved road leading east from the southeast residence in the upper half of the town and north along the left side of the east river, then transition into the north screen outside the palace. Hop right onto, and back left from, a set of three lilypads to get around a single rock in your way, then follow along and hop onto the greenish-gray stone structure the palace is based on. You should end up at the right flagpole south of the palace's front doors, where you can cast Grip to transport yourself to the left flagpole. (As a shortcut, it is possible to directly Grip onto the left flagpole from the steps in between them, if you are positioned at the exact right spot on the stairs.) From there, you can follow south along the right side of the west river back into the town, where you can hop toward the Venus Djinni Steel.

Subsequent visit

Entering Ayuthay's surface level using Wo's Letter, then entering its sub-surface level using the Tree Flute, begins a lengthy span of time spent at Ayuthay and the dungeon connected to it, Barai Temple. At first, the party will acquire the Sand Prince Stone that grants the Arid Heat Psynergy series to Tyrell when he has it equipped, which is used to evaporate water contained in special bowls and consequently cause nearby pools to lower their water levels. Eventually, the Mercury Adept Amiti will join your party and bring with him the Insight Glass Utility Psynergy item, and the story will direct you to return to Kaocho and use the Insight Psynergy to find the true entrance into the Ouroboros.

The man blocking the way across the lilypad to the Mars Djinni Lava will only move when you give him a Kaocho Dumpling purchased at the Dumpling Shop.

When the party returns to Kaocho with Amiti in tow, fewer of its villagers are present, and those who remain will have updated gossip. Despite Amiti's insistence to the contrary, you should explore the city before heading northeast into the cave leading into the true Ouroboros.

The Dumpling Shop south of the armory is now open for business, and while you can buy Plump Dumplings in bulk as a much cheaper restorative than the Nut (which is not buyable in bulk until the Morgal region), you will want to buy one Kaocho Dumpling. Since the dumpling shop cannot be entered during your possible late-game revisit to Kaocho, the current revisit is the only opportunity you have to inspect the open pot in the shop's upper-left corner for one of the game's eight Lucky Peppers; this will be permanently missed when you set off for the Clouds of Passaj. If you talk to the man sitting at the southwest corner of the town area while you have a Kaocho Dumpling, you will be forced to give him one, and he will move out of the way. This lets you hop east across the lilypad in front of him to reach the Mars Djinni Lava.

When you reach the room in the back of the northeast cave with the pool, a cutscene will have Amiti automatically cast Insight to indicate that the stone wall behind the pool will open up if you play the Tree Flute in front of it. Cast the Arid Heat Utility Psynergy on the bowl to evaporate its contents and lower the water level, then climb up the ladder and bring up the inventory on your own to use the Tree Flute. What follows is the main portion of the Ouroboros, and the mandatory treasure at the end is the Sol Mask; when you get it, you can either cast Retreat or backtrack a short ways back to the cave entrance with the pool. You can now bring the Sol Mask back to the Alchemy Forge at Passaj without incident.

Final visit

During the final arc of the game, the entirety of the Eastern Sea can be explored, and the party can beach their new sailing ship at the Ei-Jei region's southern beaches to return to Kaocho and other settlements, which will now be updated to account for recent circumstances. Said circumstances will have affected Kaocho far more gravely than the other settlements: The entire town lies in ruins, random monsters unique to Kaocho and the surrounding area can be encountered while wandering the streets, and much of the citizenry will have evacuated into the palace, which remains firmly locked. Each of the decayed corpses of those who could not evacuate into the palace can be "mind-read" through casting Spirit Sense.

Kaocho is the settlement in Ei-Jei that has the most to lose from the dark cataclysm that spreads across much of Angara late in the game.

Both the Djinn Steel and Lava can be collected if they were left alone prior to departing the Ei-Jei region for the Clouds of Passaj the first time, and so can the Mint in the residence left of the dumpling shop – but not the Lucky Pepper in the Dumpling Shop itself, for the restaurant's front door is blocked by a dead body. Furthermore, the Ouroboros can still be explored in full for any missing treasures.

Besides potentially reclaiming missing pickups from previous visits, there are two sidequests that can be advanced in the destroyed version of Kaocho, both of which must be started in other settlements. First, if you gave the Grandmother's Gift to the granddaughter on the central bridge in Tonfon, she will have given you the Grandchild's Gift. Back in the northwest residence of the grandparents in question, Spirit Sense the grandmother's corpse and present the Granchild's Gift when prompted to trigger a cutscene where the couple's ghosts will comment on your kindness and pass on. Interact with the gift on the ground to read the granddaughter's letter and find the game's only Ninja Sandals, an enormously useful Boot-class item that can be worn by any party member, including the multiple members who would have to make due with a basic pair of Leather Boots otherwise.

The other sidequest is not even a requirement for finding the Lost Ship, one of the game's optional late-game dungeons, though it provides an in-game hint for reaching it. If you head back to the ancient tree on the surface level of Ayuthay, you will find the corpses of previously encountered boss characters, and Spirit Sensing either will tell you that they hid a "treasure" back in Kaocho, in the "cracked stone three steps to the left of the Kaocho Palace stairs". This unlocks the ability to meaningfully interact with said stone, which lies just northwest of the left flagpole you need to Grip your way toward.

You will find the Treasure Note inside the crack, which produces the following message when Used: "This shows a pirate treasure's location. Coming from the south, go west when you reach a reef shaped like a hand." You do not need to have acquired or read this note in-game to successfully reach the Lost Ship; all you need is to press against the center of the four "fingers" of the northeastern reef in the ocean and then head directly west into a dark, purple cloud in the ocean, without changing directions even slightly.

Vendors

Kaocho's inn is located in the right half of the central plaza, just south of the item shop, and costs 8 coins per party member. This makes it cost either 32 or 40 coins depending on whether you had yet added Amiti as a fifth member to your party. The inn, just like all shops and the Sanctum service, will no longer exist by the time the party revisits Kaocho late in the game.

Weapon and Armor Shop
Name	Class	Cost	Effect
Broad Sword	Long Sword	1000	Attack +40
Hunter's Sword	Light Blade	520	Attack +28
Heavy Mace	Mace	500	Attack +26
Longbow	Bow	800	Attack +22
Leather Armor	Armor	240	Defense +12
Travel Robe	Robe	200	Defense +10
Bronze Shield	Shield	500	Defense +14
Leather Gloves	Gloves	220	Defense +10
Wooden Cap	Hat	400	Defense +10
Artifacts
Blessed Ankh	Staff	1600	Attack +46

Item Shop
Name	Class	Cost	Effect
Herb	Consumable Item	10	Restores 50 HP to one Adept
Antidote	Consumable Item	20	Cures Poison and Venom from one Adept
Elixir	Consumable Item	30	Removes Stun, Sleep, and Delusion from one Adept
Artifacts
Psy Crystal	Consumable Item	1500	Restores all PP to one Adept
Water of Life	Consumable Item	3000	Revives one downed Adept

Dumpling Shop
Name	Class	Cost	Effect
Kaocho Dumpling	Consumable Item	50	Restores 100 HP to one Adept
Plump Dumpling	Consumable Item	50	Restores 120 HP to one Adept
Rice Ration	Consumable Item	30	Restores 80 HP to one Adept

Collectibles

Casting Grip on the left flagpole from the pictured spot on the palace's stairs is an easier way to reach the Venus Djinni Steel than navigating to the right flagpole and casting Grip from there.

• Steel: Can be seen idling near the center-west end of the main town screen. It is reached from the exterior palace screen north of town by casting Grip on the left flagpole and then following the linear route counter-clockwise until you walk and hop south to the Djinni from above. The flagpole in question can easily be Gripped from the stairs leading to the palace's front door, but officially, you would instead Grip it from near the other flagpole to the right, which is reached by walking the narrow stone road left of the east river in town (starting from just southeast of the residence east of the inn).
• Grandmother's Gift: Received by talking to the grandmother living in the northwest residence in town and agreeing to take it to her grandchild in Sana. This can only be acquired prior to departing for the Clouds of Passaj.
• Mint: Found inside the stove in the southwest residence among the eight structures comprising the upper half of the main town screen, west of the dumpling shop.
• Sanan Dress: Found in a treasure chest immediately visible off to the right when first entering Kaocho. It is reached by hopping west across a lilypad a short ways southwest of the southeastern rice fields.
• Wo's Letter: Plot-critical item granted to you in a cutscene that automatically triggers as soon as you enter the throne chamber inside Kaocho Palace.
• 5 Coins: Found inside the drawers at the northwest corner in the grandparents' residence at the northwest corner of town.
• 29 Coins: Found inside the lower of the two pots at the lower-right corner of the library a short ways northeast of the city's front gate.
• Elixir: Found inside the right of the two pots just outside the pale-brown wooden structure near the southeastern rice fields.
• Herb: Found inside the left of the two pots in the upper-right room inside Kaocho Palace. Becomes missable if the party does not pick it up before ascending the central stairs and entering King Wo's throne room.
• Nut: Found inside the stove in the northeast residence in town, east of the item shop.
• Smoke Bomb: Found inside the white pot at the northwest part of town, just outside the grandparents' residence and west of the armory.

The following collectibles are available during the revisit to Kaocho later in the Ei-Jei arc, when the party is bringing Amiti from Ayuthay to gain access to the Ouroboros dungeon and explore it for its plot-critical Sol Mask:

• Lava: Can be seen idling at the southwest corner of town, but an equally idle NPC will be sitting next to a lilypad you can otherwise easily hop across to reach it. The man will only move out of the way once you talk to him while you have at least one Kaocho Dumpling in your inventory (bought from the Dumpling Shop, which is only open during this brief segment of the game), which he will take as payment. If you overlook Lava and head for the Clouds of Passaj, Lava will still be present during the optional late-game revisit to Kaocho, and the NPC will have disappeared, meaning you can reach the Djinni at this stage even though the Dumpling Shop and its service will no longer be available.
• Lucky Pepper: Found inside the open pot at the northwest corner in the Dumpling Shop. The shop can only be entered during the stretch of the game between revisiting Kaocho with Amiti in the party and setting off for the Clouds of Passaj, meaning this item can be permanently missed.

During the optional late-game visit to Passaj, you can still pick up both aforementioned Djinn, the Mint hidden in a stove, and the Sanan Dress. The following collectibles only become available at this stage, and only after completing side objectives elsewhere:

• Ninja Sandals: If you had given the Grandmother's Gift to the grandchild on the bridge in Tonfon, she will have given you the Grandchild's Gift to give back to the grandmother. Use it on the grandmother's corpse in the northwest residence to trigger a brief cutscene, then examine the present left on the ground to receive the Ninja Sandals. This item is only possible to obtain if you had the Grandmother's Gift in your inventory when you departed for the Clouds of Passaj originally.
• Treasure Note: Hidden inside the cracked stone just northwest of the left flagpole outside the palace. It can only be meaningfully examined, and the note retrieved, if you had previously used Spirit Sense on the corpses of previous bosses at the north end of the surface level of Ayuthay.

Bestiary

During the optional visit the player can make to Kaocho late in the game, random encounters with the following enemies can take place both in the streets and outside the closed-off palace:

Bestiary of Kaocho (Grave Eclipse)
Monster Name	LVL	HP	ATK	DEF	AGI	EXP	Coins	Weakness	Drop	Drop Rate
Dark Skull	35	382	357	171	173	817	163		Antidote	1/16
Foul Glutton	36	472	426	144	89	2153	148		Kaocho Dumpling	1/16

Enemy Formations

• Group 1: Dark Skull x1-2, Foul Glutton x0-1
• Group 2: Foul Glutton x1-3, Dark Skull x0-1

History

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Spoiler warning: The following section(s) contain plot details that some people may not wish to learn before reaching this point in the game on their own.

Wo built Kaocho Palace directly on top of the ancient Ouroboros ruins in a bid to unlock its secrets.

Kaocho was once a colony of the larger empire of Sana, and was founded by Wo. After Sana's civil war, Kaocho would split off into its own country, with Wo as king. It was initially on good terms with its neighbors, however, Kaocho would eventually become militaristic, with attacks on both Passaj and Ayuthay. Around the same time of the attacks, Chalis, a Tuaparang commander became a part of the Kaochan court, with the implication that she had encouraged the attacks to gain access to each city's Alchemy Machine. Kaocho is also bad terms with its homeland of Sana, with Wo constantly plotting to retake the throne he believed to be rightfully his.

The town includes several farms, with the main crops apparently being bamboo and rice. Most of Kaocho's military is said to be made of farmers, with the only true fighters being the army's two generals: Ku-Tsung and Ku-Embra. However, both generals are terrible leaders, which has led to many defeats. The encyclopedia entry for Kaocho is as follows:

This powerful nation was founded by King Wo, who wages war against Passaj and Ayuthay from its rich palace.

Kaocho's motherland, Sana, located northeast of Kaocho at the east end of Angara, was previously under the iron rule of the warmongering tyrant Emperor Ko, infamous as the "Dread Emperor" for his aggressive expansionism. Ko sought the secret to eternal life, much like the late Babi, and Ko's example and original goal is what his aspiring successor, Wo, tries to live up to. On Ko's death, a civil war broke out in Sana which eventually crowned the scholarly Unan as its new emperor, bringing much-needed peace to the region. Wo later attempted to take Sana back by military force, but Unan successfully repelled Wo. Unan now governs Sana from its capital city, Tonfon

Chalis, a foreigner in King Wo's court who nonetheless has the ears of the king, manipulates Matthew's party into finding the Sol Mask.

Matthew and company are granted entrance into King Wo's palace because King Wo has been expecting "new Adepts" for a while now. The adviser in his court that has told him of Matthew's arrival in advance - and is likely the one that manipulated the greedy king into attacking the other kingdoms for their Alchemy Machines - is a noticeably non-Kaochan named Chalis, a voluptuous woman with very non-humanlike horns on her head. Tyrell correctly deduces from her name that she is affiliated with Blados. Chalis presents Matthew's group as the Adepts that will help Wo fulfill his ambitions, which are to retrieve the Sol Mask from the Ouroboros and to help his army conquer Ayuthay. Wo describes the Sol Mask as the key to the power that can help him wage war to a greater degree, but decides that the campaign to take over Ayuthay is the more urgent issue for Matthew to contribute to, so he has Matthew take Wo's signed letter of approval.

The Adepts' obvious displeasure with what is happening quickly sours the mood, but Chalis invites the four to act on their intentions to try to take the Sol Mask from the Ouroboros for themselves, and has them dropped into the first room of the labyrinth below via a trap door. Chalis explains to Wo that despite their refusal to comply with Wo on the surface, she is certain they will end up proving their worth to him anyway - she predicts that they will see they can't truly enter the labyrinth yet, will then go to Ayuthay, and later return to find an entrance into the dungeon and retrieve the Sol Mask. Down in the first part of the Ouroboros, the Adepts, figuring out what Wo and Chalis are generally intending of them, decide anyway to leave and go over to Ayuthay with Wo's letter in hand.

Later on, after the Alchemy Dynamo is activated and the Grave Eclipse occurs, Kaocho is completely decimated by the shadow creatures, save for a few who hid inside the palace. Following the Grave Eclipse, the country is completely devastated, with monster attacks claiming the lives of the military and most of the citizens. It is stated that some survivors took refuge inside the palace. However, the implications of the disaster on Kaocho's political situation are not fully known.

Trivia

• Kaocho's name is a Japanese rendering of 夏王朝 (Kaōchō), which is represented in pinyin romanization as Xiàcháo; it translates as the Xia Dynasty, which is proposed to have existed between 2000 and 1600 B.C.E. The lack of verifiable archeological evidence or documentation leads to debates on whether it existed beyond mere legend, and the same holds true for the figure credited with its establishment, Yu the Great. King Wo is likely a reference to this legendary sage-king, albeit a heavily ironic one in that he shows none of the venerated morality traditionally ascribed to Yu.
• If you talk to the man sitting in the way of the Mars Djinni Lava and he realizes you're holding a Kaocho Dumpling, but you then refuse to give it to him, his response will occupy a text box that unusually extends for six rows, covering most of the screen. It is uncertain whether the developers meant but forgot to insert markup that would display either the last two or three lines of the text as a separate follow-up text box.
• During the time the party can explore what remains of Kaocho late in the game, random encounters with monsters can take place; nonetheless, the step-based timer for the effect shared between Avoid and Sacred Feather pauses while the party remains in either the city or the palace grounds outside. The timer will only resume as normal once the party returns to the overworld, meaning that an ongoing Avoid effect will be effectively permanent so long as the party remains in Kaocho.