List of permanently missable content

From Golden Sun Universe

Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age, for the most part, allow players to go back and collect any items, Djinn, and Summon sequences that may have been overlooked during their first pass through the content. However, there are a scant few such features that will become impossible to get if you fail to fulfill the limited-time conditions meeting them. Some of these pertain to the data transfer system between the two titles.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, in stark contrast, is notorious for structuring its plot in a railroaded manner that permanently locks off a lot of prior collectibles once you pass several "points of no return," which tend not to be thoroughly indicated in advance. Seemingly innocuous oversights such as overlooking a small side area can result in the party permanently missing a collectable Djinni for the rest of the game, and a fair amount of vendors will have become no longer available once you have reached the non-linear final third of the game set across the Eastern Sea.

In Golden Sun

In Sol Sanctum, once you have solved the statue puzzle near the end, interacting with where a light shines onto the wall will permanently remove Jenna from the party and bring you into the Elemental Star Chamber. Any and all items in her inventory will have disappeared with her, and it is technically possible to move all of Isaac and Garet's own equipment onto her before this happens. Separately, once Isaac and Garet exit from Sol Sanctum's exterior entrance screen back into Vale, Sol Sanctum can no longer be entered for the rest of the game (though this only means that an optional chest with an Herb can no longer be opened).

After collecting Hermes' Water at Mercury Lighthouse, if you have not pulled the left tree back onto shore at Bilibin Barricade using Move before feeding the water to Tret at Kolima Forest, you will not be given one of the game's five Hard Nuts the next time you pass through the Barricade.

If you pick up the optional Dragon's Eye in Fuchin Falls Cave, it will be impossible to throw away on your own and can only be removed from the party's inventory by fitting it into the dragon statue – which is ultimately optional and not needed to fully clear and loot the dungeon. While you can go back and use up the Dragon's Eye to free up that space prior to fighting the final battles at Venus Lighthouse, it being in your inventory by the time you're locked back into Lalivero for the epilogue means you will have, in a sense, "missed out" on retaining an extra inventory space. It is possible for this item to be transferred into The Lost Age, where it will continue to take up one of the final party's limited inventory slots with no way to remove it.

Passing south through the bottom exit of Mogall Forest prevents you from passing back north, and the only way out of the southeastern region of Angara will be west through Lamakan Desert. This will update all the dialogue and thoughts of the NPCs populating Vale and Vault, and two NPCs that would give you gifts for speaking to them before this point will no longer be capable of giving them to you. While in the case of Vale, this will only amount to a free Herb from the item shopkeeper, the mayor of Vault will only give you a free Water of Life (an Artifact that sells for 2,250 coins) if you visit him after defeating the Bandit and Thieves but before completing Mogall Forest.

The Tolbi-bound Ship sequence contains a hidden method of landing the ship on Crossbone Isle before Tolbi, one that is executed by having your hand-picked rowers be stronger on the left side than the right by a very specific amount. This allows you to explore up to part of the fourth puzzle-room floor of Crossbone Isle and loot all the treasures from the first three floors earlier than most players playing the game normally. While none of the treasures on offer will be permanently missed if the player only ever uses the "official" Tempest Lizard method of accessing Crossbone Isle from Suhalla Desert late in the game, a lot of extra dialogue and some extra scenes will only be seen by detouring to Crossbone Isle during the voyage.

As for the ship itself, a Lucky Medal in the storage room and a Nut in a jar will be permanently missed once the ship docks at Tolbi's port because you will not be let back on board. The "point of no return" for this occurs once you head downstairs to where Kaja is after having picked your fourth oarsman from the passengers following the Kraken battle, unless you have picked a compatible setup of oarsmen needed to deviate off-course to Crossbone Isle. In that case, the threshold will instead be crossed by answering "Yes" to Sean's question, "How was it, Isaac? Did you explore the island thoroughly?"

For the most part, any of the side objectives you may want to clear in advance of creating a clear data save file for the data transfer system can be completed at any time before fighting the final boss encounters atop Venus Lighthouse, and you can go back for them and expect them to be available. However, if you win Isaac's solo match against Satrage in the Colosso Finals but then lose against Navampa, the third and final opponent, the game will proceed regardless, and you will miss out on two particularly noteworthy rewards spanning both games. First, you will not receive the Lure Cap, which has a particularly unique utility effect in that it increases monster encounter rate; this should be in the party's inventory so that it can be transferred into The Lost Age to help with late-game grinding efforts. Second, presuming this game file is used for transferring data, a bonus event that would reward you with the Golden Shirt will fail to trigger in The Lost Age.

In a separate issue unique to the first Golden Sun, you are allowed to save your game in Lalivero after the final battle – even though you will be blocked off from leaving for the overworld at that point and can only proceed toward the end credits. If you save here, you will permanently lock yourself off from virtually the entire game leading up to this, and the only way to revisit that is to start a new game file. This is an especially troublesome issue because Golden Sun is also the only game in the series in which data can be transferred into the next game, meaning there is a lot of incentive to make your game file as "complete" as possible before crossing the point of no return leading to the final battles. Thanks to the data transfer function's "Update" feature in The Lost Age allowing you to reapply passwords from more complete versions of Clear Data Save Files created in Golden Sun, the player is heavily encouraged not to save over a data file set before the final battles with a data file set after them.

In Golden Sun: The Lost Age

In general, any missing item unique to the first game and any incomplete event from the first game will be reflected in the password used to enhance the current game file, causing certain rewards to be missed if you have not at least Updated the password in time for when those events or rewards would be dispensed. If Isaac did not talk to the mayor of Vault after crossing Lamakan Desert, for example, Felix in this game will not encounter a bonus event where he must fight the Bandit and Thieves after meeting Karst in Madra, and he will not gain the Golden Boots as a result.

If Isaac did not go back to Alpine Crossing and cast Lift on the boulder trapping Hsu, Felix will not be given the Golden Ring when he first arrives at Champa. If Isaac did not rescue Hammet from Lunpa Fortress, the party will not receive an extra Orihalcon before setting off to sea following the Reunion. As mentioned previously, if Isaac did not win the Colosso Finals by defeating Navampa, a bonus battle against the Colosso Gladiators will not trigger in Shaman Village Cave after the Reunion, and so the Golden Shirt will not be rewarded. Finally, if Isaac did not acquire the Orb of Force in Fuchin Falls Cave, it will be impossible to find the Mars Djinni Shine in Contigo and reach the Masamune in Yallam.

As for unique items from the first game, Isaac's party would ideally join with the Lure Cap won from defeating Navampa and the Cleric's Ring from Crossbone Isle, which uniquely allows for Cursed equipment like everything crafted from Dark Matters to be equipped without fear that the wearer will be randomly incapacitated at the end of each turn.

When you bring Piers back to East Indra Shore and explore the beached Lemurian Ship with him, stepping into the final power room will automatically propel the ship into the ocean, causing East Indra Shore to no longer be enterable. If you have not collected the Cookie from the crate on the cliffs just left of the ship when this happens, it will be permanently lost.

The Lost Age, unlike Golden Sun, only offers a finite amount of Lucky Medals that can be tossed into the Lucky Medal Fountain in Lemuria. Once you have exhausted every Lucky Medal in the game file, any unique piece of gear that has not been collected from the fountain will become permanently missed, and it will no longer be possible to acquire duplicates, either. (If you somehow fail to land a single medal into the center circle by this point, you can even permanently miss the Eclipse summon tablet.) This issue can be ameliorated by having Isaac's party join with lots of Lucky Medals stored up in their inventory though the data transfer system, since Lucky Medals can be randomly dropped by Orc Lords in the first game.

The boss battle at the peak of Jupiter Lighthouse can be lost without sending you back to the most recently visited settlement's sanctum and forcing you to get back to the scene to try again; instead, an alternative cutscene will take place, and the rest of the game's plot and progression happens as normal. However, a Dark Matter will be dropped as an extra reward for winning this battle.

The game's extra-hard bonus dungeon, Anemos Inner Sanctum, can only be entered if you have collected all 72 Djinn throughout both GBA games. To ensure this happens, Isaac's party must join with both the Orb of Force and at least six out of seven of each of the four elements of Djinn (since one "make-up Djinni" of each element can then appear in The Lost Age after the Reunion depending on what is missing). If even a single Djinni is no longer possible to collect, the dungeon will be locked off, and all of its offered features will be kept out of the player's reach:

Glitches and exploits

In a roundabout way, failing to make use of an exploit during the limited time it is available can be categorized as missing out on its benefits. The Trial Road duplication exploit is a method of getting any equipped Artifacts on the party, as well as various Artifact consumables that do not disappear while playing through the Trial Road "minigame" at Shaman Village, to appear for sale in the Artifacts menus at the appropriate vendors even though they still remain in your inventory when you leave Trial Road early. On top of letting you get easy duplicates of items like Water of Life, the first four types of forgeable items, and valuable equipment from the Lucky Medal Fountain, you can gain duplicates of various one-of-a-kind items like the Guardian Ring, the Golden Boots, the class-changing items, and various weapons and armor. Lucky Medals can be duplicated in stacks just like the forgeable materials, which can help with the issue of the limited total stockpile of Lucky Medals in The Lost Age mentioned above. Once you complete Trial Road by defeating Moapa at the end, the minigame is no longer playable, so any items you did not duplicate can be considered "missed."

Similarly, triggering a game-breaking bug can be categorized as rendering content permanently missable, even if the content being rendered inaccessible is literally the rest of the game. Ordinarily, holding down L and Start while loading the save file makes you spawn in the sanctum of the most recently visited village. If you do this during the brief interlude in Alhafra that follows Bursting the rock pinning down the mast of the sailing ship, but before the cutscene where the ship leaves the harbor, you will spawn in the sanctum outside the line of NPCs set up to force you along to the harbor and its cutscene. These NPCs are impassible from both directions, which in this case would ironically prevent you from getting back into the route leading to the harbor. If you save outside this line, you will be permanently locked off from the Avimander boss battle in Champa and the service in Champa that lets you create the plot-critical Trident. Without it, it is impossible to beat Poseidon and enter Lemuria, which contains the Psynergy needed to enter the Western Sea.

On the other hand, a glitch can be used as an exploit to get a collectible that might have been locked off as a result of normal play. The "Retreat Glitch" is a method of scrambling the pointers on the current screen by having a Venus Adept with at most 5PP attempt and fail to cast the 6PP Retreat Psynergy by use of a shoulder-button shortcut. If this is done at the bottom of the lobby of Anemos Inner Sanctum, interacting with the chest at the bottom (which normally contains a Dragon Skin) will reward you with the Iris summon tablet, whether the chest is open or not. This lets you have access to that summon even if you are locked off from the dungeon portion of Anemos Inner Sanctum.

In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

There are three primary "points of no return" that lock off a fair amount of what you will have played through in order to get to those points: heading through the south exit of Konpa Cave, riding the reversed Alchemy Forge's cloud platform to the Clouds of Passaj, and stepping up to the small, purple pedestal in front of the Alchemy Dynamo in the deepest room of Belinsk Ruins, in front of the blue circle where the face appears.

Heading south through Konpa Cave

Following the boss battle with the three Stealthy Scouts in Konpa Cave, when you pass through the south exit from a puzzle room in which several pillars can be rolled to create a path across a gap, a cutscene will depict Blados having his men detonate explosives to cave in the path behind you. You will now be trapped within the Ei-Jei region of Angara, and all of the following features that were exclusive to areas north of the caved-in boulder will no longer be obtainable:

Taking off for the Clouds of Passaj

After casting Cold Snap to reverse the Alchemy Forge in Passaj, approaching the cloud platform will prompt Karis to say, "If we leave, we may not be able to return again. So, ready to go, Matthew?" If you say Yes, you will automatically end up in the Clouds of Passaj. This will render all of the following features of the Ei-Jei region permanently unavailable, even though you can largely revisit all of the same locations once you gain the sailing ship:

Incidentally, the Clouds of Passaj themselves contain a Nut and an Herb that can be permanently missed once you climb the full winding stairs to the entrance to Craggy Peak Ruins.

Healing the Dream Tree

The only opportunity you have to add the Dream Leaf entry to the Encyclopedia is to talk to a townsperson in Saha Town near the closed gate to Kolima Village. Once you use Hermes' Water on the Dream Tree in Kolima Village following the boss battle with Sludge, both settlements' NPCs update their spoken text, and none of the replacement text boxes include any highlighted mentions of the term "Dream Leaf."

Approaching the Alchemy Dynamo

Requesting Arangoa Prelude does not count as a point-of-no-return because you can still leave Belinsk even while the music is playing, and the only functional difference is that the statue in the center of Belinsk will have temporarily revealed its stairwell leading to Belinsk Ruins. While subsequent cutscenes with Sveta and Ryu Kou portray the party as being locked into Belinsk ruins by walls that rise up behind them, you can still cast Retreat at any point to leave the dungeon and Belinsk, and Sveta will depart your party whenever you step back outside and wait for you back underneath the statue. The aforementioned walls will rise again as soon as you cross them.

The one true point of no return that takes place in Belinsk Ruins automatically occurs once you move right up to the purple pedestal in front of the blue circle (for the Ward system) of the Alchemy Dynamo in the final chamber of Belinsk Ruins. This initiates the cutscenes that will lead to the boss fight with Blados and Chalis, and the sequence that follows forces you to evacuate upward through the base of the risen Luna Tower back into Belinsk. Approaching the purple pedestal locks you out of leaving Belinsk once you've made it back into town, rendering all of the following features unavailable:

In addition, two Encyclopedia entries will only be able to be filled in at locations that become inaccessible once the Alchemy Dynamo is approached. The entry for Lord McCoy can be gotten at Border Town, and the entry for Mercury Lighthouse can be gotten by reading a bookcase in the newly awakened Dream Tree. (Both of these can be added earlier at either Patcher's Place or the Psynergy Training Grounds.)

Late in Belinsk Ruins, there is a segment where Slapping a sun-like object will initiate a ride downwards into the basement while a starry nightscape surrounds Matthew. This causes all the lesser, colored orb-shaped platforms to stop spinning around the center gold pillar, which has the effect of permanently locking you off from the upper two elemental chambers and the top chamber that came shortly before hopping to the sun. This has the effect of rendering the Potion in the lower-left corner of that top chamber permanently missed.

Fighting Gloom Skorpnas at Belinsk's dock

When exploring and fighting through Belinsk while the Grave Eclipse is just beginning to encase a large swath of it in a dome of darkness, you can still explore the various buildings and buy from vendors. At the dock at the northeast end of Belinsk, Eoleo will jump onto Briggs' ship but be faced with a trio of Gloom Skorpnas; you can still leave the screen and explore Belinsk, but this option will be taken away the moment you hop the gap onto the ship because doing so automatically initiates the battle with the Gloom Skorpnas. Since you cannot take the current screen's west exit back into town after this, this will render all of the following features unavailable:

Even after initiating the Gloom Skorpna battle, there will be a brief window of opportunity where you can still explore the screen of the dock where the ship is moored before setting off for the Eastern Sea. The following collectible can be reached even at this late point, but will be permanently missed if you set off without it:

Ironically, reaching the ending of the game makes at least some of the above features available again because the player will be able to explore most of Belinsk before heading south toward the end credits, and the game will allow you to save over the current file and start back in Tonfon with all changes to your collection intact. This allows you to buy the items at the vendors again, find the Assassin Blade, Muni Robe, and the southwest residence's Power Bread, and collect the Mercury Djinn Spout and Torrent. However, both the opera house and the castle will remain locked off, preventing you from gathering any of the other above-mentioned collectibles.

Reaching Coatlicue

When exploring Harun Channel from the direction of the Warrior's Hill dungeon, you will need to cast Crush on a boulder to allow the running water to flow, which effects a permanent change to the dungeon's layout. If you do not move a nearby earth pillar flush against the wall to its right before crushing this boulder, you will permanently lock yourself out of being able to reach the Coatlicue summon tablet, which requires you to take the route from Harun Channel's entrance in the overworld south through the underground channel by hopping across this earth pillar.


Gameplay elements and mechanics
Collectibles: Artifacts • Broken Equipment • Class Items • Coins • Consumable Items • Cursed Equipment • Equipment • Forgeable Items • Psynergy Items • Quest Items • Rusty Weapons • Stat Items
Travel: Blacksmiths • Boat (TLA) • Boat (DD) • Fortune Tellers • Inns • Item Shops • Psynergy Stones • Sanctums • Summon Tablets • Treasure Chests • Umbra Gear • Wings of Anemos
Combat: Adepts • Attack • Beastform • Bosses • Classes • Defend • Djinn (Master List) • Elements • Enemy Abilities (GS, TLA) • Enemy Abilities (DD) • Level • Mad Plants • Mimics • Monsters • Psynergy • Status Conditions • Stats • Summons • Unleashes (List) (Mastery Requirements (DD))
Information: Atlas • Djinn Guide • Encyclopedia • Sun Saga • Travel Log • Umbra Map • World Map (GS, TLA) • World Map (DD)
Minigames: Colosso • Lucky Dice • Lucky Medal Fountains • Lucky Wheels • Psynergy Training Grounds • Super Lucky Dice • Trial Road
Modes: Battle Mode • Easy Mode • Hard Mode • Debug Mode
Features: Data Transfer • Sound Test • The Reunion
Other: Debug Rooms • Glitches (GS) • Glitches (TLA) • Glitches (DD) • Optional Dungeons • Permanently Missable Content • Random Number Generator • Troubleshooting (GS, TLA) • Troubleshooting (DD) • Unacquirable Items • Unacquirable Psynergy • Walkthrough (GS) • Walkthrough (TLA) • Walkthrough (DD)
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