Tolbi

Tolbi is a major hub for the player's activities taking place on Gondowan for roughly the last third of the first Golden Sun.

Tolbi (トレビの町 Trevi Town) is a prominent and expansive town featured in Golden Sun. It is located at the north end of the continent of Gondowan but is considered a cultural and commercial extension of the neighboring continent of Angara to the east, with the inland Karagol Sea dividing the two landmasses. Tolbi's economic prosperity is partially owed to it being at the west end of the "Silk Road" trading route that stretches all the way east through Kalay and Xian. Its standing military is maintained by an annual tournament of warriors held at Tolbi, Colosso. Kraden had lived most of his life in Tolbi, studying Alchemy along with a team of scholars working in Babi's Palace (バビ宮殿), before moving to Vale prior to the start of Golden Sun.

Tolbi is a fairly imperialistic power under the rule of Babi, who has coerced the distant village of Lalivero in eastern Gondowan into constructing Babi Lighthouse for him for a reason he has not disclosed to his subjects, not even his chief minister, Iodem. When Isaac and his party cross the Karagol Sea in pursuit of Saturos' company in the direction of Lalivero and Venus Lighthouse, Babi perceives his party as Adepts uniquely capable of helping him and enters Isaac in his tournament. After Isaac's brilliant performance in the Colosso Finals, Babi discloses his secret and true goal, which Isaac promises to search for once his business at Venus Lighthouse is complete.

Tolbi provides a host of opportunities for the party in-game to improve their equipment because it contains Tolbi Spring, a Lucky Medal Fountain that allows the player to toss in all of their stockpiled Lucky Medals to get a random weapon or armor Artifact for each. Similarly, the player can spend their ever-growing supply of Game Tickets on a slot machine called Lucky Wheels to potentially give themselves most of the game's valuable Shirts, Boots, and Rings, which can be equipped alongside primary classes of armor.

Tolbi and Babi are only mentioned in passing in both Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

In Golden Sun

For all NPC gossip, see Side Scripts.

When the player finishes crossing the Karagol Sea at the end of the episode on the Tolbi-bound Ship and steps out of Tolbi Docks at the west end of the sea in the overworld, Tolbi will be within walking distance. It is presented as the "primary hub settlement" for the player's activities at the continent of Gondowan, which span roughly the final third of the campaign's play time and content. A host of other locations spanning most of Gondowan will be made available at the same time as Tolbi itself:

Tolbi offers many optional activities for gathering strong gear, such as the Lucky Medal Fountain.

• Altmiller Cave, the cave icon north of Tolbi, is a dungeon that will be the first mandatory location to complete.
• Southwest of Altmiller Cave is a stretch of forest near the coast that can pit you against the Mercury Djinni Hail as a random encounter.
• Traveling east along the north shore of the Karagol lets you enter Kalay Docks from its north end to pick up the Venus Djinni Ground.
• Traveling east along the south shore of the Karagol brings you to Gondowan Cave, which can be permanently opened up as the "land bridge" between Gondowan and Angara, letting you revisit Angara at any point during the rest of the game.
• You can freely pass south through Gondowan Passage to reach the small settlement Suhalla, which is located above the north entrance into Suhalla Desert – a future mainline dungeon. Even at this early stage, it is entirely possible to fully traverse Suhalla Desert, defeat its Storm Lizard boss, and take its east exit back into the overworld, and you can battle and collect the Mars Djinni Flash early. You can even ride the hidden Tempest Lizard's tornado from there to the optional endgame dungeon Crossbone Isle, where the same tornado can deposit you back at Suhalla when needed.
• East of Suhalla Desert is Suhalla Gate, which is currently blocked off by two guards requiring "papers" to pass. Passing this gate is the overarching objective of the Tolbi-focused swath of the game and leads to the last main overworld area, where Lalivero and Venus Lighthouse are located.

If this section of the game is boiled down to its most mandatory steps, Tolbi technically does not even have to be entered the first time. Ultimately, you would have to enter Altmiller Cave, find the Mystic Draught at the end of it, and bring it to the shadowed figure earlier in the dungeon. Then, in Tolbi, you would need to approach its colosseum and partake in a fairly complex series of timed puzzle-gauntlets and one-on-one battles collectively referred to as the Colosso Finals. You will need to win at least the first two out of three rounds total. Following this, after another cutscene in the palace at Tolbi, the guards all the way over at Suhalla Gate will no longer prevent you from passing through.

Initial visit

Tolbi's bustling main screen connects north to the Colosseum Entrance, the front gate of the ongoing Colosso competition, which you cannot do anything at yet. When you climb up the stairs at the northwest corner of town, a pair of guards will show you the in-game portrait of the town's ruler, Lord Babi, who is currently missing; whether or not you say you had seen him has no bearing on the gameplay. The northwest stairs brings you to Babi's Palace; the first time you approach a four-way intersection upstairs, a lengthy cutscene between chief minister Iodem and his guards establishes that Babi was last seen entering Altmiller Cave to the north.

The northeast region of town alone contains the Lucky Wheels minigame in the room above the booked-to-capacity Inn, the Lucky Dice minigame left of that, and the Mars Djinni Ember.

Tolbi and Babi's Palace jointly offer a host of a collectibles and activities that can shore up the party's overall power and defenses before heading to Altmiller Cave. If you step out of the front gate but not so far as to step back out into the overworld, you can walk behind the trees to the right and find a sapling northeast that you can turn into a vine ladder using the Growth Psynergy (change classes as necessary if your current class setup does not provide Growth). Cast Frost at the puddle atop the vine to turn it into an ice pillar, then sidle back through the gate and head back northeast to the Inn building, where you can now hop right from the pillar to reach the Mars Djinni Ember.

If you cast Reveal at the circle of gravestones at the lower-left corner of town, south of the Sanctum, you can open a hidden chest containing one of the game's four Power Breads. You can find a Lucky Medal by checking the closed jar behind the right side of the center-east building in town, a short ways left of the above-mentioned sapling. A second Lucky Medal lies in the residence situated atop the southwest armory, in the standing barrel left of the oven.

In Babi's Palace, climb up the southeast watch tower to find a lone barrel containing a third Lucky Medal. Unusually, the Inn in town does not ever provide an Inn service, but you can get the same service for free and without limit in the bedroom at the first floor of the palace. Talk to the lady at the tables at the west end of the bedroom twice in order to unlock the privilege to use this service, which can be initiated by interacting with any of the four beds in the left half of the room. At the intersection where the cutscene with Iodem took place, going down the stairs at the west end brings you to the scholars' study, where you can find one of the game's five Hard Nuts in the lower of the two white-and-blue jars in the right area.

If you go down the stairs at the east end of the intersection in the palace, you can follow a linear path through the Colosseum Tunnel until you reach the bleachers where the crowds are watching the ongoing trials. You can interact with the bald man to the upper right twice to initiate two cutscenes in a row where gladiators in the arena try to qualify for the upcoming Colosso Finals by lifting a huge pillar. Because this is the only point in the game where the Colosseum Tunnel can be accessed, the locked door blocking access to the stairs ostensibly leading to where Iodem can be seen watching the trials next to Babi's empty throne can never be opened. Incidentally, if you go up the other set of stairs at the east end of the intersection, you can meet Sheba, an NPC who will be important to the plot later in the game and will eventually become a party member in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

The armory building at the southwest area of town contains the weapon, armor, and item shopkeepers, and they introduce the Great Sword, Master Rapier, War Mace, Armored Shell, Silver Vest, Steel Helm, Knight's Shield, and Guardian Circlet as common pieces of gear. The weapon shopkeeper adds the Angelic Ankh to the Artifacts menu when it is opened, and the item shopkeeper adds a Water of Life.

Minigames

Tossing a Lucky Medal into the drained Tolbi Spring rewards you with a randomly chosen Artifact based on where in the ring target it lands.

For the most part, the player should not need to buy any of the generic gear items at the shops because of the Lucky Medal Fountain minigame in the center of town. If you tell the green-dressed merchant you want to test your luck at Tolbi Spring, he will step aside and let you approach the fountain, which will bring you into a separate screen where the fountain is now to scale. Interact with the fountain to lower its water level. Whenever you toss in a Coin, you will receive some extra coins back depending on where it lands inside the painted ring target, with the top prize being 20 coins when landed in the center. The main obstacles in the way of doing this reliably are the wandering turtles and crabs that the coin can rebound off of. This is not an efficient method of gathering coins whatsoever.

Tolbi Spring is the one place in the game where you can redeem your steadily growing supply of Lucky Medals, each of which will assuredly cause the fountain (via a mechanical dragon-headed statue) to give you a valuable item chosen at random. You can easily dump over ten medals to provide your party a host of strong weapons and armor superior to anything on offer in the normal shops, and any such items you do not need can be sold off for large sums of coins.

• Whenever you land a medal in the center, purple circle, you will receive either an Assassin Blade, Earth Shield, or Spirit Armor.
• Landing a medal in the first, yellow ring can randomly award either the prizes from the center circle or an Adept's Helm, Burning Axe, or Cocktail Dress, which have relatively higher probabilities.
• Landing a medal in the second, purple ring makes it possible to win a Glittering Tiara, Grievous Mace, or Guardian Armlet, if not one of the previous six prizes.
• Landing a medal in the third, yellow ring makes it possible to win Battle Gloves, Kimono, or Ninja Hood in addition to the previous nine prizes.
• Landing a medal in any blank-colored area (whether or not it is the ring surrounding the outer yellow ring) adds the final three items to the possible prize pool: a Potion, Psy Crystal, or Water of Life. This technically makes the "bad outcome" of "missing" the ring targets ironically offer the widest prize pool, though landing the medal within the outer yellow ring is preferable for at least keeping the prizes restricted to gear pieces.

Whenever a piece of gear is awarded, it becomes less likely to be awarded by the spring for the rest of the game, which means continuing to toss Lucky Medals into the spring makes it more likely that you will acquire at least one of every item you are currently missing. Tolbi Spring is worth going back to as you continue to collect Lucky Medals in the remaining dungeons in the game (and a random monster in one of the final dungeons, the Orc Lord, can randomly drop Lucky Medals without limit).

Spending Game Tickets on rolls of the slots at Lucky Wheels potentially gives you valuable supplementary gear like shirts and boots.

Tolbi offers a second minigame that lets you redeem a second "item-based currency" you will have been steadily amassing throughout the game: Lucky Wheels, a slot machine that lets you spend Game Tickets on rolls for supplementary equipment that do not take up the primary gear slots. It is located in the rather nondescript upper floor of the two-story building at the northeast corner of town, atop the Inn.

The object is to spin the five reels of the slot machine up to five times in total, freezing reels in place by pressing star-shaped buttons underneath them as necessary, so that you can hopefully line up five of the same symbol for a prize corresponding to that symbol. You can spend one ticket to try to line up symbols within only the center row, but spending two, three, or even four tickets per play session will make additional rows eligible for dispensing prizes if five symbols are lined up along them instead. The potential prizes associated with each symbol are as follows:

• A line of pink Shirts will award either a Mythril Shirt, Running Shirt, or Silk Shirt.
• A line of green Boots will award either Fur Boots, Hyper Boots, or Quick Boots.
• A line of blue Rings will award either an Adept Ring, Sleep Ring, or War Ring.
• A line of red Hearts will award either a Nut, Vial, or Potion.
• A line of pink Stars will award either an Elixir, Psy Crystal, or Water of Life.
• Yellow Moon symbols are wild cards that make lining up the five symbols needed for a prize easier; four shirts and one moon count for the shirt prize, for example. Lining up five moons will dispense any of the above prizes.

Whenever one of the three prizes associated with a symbol is won, the prize dispensed the next time that same symbol is lined up can only be one of the other two prizes. Ideally, all four of your party members will be equipped with one Shirt and one pair of Boots each by the end of the game because they give extra bonuses that do not force you to unequip your main pieces of armor. On the other hand, getting lucky enough to consistently win useful boots and shirts from this is rather difficult and will take a fair bit more than the 20+ Game Tickets you will likely have amassed when you first get to Tolbi. (Shops will give you a Game Ticket every time you buy a total of 8000 coins worth of goods, starting from the 25th ticket.)

One last minigame, Lucky Dice, is located in the building left of the Inn and Lucky Wheels building, with a playing die sign above its door. This particularly randomized form of gambling lets you bet an amount of coins equal to 10 times the level of your lowest-leveled party member to toss a pair of dice onto a board, with their faces and the identically marked areas they land on all counting as four die faces in total. While you will likely make back your bet by landing a pair, it is very difficult to land anything more than that, and how you position your dice throws does very little to appreciably influence the probabilities of the outcome.

Subsequent visits

Once you have given the Mystic Draught at the end of Altmiller Cave to Babi earlier in the cave, all of the NPCs in Tolbi and Babi's Palace will have updated their gossip and mentally expressed thoughts, and there will now be an NPC blocking the entrance to the Colosseum Tunnel inside Babi's Palace. Head north to the Colosseum Entrance and climb up the stairs; when the four guards notice Isaac, you will be automatically and forcibly escorted into the Colosso Finals (with Garet taking the lead if you repeatedly try to back out).

After Colosso is over, Isaac receives a new quest at Babi's palace that coincides with his business at Venus Lighthouse.

The ultimate goal in Colosso is to have Isaac win at least the first two of a series of three one-on-one battles against rival Colosso Gladiators, with your performance in the puzzle gauntlet preceding each duel giving Isaac the chance to equip a better piece of equipment and force his opponent to equip a worse one. If you lose against either of the first two opponents, Azart or Satrage, Isaac will wake up in the bedroom at Babi's Palace, and the game will present this as Isaac having had a bad dream about losing at the finals, which are only about to begin. Having functionally "time-traveled" back to this point in the game, you can then initiate the Colosso Finals all over again.

Once you have defeated Satrage, you can either defeat or lose against the opponent at the final stage, Navampa, and the game's plot will proceed regardless. However, both this game and Golden Sun: The Lost Age lock some rather useful rewards behind Isaac defeating Navampa at the one opportunity given, and the game will not let you try again if you fail against Navampa once. During a follow-up cutscene with Babi and Iodem in the palace, you will receive the Lure Cap if you had won Colosso, which uniquely increases random encounter rates while equipped, making it useful for grinding levels in the endgame. This ideally would be in the party's inventory when a clear data save file is created at the end of the game so that it can be transferred into the second game via the data transfer system. Furthermore, defeating Navampa will cause a bonus event to trigger in Shaman Village Cave late in the second game that will reward you with the unique Golden Shirt.

Either way, following Colosso, you will wake once again in Babi's Palace, and you must then go to the throne room to partake in the aforementioned cutscene with Babi and Iodem, establishing that Isaac will have to serve Babi's interests in the area of Gondowan east of Suhalla Gate while pursuing his own antagonists to Venus Lighthouse. Following the cutscene, if you follow Babi to his bedroom downstairs and interact with the Cloak Ball on the stand left of him, he will give it to you. This bestows the Cloak Psynergy needed to complete the lingering sidequest all the way back at Lunpa Fortress, as well as to progress down to the seventh floor of Crossbone Isle.

All of Tolbi and the palace's NPCs will update their spoken and mentally expressed gossip a final time after Colosso (and the NPCs in Suhalla will update their gossip after the cutscene with Babi), and with the festival now over, the town is much less bustling. The minigames will remain available, but the Inn will remain unavailable to the party because of reasons emphasized by bonus cutscenes that can now take place both in the lower-right bedroom downstairs and back at Tolbi Docks to the east. However, if you enter the upper-right bedroom downstairs, a cutscene will show a staff lady finding something under the bed and putting it into the barrel, which is revealed to be one more Lucky Medal when you inspect the barrel. Like before, you can continue to receive free Inn services in the bedroom at Babi's Palace.

Vendors

Tolbi, because of plot reasons pertaining to the blocking of Silk Road and the suspension of the ferry service across the Karagol Sea, does not offer a functioning Inn service at the Inn building at the northeast part of the main area of town. On the other hand, the party can use the beds in Babi's Palace at any time without having to pay a fee.

Weapon Shop
Name	Class	Cost	Effect
Great Axe	Axe	5200	Attack +80
Great Sword	Long Sword	7000	Attack +90
Master Rapier	Light Blade	6800	Attack +86
War Mace	Mace	6200	Attack +84
Artifacts
Angelic Ankh	Staff	6400	Attack +83, Unleashes Life Leech

Armor Shop
Name	Class	Cost	Effect
Armored Shell	Armor	3600	Defense +30
Silver Vest	Clothing	3200	Defense +30
Gauntlets	Gloves	1600	Defense +23
Heavy Armlet	Bracelet	2000	Defense +25
Steel Helm	Helm	3100	Defense +27
Knight's Shield	Shield	3000	Defense +28
Jerkin	Robe	2400	Defense +26
Mail Cap	Hat	2000	Defense +23
Guardian Circlet	Circlet	3400	Defense +25

Item Shop
Name	Class	Cost	Effect
Antidote	Consumable Item	20	Cures Poison and Venom from one Adept
Elixir	Consumable Item	30	Cures Sleep, Stun, and Delusion from one Adept
Herb	Consumable Item	10	Restores 50 HP to one Adept
Nut	Consumable Item	200	Restores 200 HP to one Adept
Sacred Feather	Consumable Item	70	Temporary lowers monster encounter rate
Artifacts
Water of Life	Consumable Item	3000	Revives one downed Adept to full health

Collectibles

The following collectibles, which do not encompass the many prizes that can be won at Tolbi Spring and Lucky Wheels, can be found in the main area of the town:

• Ember: Visible at the upper-right corner of the main area of town, behind the Inn building. Requires stepping out of the south gate of the town (without stepping back out into the overworld), walking east and north behind the trees, and casting Growth on a sapling so that you can then climb up to a puddle that you can then turn into an ice pillar with Frost. That way, you can make your way back to the area in front of the Inn and jump right from this pillar onto the ledge the Djinni is standing on.
• Lucky Medal: Found in the standing barrel left of the oven in the second-floor residence atop the southwest building with the shops.
• Lucky Medal: Found in the closed jar to the right of the building just east of the Lucky Medal Fountain, with a sapling visible off to the right of it.
• Power Bread: Hidden in the ring of gravestones at the southwest cemetery. Cast Reveal to expose and open the chest.
• Vial: Found in the upper-left barrel in the small residence just to the upper-left of the Inn building.
• 9 Coins: Found in the open barrel to the left of the northwest L-shaped residence in the main area of town.

These collectibles, meanwhile, can be found inside Babi's Palace:

• Hard Nut: Found inside the scholars' study down the stairs at the left-end of the four-way intersection in Babi's Palace, in the lower of the east pair of white-and-blue jars.
• Lucky Medal: Found inside the lone barrel in the top floor of the lower-right watchtower accessible from the first main hall.

The following collectibles only become available after Colosso concludes:

• Cloak Ball: After the cutscene in Babi's throne chamber, head downstairs to Babi's bedchamber and interact with the Cloak Ball. Babi will comment on its sentimental value before letting you "borrow" it for the rest of the game.
• Lucky Medal: If you head downstairs in the Inn and enter the bedroom to the upper right, you will see a short cutscene of a lady finding this item inside a bed and dropping it into the barrel left of it. Inspect the barrel after she is gone to get the medal.
• Corn: Received as a "leftover" from the clerk at the east souvenir stall, just left of the Lucky Dice building.

History

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Shortly before Isaac's arrival in Tolbi, the annual Colosso festival begins. However, many citizens are aware that this year's events are different to normal, as the festivities started early, and more importantly, Tolbi's ruler, Babi was not present at the trials. Fueling the imaginations of the citizens was the fact that Tolbi's forces were abuzz with activity, searching the town and the surrounding area for something.

As it turns out, Babi had left Tolbi to travel to Altmiller Cave, in order to retrieve his Mystic Draught, a drink that would endlessly prolong his life, provided he kept drinking it on a regular basis. His problem was that he was running out of the liquid, and could not return to the place he originally obtained it (the isle of Lemuria) because the seas surrounding it had treacherous currents, and were perpetually covered in a think fog.

With Babi missing, Iodem presides over the trials at Colosso that are underway by the time Isaac reaches Tolbi.

For this reason, he commissioned the construction of Babi Lighthouse (as well as other, less direct means, such as constantly researching Alchemy, and was responsible for Kraden's involvement in the subject) to act as a beacon to aid his men in their searches for the mysterious island. In the meantime, he had been rationing his draught and been growing gradually weaker, eventually collapsing in Altmiller Cave. Both fortunately and unfortunately, Babi was under the influence of the Cloak Psynergy, meaning that although no monsters would attack him, he could not be seen by any non-Adept rescue party. His luck held strong though as Isaac's party stumbled across him, and were able to see the man wrapped in Psynergetic light (although they could not see Babi himself).

After Isaac retrieved his draught, Babi returned to Tolbi and entered Isaac in Colosso, bypassing the trials under the excuse that saving his life had been enough of a trial in of itself. Knowing full well that Isaac was physically inferior to the normal participants, Babi believed he would still win by utilizing his mastery of Psynergy, which Isaac promptly did. Pleased to no end to find someone who was both able and willing to help him recover more of Lemuria's precious springwater, Babi set free his hostage Sheba (whom he had been using to extort the cooperation of the citizens of Lalivero) and arranged for Iodem to take Babi's Black Orb and travel with Isaac. This would eventually allow Isaac's party to use Babi's Lemurian Ship, both for their own quest of stopping the ignition of the four Elemental Lighthouses and of Babi's quest to find Lemuria.

Babi's good luck runs out however, as once Isaac's party leaves, they do not return in time to save his life, and Babi perishes during the events of The Lost Age, leaving the ultimate fate of Tolbi unknown, especially since it had held the same ruler for many, many years (though, presumably Iodem would have taken command).

Trivia

• Tolbi is said to be the largest and most prosperous town in the world by some characters in the games, though its size seems rivaled by towns such as Alhafra in Osenia, and certainly Lemuria in its golden years.

Name Origin

It is likely that Tolbi's Japanese name, Tolebi, is meant to be read as Trevi, as in the Trevi Fountain in Rome in which people threw coins for good luck, much like Tolbi Spring. This may be supported by the notion that Tolbi exerts power over the towns of Suhalla and Laivero, which are akin to Rome ruling over parts of Northern Africa.

It is also possible that Tolbi's Japanese name was influenced by or is a play on Toledo, an ancient city in Spain. Altamira, the ancient paleolithic caves upon which the nearby Altmiller Cave was based on, is also located in Spain. Furthermore, Spain is west of the Mediterranean Sea, as Tolbi is west of the Karagol Sea, and Tolbi is just north of Gondowan, while Spain is just north of Africa.