Vault

Vault is located at a crossroads in western Angara southeast of the starting village of Vale and south of the village of Lunpa. The bridge to the city of Kalay to the south is initially broken.

Vault (クープアップ村 Coopup Village) is a village featured in Golden Sun, located in the center of the western region of the continent of Angara. The Adepts Isaac and Garet, having just set off from Vale northwest of Vault on their journey across Angara, stop by this village along their way northeast to the first Elemental Lighthouse they must protect from Saturos and Felix, Mercury Lighthouse. During their time here, they meet the Jupiter Adept Ivan and help him retrieve his Shaman's Rod from roving bandits in town, which will soon lead Ivan to permanently join Isaac's party at the entrance to Goma Cave northeast from Vault.

Southwest of Vault is a bridge leading to the merchant city of Kalay, but this bridge is destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Aleph, which is what forces both Saturos and Isaac's respective parties to travel clockwise across Angara following the events at Mercury Lighthouse. The bridge is repaired by the time Isaac reaches Kalay from the east, which is when the party can explore the optional Vault Cave dungeon underneath Vault.

In Golden Sun

For all NPC gossip, see Side Scripts.

When the player's starting party of Isaac and Garet are first deposited into the overworld outside of Vale, the only other locations that can be entered besides Vale are the open village of Vault a short distance southeast of it, the blocked-off village of Lunpa north of that, and the entrance to the dungeon Goma Cave east-by-northeast from Vault. The overarching objective of this segment is to enter and travel through Goma Cave, but the stump blocking it cannot be Moved aside without clearing away the vines with the Whirlwind Psynergy first. Most players will stop inside Vault first anyway because it is placed directly in the general route they will take when first traveling southeast from Vale.

Inside the tightly enclosed village of Vault. The hole in the roof will eventually lead to the boss battle with the Bandit and Thieves. The ring of gravestones hides the entrance to the optional midgame dungeon Vault Cave.

The first time Vault is entered, a cutscene in the overworld will take place showing Master Hammet and his merchant caravan attempting to head back south from Vault toward his home settlement of Kalay, only to find that the bridge southwest of Vault that connects Vault and Kalay's respective regions of Angara has been destroyed.

In Vault, you can immediately enter the Inn and inspect the leftmost crate in the first floor for one of the game's four discoverable Mints, part of a series of consumable items that permanently increase a statistic. Because it counts as an Artifact, you may prefer to sell it for 525 coins at any vendor so that you can buy items like a Battle Axe or the Magic Rod at the weapon shopkeeper, and you can buy the Mint back for 700 coins at any item shopkeeper's Artifacts menu sometime later.

Your first mandatory task in Vault is to enter the mayor's manor at the northwest corner of the village and talk to Ivan at its northwest corner, who will temporarily join your party after a cutscene. You will be able to use his Mind Read Psynergy on any townsperson (or animal) in the village for additional gossip. Since he will not leave Vault until he has found his missing Shaman's Rod, he will automatically leave the party the moment you head too close to either the town's north or south exits – but he will immediately rejoin the party the moment you reenter the village from the overworld. (While he will keep any items you place in his inventory, he will give you back the Venus Djinni Flint if you had Set Flint onto him.)

Your next task is to head upstairs inside the Inn and approach the two differently colored thieves in the bedroom, who will spare no effort keeping their distance from you. When you walk back away from the bedroom, another cutscene will suggest you go and try again, and walking back toward them will initiate a "minigame" where Garet blocks off the way back to the stairs while Ivan and both thieves begin walking between and around the beds in random directions. As Isaac, who can freely move around (but cannot bring up any menus or cast any Psynergy using shoulder-button shortcuts), you must corral at least one of the thieves between yourself and Ivan. The minigame ends and the next cutscene plays when at least one thief cannot move in any direction for over half a second.

The game's first winnable boss battle pits Isaac's party against the Bandit and Thieves inside the attic of Vault's inn.

Back outside, the ladder leading into the hole in the Inn's roof will now be accessible because the red-haired male NPC guarding it will have disappeared, and a blonde lady will instead be pacing in front of the Inn looking around for him. You must climb into the hole to enter the Inn's attic, then cast the Move Psynergy to shift the giant crate one tile left so that you can hop the black gap and enter an attic room with a huge pile of crates and chests. The moment you interact with the tied-up NPC, a cutscene will shuttle you into an automatic boss battle against the Bandit and two Thieves. If you lose, you will trigger a unique cutscene before respawning at the Sanctum with just Isaac conscious and having only 1 HP left, and entering the storage room of the attic initiates a different prelude to the boss battle. When you win the battle, they will drop the Bandit's Sword weapon artifact. At the end of the long cutscene that follows, Ivan will have left the party, and the village's NPCs will all have updated their gossip.

If you talk to Vault's mayor before leaving, you will receive a free Water of Life, which can be used for a similar financial benefit as the Mint mentioned above. It can be sold for a very useful 2,250 coins, which can then be spent on the much more powerful and expensive equipment in the next settlement on the map, Bilibin. Because the Water of Life counts as an Artifact, that individual Water of Life can be bought back much later in the game for 3,000 coins, so you will ultimately avoid being "impeded" in the long term even if you sell it off for now. This Water of Life can be permanently missed if you head through the south exit of Mogall Forest at the east end of Angara, however.

Your next destination beyond Vault is the entrance to Goma Cave. Even if you tried and failed to cast Move on it before now, you will have to try and fail to do so again in order for Ivan to permanently rejoin your party. This allows you to bring him back to Vault and Mind Read all of the villagers again for their updated thoughts.

Subsequent visits

During your first visit to Vault, you can Mind Read the dog at the elevated ring of gravestones, which outright mentally offers to "tell you something useful" if you bring it a Bone. Once the boss battle is completed, the blonde lady from earlier will now be standing behind a barrel with a Bone atop it, and you can gather as many Bones from both the lady and the barrel as you want. Each Bone can be discarded, but if you give one to the dog, it will move behind the gravestones, and Mind Reading it again will inform you that you can "reveal" a passage leading underground to some treasure.

The mayor's manor at the north end of Vault is where you first meet Ivan. Later, ringing the bell atop the watch tower parks the Venus Djinni Sap at the elevated cave exit from Vault Cave.

This foreshadows that the Reveal Psynergy can be used to enter Vault Cave underneath the village through the center of the ring. However, you will not get Reveal until much later, and you will only be able to bring Reveal back to Vault after completing Lamakan Desert and taking its west exit back out into the overworld. By this point, the bridge between Vault and Kalay will have been fixed, and all of the NPCs in town will have again updated their spoken and mentally expressed text.

During the midgame revisit to Vault, it is not actually required to give a Bone to the dog in order to gain access to Vault Cave with Reveal, since the ladder hole that can be exposed with Reveal can be reached from the top end of the ring of gravestones regardless. However, it is heavily recommended that you first climb up the watchtower at the northeast end of Vault and interact with the bell to tap against it and scare the Venus Djinni Sap out of a nearby tree and onto an elevated, isolated cave exit. This is the exit leading from the other end of Vault Cave, and making the Venus Djinni move there ensures it will be waiting for you to collect it once you explore and travel through Vault Cave. (Be aware that the Djinni returns to its hiding place in the tree whenever you head back out into the overworld.) Another treasure hiding in Vault Cave itself, meanwhile, is the Vambrace glove artifact.

If you are playing Golden Sun with the intent to transfer data into Golden Sun: The Lost Age using the Data transfer function, it is important that you talk to the mayor of Vault during your time revisiting Vault. Somewhat illogically, having Isaac learn from the mayor that the Bandit and Thieves from earlier have busted out of jail and are now looking for him will enable a bonus event in The Lost Age where the trio will accost Felix when he leaves Madra after the first meeting with Karst. This will be the only method of getting the Golden Boots for Felix's party.

Vendors

The village's Inn service is provided in the village's lower center building for 4 coins per person. Its Sanctum service lies behind the double doors west of the Inn.

Weapon Shop
Name	Class	Cost	Effect
Battle Axe	Axe	280	Attack +24
Long Sword	Long Sword	200	Attack +14
Mace	Mace	80	Attack +6
Short Sword	Light Blade	120	Attack +8
Artifacts
Magic Rod	Staff	380	Attack +16, Unleashes Murk

Armor Shop
Name	Class	Cost	Effect
Circlet	Circlet	120	Defense +6
Leather Armlet	Bracelet	180	Defense +7
Leather Cap	Hat	20	Defense +3
Padded Gloves	Gloves	10	Defense +2
Travel Vest	Clothing	50	Defense +7
Wooden Shield	Shield	40	Defense +4

Item Shop
Name	Class	Cost	Effect
Antidote	Consumable Item	20	Cures Poison and Venom from one Adept
Herb	Consumable Item	10	Restores 50 HP to one Adept

Collectibles

• Mint: Found in the wooden box at the west end of the first floor of the inn.
• 7 Coins: Found in the white-and-blue jar in the house closest to the south entrance.
• 4 Coins: Found in the upper-right wooden barrel inside the house right of the inn.
• Sleep Bomb: Found in the right wooden barrel in the item shop.
• Nut: Found in the wooden box outside of the mayor's house at the northwest corner of town, left of its front door.

The following items can only be gotten after defeating the Bandit and Thieves:

• Water of Life: Received by speaking with the mayor of Vault in his northwest manor after the boss battle. This is permanently missed once the south exit from Mogall Forest is taken.
• Bone: An infinite supply can be acquired, one at a time, by interacting with either the barrel in the first floor of the inn with a Bone on it or the woman standing behind the barrel. One can be used to get the dog at the south cemetery to move and mentally express a hint about Vault Cave.

After acquiring Reveal for Ivan and exiting Lamakan Desert through its west end, the following collectible can be set up as a reward for clearing the optional Vault Cave (see that article for other collectibles in Vault Cave itself):

• Sap: Climb the watchtower and interact with the bell to make Sap jump from the nearby tree onto the elevated, isolated exit from Vault Cave. Then, without exiting back out into the overworld, enter and play through Vault Cave by casting Reveal at the circle of gravestones. At the end of the dungeon, you should step out of the isolated exit to pick up Sap.

Bestiary

During the player's first visit, the party will eventually fight the following trio of enemies as a mandatory boss encounter in the attic of the Inn. See Vault Cave for the monsters randomly fought in the underground passage underneath Vault.

Bestiary of Vault
Monster Name	LVL	HP	ATK	DEF	AGI	EXP	Coins	Weakness	Drop	Drop Rate
Bandit (boss)	7	244	46	8	20	36	46	Equal	Bandit's Sword	1/1
Thief (2) (boss)	6	110	42	5	9	15	32	Equal	N/A	N/A

History

This article or section has been identified as needing to be either cleaned up, reformatted, or rewritten. Please help us improve it by editing.

Vault is not given any background information in the games, being depicted merely as a small village in the heart of Angara. The village itself consists of several houses, surrounded by a wall-like cliff, with a prison inside a cliff cave. It is the only village 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.

Ivan, left behind by his master Hammet, enlists the help of Isaac and Garet in searching for the missing Shaman's Rod.

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 village. Some rocks also fall into the village 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 village'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 village'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 village are the thieves that have been taking all their stuff.

Clearly the village 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 villagers regardless of any unpleasant circumstances going on in that village. Practically as expected, he is captured by the empire of thieves situated behind Lunpa.

Right as Hammet leaves Vault, Isaac and Garet enter the village, 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 village, 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 village 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 village at ease, and the village 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 bandits are the first inmates in Vault's jail in a long time.

The village 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. By the time you go back to Vault, another person got locked up for hitting somebody.

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 villagers 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 villagers, including their families, 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 villagers survived. The Lost Age ends at that point.

Trivia

• After Ivan temporarily joins during the first meeting with him in Vault, he will automatically leave the party whenever you leave Vault for the overworld and will automatically rejoin whenever you reenter Vault. In both this case and when Ivan "officially" departs the party after the boss battle, the game makes it a point to have Ivan return to you the Venus Djinni Flint if you had moved Flint onto him, but he will not do the same with any items moved into his personal inventory. Humorously, this allows for the important Catch Beads and even the plot-critical Mars Star key item to be taken away from Isaac and Garet for a time, without any in-game mention of this. Since Ivan rejoining at Goma Cave is required for progressing beyond the Goma region of Angara and his inventory will remain intact, it is not possible to lose the Mars Star permanently.
  • Incidentally, if all 15 of Ivan's inventory slots are filled up prior to the boss battle, the Shaman's Rod that will enter his inventory during the cutscene following the battle will overwrite the first droppable item in his inventory list. The Shaman's Rod will pass over the Mars Star and/or the Catch Beads even if they are placed in the first two slots of Ivan's inventory.
• When playing the "minigame" in the inn where Isaac and Ivan must enclose at least one thief between each other while Garet is standing with his arms outstretched, pressing A, L, R, Start, or Select will instead cause Garet to exclaim, "We don't have time for that, Isaac!" This is the only instance in the Golden Sun series where the game prevents you from attempting to open up a menu of any sort during a sequence where you are not in "cutscene mode" and can move around. (The only other instance where the game stops you from performing a shoulder-button shortcut for casting Psynergy is during a tutorial segment in the cave in Goma Plateau in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.)