Tips and Tricks (Golden Sun)

General Tips

Even though it sounds mundane: Explore the world, fight enemies and get to know the game better. Only practice makes perfect!
Always try to get on in the game without the help of a walkthrough. Sometimes enlightenment just comes by itself! So only look for help when you're really desperate. Otherwise the game might lose its certain fun.
Use 'Mind Read'! You'll be astonished hiw many secrets you'll get to know this way. Whether unimportant or vital to the game's plot, shamelessly exploit this gift! ;-)
With the 'Reveal' psynergy you'll be able to find hidden hidden items in pots, crates, barrels etc. without much effort. If there's something in the container it will start to glitter during the psynergy's effect. You won't get this psynergy until later in the game, though.
Always make sure that someone in your group is a good healer. Even the strongest of characters need a refreshment every now and then! Especially useful are of course the healing spells which do affect the whole group!
Make some money wth selling things you don't need anymore. This doesn't only apply to weapons and armours – feel free to sell Waters of Life, Potions and Psy Crystals above all early in the game, as that's very profitable. Since they're articacts you can simply buy them back later in the game.
Don't blindy use a weapon or armour solely because its boost in attack or defence is stronger than your current equipment. The true strength of any artifact are almost always its unleash or additional bonuses!
Find out what element your enemy is weak against! This is easy to find out, simply read the message on the battle screen: If the element was weak, the sentence will end with ".", but with "!" after a normal blow and a "!!!" after an especially effective one!
As soon as you know the elemental weakness of your enemy you can exploit this knowledge in another way: defeat it with a djinn corresponding to the weakness. The monster will flash for a short time and the experience points gained as well as the chance of an item drop will increase greatly.

Ultimate Equipment


Gaia Blade	Kikuichimonji	Kikuichimonji	Crystal Rod
Asura's Armour	Storm Gear	Feathered Robe	Oracle's Robe
Warrior's Helmet	Lucky Cap	Mythril Circlet	Thunder Crown
War Gloves	Spirit Gloves	Virtuous Armlet	Spirit Armlet
Mythril Shirt	Mythril Shirt	Mythril Shirt	Mythril Shirt
Hyper Boots	Hyper Boots	Hyper Boots	Hyper Boots
Unicorn Ring	Unicorn Ring	Unicorn Ring	Cleric's Ring

My opinion of an ultimate equipment in Golden Sun.

Some people tend to give Garet a cursed weapon and the Priest Ring along with it... I prefer to give that one to Mia, as she oughts to have the Thunder Crown. With its PP regeneration her healing powers become nearly inexhaustible, which should make the group virtually invincible from a certain point on. And yes, a light blade's indeed Garet's strongest weapon on average. Naturally feel free to also add a multitude of Potions, Psy Crystals, Waters of Life and so on to this list when strictly speaking of "ultimate".

Battle Arena

As soon as you have created a save file and found the first djinni, you can send your characters from it to the Battle Arena in the title menu. There you can show your true strength with them! You can either fight against a friend (for this you need to have two GBAs connected via a Game Link Cable) or alone against monsters. In any case talk to the girl behind the counter and she'll grant you entrance! When playing alone you'll encounter randomly chosen enemies that you've already faced in your save file. Once a battle's won you'll get to the next one without a pause. Your rounds won are counted until the winning streaks ends you voluntarily stop fighting – hey, how far may your record go? But take care, as with each successive round your enemies will become a little stronger than before...!

A few general recommendations for the Battle Arena

Carry as many healing items as possible with you and have at least one healer in your team.
Agility can be more important than any other stat here.
Quite obvious, but have your best equipment at hand here!
Have weapons with you that can poison. This way you'll quickly defeat most monsters.
Good luck!

Skippable Events

Leave out Fuchin Temple
You don't have to get the Orb of Force in the Fuchin Temple to advance in the game, you can walk through the Mogall Forest without it, too! I have no clue whether this was intended by the developers or not, but that way you can leave it out! You're not going to need 'Force' to get on in Altin Peak, the cuscene even occours without the Orb of Force.
Walk through Lamakan Desert without oases
You can pass through the desert without even having jumped into a single oasis! As the heat merely damages you you'll be able to hold against this through simple healing. It won't be of much use, though: it's impossible to skip 'Reveal' as you're going to need it to reach the very end of the desert.
Reach Crossbone Isle early
Command the right persons to the oars during your shipping to Tolbi and you might reach Crossbone Isle even earlier! The ship then halts at the beach of said island. The Lizard boss enemy won't be there, though, and as you surely won't have certain psynergies at this point yet you won't be able to go very far into the cave! There are most likely several ways to combine the persons correctly, those are known to me:
1. Brunette lady, 2. Blonde lady, 3. Elder man, 4. Merchant (far from the stairs)
1. Warrior, 2. Brunette lady, 3. Muscular man, 4. Young man
1. Brunette lady, 2. Cook, 3. Elder man 4. Thief / Merchant

Glitches

These are programming errors in the game.

Clipping errors
Generally there sometimes are some very minor clipping errors noticable in the game. Once you manage it to stand behind anything (so that it covers you), very lighty and quickly press any direction on the control pad. It may happen that the character now stands in front of the thing through this motion, even though the character should be behind it! » Picture «
Running animation doesn't stop
There's one occasion in Golden Sun where the group continous to run despite not being supposed to do that. Go to Tolbi Spring, that is, the area where you can toss the coins. The water still has to be in it. Stand in front of the stone plate on which you're tossing the coins. Now run into the spring's direction and as soon as you're on the plate press the A button as quickly as possible! The water should go away now, but the group will continue to mindlessly run against the spring wall! » Picture «

Cheats

Return to the last visited sanctum
Should you ever get stuck anywhere (or perhaps simply want to take a shortcut) you can return to the last sanctum visited with a special button combination. Simply press L, R and START simultaneously whilst loading your save file in the main menu.
Change names
Press three times SELECT during the main menu (which is the one directly after the title screen), after that you should hear a sound. Now you're not only able to name Isaac, but Garet, Ivan and Mia too when starting a new game!
Change even more names
With this cheat you'll not only be able to rename the said four main chatacters, but Felix, Jenna and Cosma as well. For this press the following buttons or directions:
up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, up, right, down, left, up, SELECT.
Send option
This cheat unlocks the "send option" which will pop up as a new item in the main menu. Be also in the main menu for this. Hold down the R button as well as the left on the control pad, then press START during that time. A new symbol with a letter should appear! This cheat's also given in the manual of The Lost Age. The send option will be important for finding out the passwords required for transferring data.
Cheat codes
As Golden Sun doesn't have a built-in "cheating system" many things can only be achieved through cheating devices such as the Gameshark, Codebreaker or Action Replay. For those simply take a look at the last section of this page.

Debug Room

A "Debug Room" is a special place that game developers usually create to test out certain functions in the game in a quick and uncomplicated manner, as well as to validate them. Which means it only serves testing purposes. Normally such rooms get deleted after the game's completion, or access to them is removed.

Golden Sun's got two of such debug rooms that will be described in the following. But at first the cheat codes (for the Action Replay, Codebreaker and Gameshark cheating devices) which you'll have to enter to access one of these rooms.

Debug Room #1	60FF6450 D96B96FB 4553DE0F 0913E722
Debug Room #2	92B5130F 1B7FA51A 0DFA4AD9 3B7A93E7

Activate the codes only until after you save file's already loaded, though. Now enter any new area in the game, instead of the expected room you'll now find yourself in one of the debug rooms!

Debug Room #1

Name: "Increase item and level". Quite a strange one to look at is the first debug room. The whole area is pitch-black and only a few things can be found in this emptyness. You'll enter this room in front of a red statue, a man and a cat. The statue lets a menu appear in which every item in the game can be viewed and added to the own inventory. The man on the other hand allows you to view any psynergy imaginable of the game. You won't be able to learn them, though. Finally the cat will raise your level by one or five, as you may wish. North of them there are two emoticons which are even able to tell you something if you talk to them... Northernmost there finally is Menardi, covered for the most part. Talk to her and a list of all persons and icons will appear. But the names will be a little out of order, and your screen might become a little messy... Though at least not as screwed-up as in the German version.

Debug Room #2

Name: "Menu test". If you've found the first room strange already, this one's it even more! It solely consists of a small area with many persons. As the name might suggest the different menus can be tested here. By the way, you'll always start in this room with all four characters at level 30 except for Isaac, who'll be at level 50. Let's start with the upper left! Garet apparently raises our levels, but they'll remain the said ones. Jenna gives us a multitude of artefact weapons and armours. Ivan gives you all sorts of usable items. Mia lets you change your name. Kraden brings up the inventory. The left Dora gives you all djinn (apart from Luff...). The left Saturos damages your group and randomly inflicts status ailments. Menardi gives us items important for the game's plot. The merchant causes the trading menu to pop up, whereas the right Dora brings up the priest's menu. The right Saturos only says a single sentence. The upper and lower Felix tell you the diverse phrases of the merchants. And the single bush shows all of the game's icons to you...

Cheat Codes

Cheats for the Action Replay, Gameshark or Codebreaker.

Cheating's evil, mind you! ;-)

General

Max. Coins	79D6FD8C 6BC07A36
Debug Room #1	60FF6450 D96B96FB 4553DE0F 0913E722
Debug Room #2	92B5130F 1B7FA51A 0DFA4AD9 3B7A93E7
Unlock Djinn	D1E12941 E0A804AE EED85751 3D77FB75

Isaac

All Venus Djinn	4DB57560 4994570B
All Mars Djinn	00E47EA5 A74D3234
All Jupiter Djinn	BA9073B3 F21A8F78
All Mercury Djinn	287D5655 E9C342CA
Infinite HP	19D1A5D7 949CC74A BE7DD682 89B58188
Infinite PP	50FD7C40 B4933D6A BE4E67C9 61DD239F
Max. Level	7302CEE5 48E99C7F
Max. Experience	E234DC59 C53527D7
Max. Attack	A407CE78 05DE0A30
Max. Defence	2E380795 899710EF
Max. Agility	ACC79655 75AA520C
Max. Luck	7281CA2F B014F3C9

Garet

All Venus Djinn	9D36E735 255AD8B3
All Mars Djinn	4023BB8F 2A410E25
All Jupiter Djinn	CEAE7BA6 E8090E77
All Mercury Djinn	94C0C36E C7A7BAB1
Infinite HP	1A34058D 588CFEEC 0777404E 16AD0196
Infinite PP	0A97D648 2AA0CF49 91F59A4c 5F6418CF
Max. Level	48E64d44 30282ED9
Max. Experience	C055DB51 EA6C3251
Max. Attack	234FCE26 BA6D79F7
Max. Defence	B002FBCA CB7D6E23
Max. Agility	BB33F0CE C7022176
Max. Luck	60F7BF22 93596614

Ivan

All Venus Djinn	D4778534 BE5CFF7F
All Mars Djinn	5146690A 5391D655
All Jupiter Djinn	B5DB480B F829167D
All Mercury Djinn	76D9DEDD E9D72F19
Infinite HP	9126F163 88A232CB AFDACCE6 94A229F8
Infinite PP	DC29B71F 1B8A19B3 D056CDFE E4B1B0B4
Max. Level	73F575F7 8A006217
Max. Experience	4B32FBA5 E66914DA
Max. Attack	5385E154 A48E1DC5
Max. Defence	C2AECA7D E03F6D77
Max. Agility	CEC0FF3D 05837717
Max. Luck	8B02DF0D 9441911B

Mia

All Venus Djinn	DD31C5B3 980E3345
All Mars Djinn	77CF3C23 5CA64382
All Jupiter Djinn	8B4B51A8 5B047E13
All Mercury Djinn	D1EC5867 F8935E91
Infinite HP	F9940A47 C89061D5 A892CAC0 1AF58E5E
Infinite PP	05CDD068 89B4BDA8 50699B63 40F08191
Max. Level	22656FFA C7408097
Max. Experience	959CACB9 D06765C4
Max. Attack	6E8BF089 03486435
Max. Defence	F85419F9 B1C0EF22
Max. Agility	9FAF8B60 97CA1DE0
Max. Luck	BA8A34A3 D5D4DF86

Jenna

Infinite HP	7375F9A7 3CAC6678 E47F2298 E9DFA3F2
Infinite PP	B1884AF8 B58A359D 154283E0 841018CF
Max. Level	EC348B2E 3AD1142A
Max. Experience	33A8C6C5 1B36C03C
Max. Attack	E1DD258D D99857F6
Max. Defence	810E3098 295F1DD2
Max. Agility	077DDD5A 1FBDAF10
Max. Luck	1CE9CC0D 24FBCCBC

Suum cuique! I own nothing, except for the self-made contents and images here. Golden Sun™ is a registered trademark of Camelot Software Planning®.
No original content should be used for non-private purposes without my knowing and approval.

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