Money is power, and you need power to survive in Teamfight Tactics. Gold is the only way to get new units and level up quickly, both of which are very important on the path to a TFT victory. It’s also a way of mitigating bad luck, spending it to reroll and potentially getting the champions you need to complete your comps. But what are the best ways to earn and spend gold? Our Teamfight Tactics Economy guide will give you the information you need to get ahead of the gold rush.
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TFT Economy Tips – Earning Gold
For how important gold is in TFT, there’s not much in-game that explains all the ways you can earn it. There are a number of factors which determine how much gold you get per round. Understanding these systems will help you get ahead of your opponents.
Players start with a base income of 2 gold. This increases per round until you max out at a base income of 5 gold. No matter how you perform in the last round, you can always count on this gold to be there.
Winning a match awards you 1 gold. You are also awarded extra gold for a win streak, with 1 gold for 2-4 wins, 2 gold for 5-7 wins, and 3 gold at 8 or more wins.
A losing streak also awards you extra gold at the same rate as winning matches. This is likely to give those having trouble winning some extra resources to get back on track. In fact, sometimes it’s more beneficial to keep your losing streak intact than to eek out a win.
If you don’t get an item in a PVE round, you’ll receive gold to make up for it. The chart below explains the game’s method of determining who gets gold and who receives items. In general, gold is a paltry make good for not getting items. It can be predicted and planned for, however, which is important when managing your bench and unit purchases.
But there is something Teamfight Tactics never really explains that can be integral to your spending strategies—interest.
Interest
If you save up gold instead of spending it, you’ll earn interest on that gold. You gain 1 extra gold for each 10 gold you have in the bank each round, for up to 5 gold a round.
Here’s how much interest you get per round based on your banked gold:
- 10-19 gold = 1 gold in interest
- 20-29 gold = 2 gold in interest
- 30-39 gold = 3 gold in interest
- 40-49 gold = 4 gold in interest
- 50+ gold = 5 gold in interest
Interest gives you a reason not to just spend gold as soon as you receive it. If you’re patient and conservative with your spending in the early game, you may end up with plenty of gold in the mid- and late-game. If find yourself winning early on with a relatively high health total it may make sense to start hoarding some gold for free interest.
Pirates
Having three pirates on the field allows you to gain an extra 1-4 gold a round. It’s not the best Origin ability, but Pirates can help you amass gold quickly in the early game and get you earning interest sooner.
TFT Economy Tips – Spending Gold
There are three main ways to spend gold: buying units, buying XP, and spending two gold to reroll the units in your shop.
In terms of strategy, you can do one of three things.
TFT Economy Strategy 1: Aggressive Spending
If you decide to be an aggressive player, you’ll want to spend, spend, spend. Getting lower cost characters to higher tiers is the name of the game, helping you dominate the early game and giving you some time to build some decent units on the side-lines while riding that early game lead.
If you’re spending most of the gold you get from round to round, you’ll probably not be able to do much with stacking interest. Most of the extra gold you get will come down to win streaks. If you’re deploying powerful characters in the early rounds while others are trying to get situated, you’ll earn gold by winning matches and through win streak bonuses, giving you a bit more breathing room to reroll for the champions you need.
TFT Economy Strategy 2: Conservative Spending
If you want to be more conservative, you should start earning interest as soon as you’re able. Spend only what you need to in the early game, saving gold for the later parts of the match when higher-cost units can be bought to round out your team.
Being more conservative means that you are probably going to take a few early-game losses to more aggressive players that quickly tiered up their units. However, biding your time gets you exponentially more gold to work with when the more powerful and more expensive units start cropping up.
TFT Economy Strategy 3: Somewhere in the Middle
Most of the time, going too aggressive or too conservative can lead to problems winning. If you go too aggressive with your spending, you might not be able to get a good team comp together in the late game, wrecking your chances to clinch victory. If you’re too conservative, then you might have taken too much damage in the early and mid-game to recover fast enough in the late game, especially if luck isn’t on your side.
The seasoned TFT player will know when to save their money and when it’s time to spend away. It’s not an easy tightrope to walk, but the best bet is to see which of the two more extreme strategies works better for you and your play style and make tweaks from there.
