History — Gold & the Economy
Gold buys gear, fuels Ascension, founds guilds and — once you are deep enough that nothing in a shop tempts you any more — buys the Regalia. This page is where it comes from and where it goes.
Where Gold Comes From
Every defeated enemy pays gold on a single shared curve, the same shape as the experience curve, so a kill is worth a consistent slice of at-level gear wherever you fight. Bosses are the payday; raids sit a little above the overworld, as the hardest group content should.
| Source | Relative pay |
|---|---|
| Overworld / dungeon trash | Baseline |
| Rare monsters & variants | ×2.5 |
| Raid trash | ×1.2 |
| Dungeon boss | ×15 |
| Raid boss | ×25 |
On top of the base rate, Fortune Essences, the Fortune trait, your guild's gold bonus and guild relics all add together — they stack additively, so each one you add is worth the same as the last.
Quests, daily and weekly objectives, board contracts, the World Boss and The Long Watch all pay gold as well. And treasure chests in dungeons are free money for the walk.
Selling Loot
Any shop buys your unequipped gear. What it pays is a share of the item's listed value, and that share depends on the item's level:
| Item level | Vendor pays |
|---|---|
| Up to Lv 500 | 15% of value |
| Lv 1,000 | 14.4% |
| Lv 2,500 | 12.6% |
| Lv 5,000 | 9.6% |
| Lv 8,000 and above | 6% |
Early gear sells at the full rate — the taper only bites on high-level loot, where selling bag after bag was earning more than every other source in the game combined.
Boss-tier loot vendors at a twentieth of the normal rate. Legendary, Unique and Dark Crystal items pay only 5% of what the table above would give — no shop sells them, so no shop pays full price for them either. Salvage them for Ascension Dust, or sell them to other players on the auction house.
Rarity is worth real gold: a Unique is worth more than a Legendary, which is worth more than an Epic, and so on down. If a drop looks unremarkable, check its tier before you sell it — and consider whether it is worth more broken down at a Smash Shop for Ascension Dust instead.
Where Gold Goes
Ascension is the largest sink in the game and the main thing your gold is for. The cost of taking one item up a tier rises steeply — each tier costs disproportionately more than the last, and rarer gear costs more to ascend:
| Rarity | Cost multiplier |
|---|---|
| Common | ×1 |
| Uncommon | ×1.4 |
| Rare | ×2 |
| Epic | ×3 |
| Legendary | ×4.5 |
| Unique | ×6 |
| Dark Crystal | ×8 |
Taking a Lv 12,000 Epic all the way from +0 to +10 runs to roughly 346 million gold; the same journey on a Unique is about double that. A full nine-piece set is a genuine project, which is the intention — your best gear should cost you something.
Gold also pays for shop gear, guild founding and guild works, Skyhold buildings, vault tabs, Waystone travel, auction listing fees, the Altar of Rebirth, and the Curio of Vanities. And remember: gold you are carrying is lost when you die. Bank it at your Safehouse.
Flash Sales
From time to time the realm runs a flash sale: a single percentage off every catalogue price, everywhere at once, with a countdown. The sticker price is always the price charged. Sales run between 1% and 90% off and never longer than fourteen days — a sale is an event, not a price change. Vendor sell-back is deliberately not discounted, and nothing you receive (gold, EXP, drops) is touched.