Gold management is one of the most complex skills in Teamfight Tactics. Knowing when to spend that gold and what to spend it on is one of the ways to express your own skill and knowledge in an auto chess game. While every game has different circumstances, there are some crucial basics to know.
What is Interest and how do I maximize it?
In Teamfight Tactics, you earn one bonus gold for every multiple of 10 you have in your wallet. This is called interest. It goes all the way up to 5 extra gold per turn when you hit 50, effectively doubling your overall income. Because the game only takes multiples of ten into account, your interest is the same whether your gold is 20 or 29. This means you should purchase champions to get you down to the multiple of 10 that you’re going to be at. You can also gain another interest gold by selling a unit that you don’t need or likely won’t need later on. There is no downside to “buying down” to your next interest level.
Why is this Important?
Buying down has a different purpose depending on the stage of the game, but it is good to do almost all the time. During the beginning of the game, your bench should be nearly full with 1 and 2 gold champions. When you buy down in the early game, not only do you give yourself more chances to hit 2 star units, you also unlock more potential compositions to work towards. If you don’t pick up all kinds of units early, you can get forced into a team that may not be optimal with your items or don’t match up well against other people’s teams.
Once the game gets to the later stages and you have a composition to build towards, buying down takes a bit of a different form. Instead of buying whatever will get you to a multiple of 10, you should look to buy units of the same rarity as one that you want. This will make the available pool smaller, but the appearance rate of that rarity will stay the same. Therefore, your chance to find the unit you want will go up. Keep in mind, others may be rolling for units of the same rarity, or even the same unit at the same time as you. Look around and see what people need so you can try to deny and not get denied critical units.
Still, the decision to roll away all your gold or to keep some for more interest is up to the player. A good general rule is that you should keep as much gold as you can if your comp is stable and you aren’t down or losing too much HP. If you’re afraid of getting left behind or losing too much HP in the coming rounds, rolling a bit is perfectly fine. And as always, try to not die with gold (and items) left over. Use everything at your disposal to get those higher placements.
Finally, here’s a quick list of general gold management tips:
- Getting a 2 gold unit with a mediocre item off of the first carousel is often better then a 1 gold unit with a good item. The reason is that by selling the 2 gold unit, you have a much bigger chance of hitting a 2 star 1 gold unit which can save you a lot of early HP.
- Don’t hold onto 3 gold units in the first battle stage. They take up a lot of your early gold value and can prevent you from hitting 2 star 1 gold units (which are often more powerful then 1 star 3 gold units). There can be exceptions to this if you have a composition that would benefit from the 3 gold unit, Gangplank for Pirate Gunslingers for example, but try not to hold on to them for the sake of holding on.
- Don’t roll or spend money on creep wave rounds unless you feel like you won’t be able to kill them. Learn how to position against each camp so this isn’t often a problem.
- Since you don’t get extra interest for multiples of 10 above 50, use spare gold to buy experience down to 50 at the end of each turn. Level 8 will come surprisingly quickly while doing this.
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