Gold

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

A pile of glittering gold coins. "Here it was that the ambassadors of the Samnites, finding him boiling turnips in the chimney corner, offered him a present of gold; but he sent them away with this saying; that he, who was content with such a supper, had no need of gold, and that he thought it more honourable to conquer those who possessed the gold, than to possess the gold itself." -Plutarch, "Marcus Cato"

Gold is the universal currency of Crawl. It has several uses, the most common being to purchase goods from shops.

Obtaining Gold

Gold may be obtained in many ways:

• Gold can be found lying on the floor like any other random treasure. Especially large piles of gold are often found at the bottom of Dungeon branches, and the Orcish Mines contains almost nothing but gold.
• Gold is one of the options a scroll of acquirement can be used for, granting you anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand.
• Xom occasionally gifts piles of gold to worshipers.
• Gozag worshippers have a passive Golden Touch, which turns defeated enemies into piles of gold.

Properties of Gold

Gold is not carried in the inventory or assigned a letter like other items are. You can check how much gold you are carrying by using the $ command.

Since no effect can remove gold (Maurice notwithstanding) or harm you for carrying it, there is no reason not to carry it. (The act of picking up gold takes a turn, so a turncount speedrun will want wand to avoid picking unnecessary gold.)

Uses for Gold

• Buying items from shops. Note that you can only buy items from shops, never sell.
• Worshipers of Zin pay a tithe (10% of all gold they gather) to gain piety. They may sacrifice half their gold for additional piety.
• Gozag requires a service fee for joining. Its followers may spend gold to gain collections of potion effects, bring shops to the Dungeon, and bribe monsters to be less hostile.

History

• Prior to 0.19, two cards existed, the Alchemist and the Mercenary, which would let you spend gold to heal yourself and purchase a permanent ally, respectively.
• Prior to 0.15, gold contributed to your score.
• Prior to 0.14, all non-Monk backgrounds began with a small amount of gold.
• In ancient versions of Crawl, enemy centaurs, nagas, and yaktaurs were supposed to occasionally spawn with bardings. However, the code mishandled the no-barding case, and gave the monster a pile of gold instead. This caused large quantities of gold to be generated in the Snake Pits and the Vaults.