TFT Interest and Gold Income: How to Get Ahead in Teamfight Tactics

In Teamfight Tactics, Gold is the only resource and currency in the game. While it can’t be used to buy items, as it can in LoL, it can be used to buy champions. Furthermore, it can be used to buy experience, which allows you to field more champions at the same time. If you don’t focus on your gold income, you will quickly fall behind and lose. Even if you have a great champion and item strategy in TFT, you just won’t be able to fund it.

What are the Different Ways to Make Money in Teamfight Tactics?

Gold can be earned in a variety of ways in Teamfight Tactics, including passively, through streaks, from monster drops, and from interest.

Passive Gold Income

After every combat round, you earn five gold through passive income, regardless of whether or not you win. This is a stable source of income, but it’s relatively small. You cannot rely primarily on passive income. It just won’t provide enough gold to level up your champions or increase your team size in order to make it into the top four.

Win/Loss Streaks

If you get on a hot or cold streak, there are bonuses applied to your round income based on how long you’ve been on your streak. These bonuses can be very significant, but they can also disappear immediately with a single round of bad (or good) luck. Don’t count on them for steady income.

You will also earn one additional gold for every win, regardless of the long-term streak you are in. This is sort of an additional 1-round win streak bonus.

Monster Drops

Many monsters will drop gold when killed. They don’t always just drop items. Additionally, champions found in monster drops can be exchanged for gold if they are unwanted. If you receive a large gold influx from multiple monster drops in one round, consider saving the money to help you start earning a more stable income through gold interest in TFT.

If you receive a lot of gold in place of multiple items, it’s especially important that you save the gold and earn interest off of it. This is because your champions will be at a distinct disadvantage for the rest of the game without the extra items. You need to offset this loss with added gold income in order to try to gain an advantage through a larger team size or higher level champions in the mid- and late-games.

Interest in Teamfight Tactics

You earn interest in TFT whenever you save a significant amount of gold and don’t spend it by the end of the round. Specifically, for every 10 gold that you have (rounded down), you will earn an additional gold each combat round. You control your spending, so you can control and plan around this gold income source in TFT.

You earn interest in TFT whenever you save a significant amount of gold and don’t spend it by the end of the round. Specifically, for every 10 gold that you have (rounded down), you will earn an additional gold each combat round. You control your spending, so you can control and plan around this gold income source in TFT.

Unfortunately, gold interest maxes out at +5 additional gold, so there’s no bonus given for having more than 50 gold saved. That being said, there are reasons to hold more than 50 gold, including to reach the final Little Legend levels to max out your team size or to save up for more high tier champions in the late game phase.

Trait Bonuses

In Set 5, the Draconic trait drops eggs after each round. These eggs hatch into champions for your bench, but they can also be further sold as a source of income. It’s not a great source of income, especially because you’d be selling champions that likely fit into your team comp, but we thought we’d mention it for completeness.

How to Get a Head Start on Your Player Economy

You will want to get a head start on your gold income to take advantage of bonus interest gold as soon as possible. The best strategy is usually to buy every champion offered in the store that you want until you have 10 gold between your unused champions and saved funds. Then, you should sell the unwanted champions that aren’t fitting into your evolving build to start gaining interest.

Don’t waste your early funds on bonus XP or on champion shop refreshes. Put everything extra into building your gold reserves to earn more TFT interest. It’s usually best to focus on building a source of income through interest, even if you lose some rounds. In fact, in the early game, it may be to your benefit to lose early.

Likely the only reason you may want to spend your early income on additional XP is if you need to maintain a winning streak as a different source of income. There are also some rare team comps that need many early game tier-1 heroes, such as Hellion. If you are running one of these early game team comps, you will want to prioritize grabbing as many of those champions as possible over gaining early interest.

Yet, in most situations, you will want to focus on getting a head start on your income by saving the gold from the first several rounds.

Staying on Top of Your Gold Income in TFT

Here are a few tips to help you stay on top of your gold income in TFT.

Here are a few tips to help you stay on top of your gold income in TFT.

• Don’t spend any gold within 2 rounds of fighting a monster wave. Unless of course, you have to buy a champion for your team comp. Monster waves are trivial, and you can guarantee yourself a win. Save up, to get more gold from interest. You’ll also be in a better position to buy the higher quality champions when they become more common after the monster wave.
• Collect the gold on the battlefield before the round ends. If you can get above the next TFT interest threshold before interest is earned, you will make an additional gold. Every bit helps.
• Don’t keep unneeded champions on the bench if selling them can earn you more gold interest. Champions on your bench aren’t helping you. While you can sell level one champions later for the same gold you purchased them for, you may be missing out on extra gold interest by keeping them around.

When to Spend Instead of Earning Interest in TFT

There are a few situations where it makes more sense to spend your gold in order to protect your long-term income and placement. The most common reason to spend gold in the moment is to maintain a long-running winning streak. If you are pulling in several golds per round from your winning streak, you have a decent income source and can take the interest hit in order to preserve your place.

Another reason you may need to spend a large amount of gold and lose your ability to earn interest is to level up and gain an additional champion slot. You can offset this loss by waiting for one or two additional rounds beyond when you can afford the extra level in order to preserve some interest income after you level up.

In the late-game, if you’re in the top 4 and are trying to eek out just one better position by leveling up a few champions or increasing your team size by one, it’s also a good time to spend everything you have. Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky?

There are a few times when it makes sense to spend in order do better, but in general, you want to try to maintain as close to 50 banked gold as possible in order to maximize your gold revenue. It’ll effectively double your earned gold throughout the game compared to spending everything right away. Using TFT interest effectively means that you will afford more champions, will level up rarer ones, and will have a larger team size. All of these differences translate into more wins!!!

Thanks for reading!! Please let us know, below, if you have any other great advice on how to use TFT interest to build a strong player economy.

Images Courtesy of Riot Games.