Gold

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 gameplay reason not to carry it. (The act of picking up gold takes a turn, so during a turncount speedrun you might want to avoid picking gold, especially small stacks of coins.)

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, and followers can spend gold to access abilities.

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.
• Prior to 0.1.4, gold was an inventory item.