How to Get Gold: Nuggets, Ingots, Jewelry and Gold-Grade Items

Unlike copper and iron, gold cannot be dug up. No vein, no boulder, no zombie quarry: every Golden nugget in the game is bought, panned, looted or conjured out of iron. That makes gold a trader’s metal, which suits a Keeper who already sells certificates for the dead. Below: every way to get it, the smelting recipe, what each gold product is worth, and the gold-grade items (gold Stories, gold Wine, gold certificates) that share the word but not the metal.

Gold at a glance

If you only remember one line: nuggets from the Trademaster early, Davy’s Valuables crates in the mid game, and Philosopher Stones on Iron Ingots (never on ore) once alchemy is mature.

Where Golden nuggets come from

The Trademaster at the Main Pier

The first reliable gold is for sale. Once you hand the Trademaster 3 Lens in Crystal Clear, his shelf at the Main Pier carries 20 Golden nuggets with a base price of 1 silver. The first units cost exactly that, then each purchase nudges the price up: 3 nuggets cost 3 silver 8 bronze, a full shelf of 20 costs 33 silver 96 bronze instead of 20 silver.

Even at the top of that curve the deal is excellent, since 3 nuggets become 2 ingots and each ingot ends up worth roughly 70 silver or more. Buy in lots of 3 or 6 so every purchase matches a furnace batch, and come back as his stock recovers over the following days. He also sells 5 Gems at about 10 silver each, which you will want later for Fine Jewelry.

Gold Digger: panning at the Sluice Box

The Sluice Box (technology Bronze Forge, built from 4 Board and 4 Bronze Nails) washes 3 Sand into 2 or 3 Tin at Smithing mastery 2. With the Gold Digger talent (Smithing tree, 1 inspiration point, right after Miner) every wash also has a 40% chance to drop 1 Golden nugget.

The arithmetic: on average one nugget per 2.5 washes, so about 7.5 Sand per nugget and 22 to 23 Sand per furnace batch of 3. Sand is free and renewable at the sand pits of the Riverside (4 per pit, Building mastery 3), and a Sand Digger Stand zombie can dig it for you. The Tin that comes out alongside is exactly what copper-route Bronze Ingots need, so nothing is wasted.

Davy the Dagger’s Valuables orders

After Wharf Rats, Davy the Dagger at the Dockside Club takes looter orders on Lust, one at a time, paid in Keys for Looters. The crate shows up behind him a day or so later.

A big crate alone is worth 13 to 26 ingots once smelted. Keys come from Sewer Brawl I and Sewer Brawl II (3 each), Break Through to the Bathhouse Basement (3) and every round of the Sewerena (4 to 10), and the Jeweler sells them from his second tier at a 1 silver base. Plan Davy for the same Lust trip as the Trademaster’s ship.

Press for Cash: the one-off jackpot

Press for Cash starts after the Village election. Print 20 Printed Money at the Printing Press (10 Clean Paper and 1 Paint make 10 notes, Book writing mastery 4), give them to Januarius, then carry the 10 signed notes to the twins, Heffry and Jeffry, in Twins’ Land. Their Mysterious Chest holds 20 Golden nuggets, 6 Golden ingots, 8 Gems and 3 Town Gratitude. Smelted, that is enough gold and Gems for 8 Fine Jewelry with ingots to spare, all for two print runs.

Philosopher Stone: iron into gold

A Philosopher Stone is brewed at Laboratory II from any mix whose runes add up to 3 red, 3 green and 3 blue (Marble, Alcohol and Pumpkin is one of the simplest), once Alchemy, Advanced is researched (200 red, 100 blue). At the Formulation Bench it converts:

• 1 Iron Ore + 1 stone into 1 Golden nugget (Anatomy mastery 6), worth 1 silver;
• 1 Iron Ingot + 1 stone into 1 Golden ingot (Anatomy mastery 8), worth 1 gold.

Same stone, a hundred times the value. Always transmute ingots. The Alchemist buys Philosopher Stones at his third tier for about 35 silver 75 bronze, so turning one into a Golden ingot roughly doubles its worth, and turning that ingot into Fine Jewelry multiplies it again. A Good Alchemist’s kit (+4 Anatomy in the tool belt) helps you reach mastery 8, and it is itself made from a Golden ingot. For rune mixes, see the alchemy page.

How to smelt Golden ingots

The trap here is the technology. The gold recipe does not sit in Metallurgy next to iron: it comes with Reanimation II (100 blue) in the Anatomy and Alchemy tree, behind Reanimation Liquid. The same node unlocks the Golden Zombie Collar. Players who stare at the Metallurgy tab for a gold smelt are looking in the wrong graveyard.

Fireman (Smithing talent, 1 inspiration point) turns every batch into 3 ingots instead of 2: 50% more gold from the same nuggets, and one more Iron Ingot per iron batch too. Take it before you smelt in volume.

Fuel is cheap: 30 Fuel is 3 Firewood from a Firewood shed, and a single Short Log chopped into 10 Firewood feeds three gold batches. Furnace II is an auto-crafter, so start a batch and go dig a grave, but collect the finished ingots before the next batch can start.

What to make with Golden ingots

Watch the names: the Fine Jewelry technology (30 red, 30 green, 70 blue) unlocks the Golden Talisman, not the Fine Jewelry item. The Fine Jewelry recipe comes from the Jeweler talent in the Building tree, which also adds a 20% chance of an extra Gem from each copper vein.

Precious Trinkets and Fine Jewelry: the money route

The Jewelry Table lives in the Writing Basement (Delicate Work, 4 Wooden Plank, 12 Bronze Nails, 3 Glass). Each piece takes 16 ticks at 3 energy, 48 energy at the required mastery; only twice the requirement halves that. Reaching Smithing 12 and then 14 is the real gate. Stack what you can:

• Talented jeweler (Book writing talent): +4 Smithing, but only at the Jewelry Table, which is exactly where you need it.
• Goldsmith (Book writing talent): the 14 Jewelry Table recipes cost 2 energy per tick instead of 3, so 32 energy per piece instead of 48.
• Your best hammer in the tool belt (+1 Rusty, +2 Bronze, +4 Iron, +6 Steel) and your best small-tool set (+1, +2, +4).
• Soldier’s stew for +2 Smithing, and Prayer for Excellence for +1 to every mastery while its blessing lasts.

Gems for Fine Jewelry: the Trademaster’s shelf of 5, the Miner and Jeweler perks on copper veins (20% each), a Zombie Miner with Magpie’s Eye (10% per cycle), and the 8 from the Press for Cash chest. Use the crafting calculator to see the full tree for a batch of five.

Collars, talismans and kits: the useful route

A Golden Zombie Collar raises a zombie’s red skull cap from 5 (bronze) to 10. Before you spend a 1-gold ingot on one, check the Jeweler: from his second tier he sells Golden Zombie Collars for 10 silver, though the price can show 20 to 30 silver, especially at his third tier, so glance at the trade window first. Even then it is far cheaper than the ingot’s sale value, so buy collars and keep the gold for jewelry. Personal Zombie Zone also hands you two.

The Golden Talisman cannot be sold, but its +4 Book writing goes a long way toward the mastery 8 that gold Stories demand. Blank Hardcover Notebooks are the opposite case: the Alchemist sells them at his third tier (20 in stock, 1 silver 50 bronze base), so buying is much cheaper than burning a Golden ingot per notebook.

Church and graveyard decorations

Golden ingots also go into the top tier of several decorations: Candelabra III (+5 church quality) and Church Smells III (+10) take 1 each, Monument III (+6 graveyard quality) and Columbarium II (+20) take 2 each. Graveyard quality feeds every successful sermon, so a Columbarium keeps paying long after a ring would have been sold. See graveyard quality for where each piece fits.

Selling gold without crashing the price

Traders pay about 75% of an item’s base price when they hold their usual stock, less with every unit you add, never more than the base. Gold goods follow that curve:

Three rules keep the money flowing:

1. Sell two or three a day per buyer. A trader’s stock drifts back toward normal by at most a fifth of his usual stock per day, so a stack of 20 rings dumped at once loses a large slice of its value. Split rings between the Trademaster and the Jeweler.
2. Use net trade. Only the balance of a trade window is checked against the trader’s purse. If the Jeweler cannot pay for a Fine Jewelry, take some of his stock (Golden ingots, collars or Keys for Looters from his second tier) in the same window as part payment. His purse also grows as he resells what you sold him, so a Jeweler you trade with regularly ends up rich.
3. Never upgrade the Jeweler to tier III with Fine Jewelry in your bag. His offer drops to 1 bronze and no one else buys it. Sell out, then upgrade for the Golden Talisman and Steel collar stock.

Note that a ring adds little over the raw ingot (about 75 silver against about 70). The ring’s real value is that the Trademaster buys it, and that it is one Gem away from a 3-gold sale.

Gold-grade items: gold Story, gold Wine and friends

Many items come in bronze, silver and gold star grades, each a separate item with its own price. “Gold” in these names has nothing to do with the metal.

Gold Story

A Story is written at the Writing Desk from 3 Faith, 2 Clean Paper and 1 Ink (Books I, Book writing 6). It is a quality craft: the number of successful ticks out of 10 sets the grade (1 for bronze, 6 for silver, 10 for gold), and below the required mastery ticks can fail. The gold grade arrives with Storytelling I (80 green, 80 blue), which also unlocks the last step of the safest route, merging:

• Improve story I: 2 bronze Stories into 1 silver (Book writing 7, Books II, 24 energy).
• Improve story II: 2 silver Stories into 1 gold (Book writing 8, Storytelling I, 32 energy).

The merges cannot fail. The Like a King talent starts every Story with 2 successful ticks, which helps when you write below the requirement.

Where to get Stories without writing: the Town Tavern sells bronze Stories (10 in stock) from tier I, silver from tier II and gold from tier III at 50 silver. Davy’s Stories orders also throw in gold ones (25% chance of 1 in a medium crate, 50% in a big one), and the main quest Goddess in the Swamp rewards one.

What gold Stories are for: Rhyme and Printed needs Printed Poetry, which only accepts a gold Story, and every batch of 20 gold Newspapers (Improve newspaper II) eats one. Surplus can go to the Tavern at tier III, which buys gold Stories back for about 36 silver. Two silver Stories cost about 10 silver, so each merge earns roughly 25 silver; buying four bronze Stories (about 2 silver 20 in total) and merging three times pays even better per coin, at the cost of about 80 energy. That buyback is not yet confirmed in play, so test it with one Story before you build a production line on it.

Gold Wine

Wine is fermented in the Wine Barrel (Winemaking, 175 green, 20 blue): 4 Grape Juice make 4 Wine (5 with Wine Master), and the grade follows the juice. Fermenting gold juice needs Farming mastery 14 at the barrel (pressing it at the Vine Press needs 14 too), and gold Grapes need Farming 16 to plant gold seeds at the Vine Trellis.

The shortcut skips the high Farming: at the Kitchen Table, a bronze Wine plus Spices becomes silver (Farming 4, Transmutation I), and a silver Wine plus Umami becomes gold (Farming 6, Alchemy, Advanced). The Alchemist sells Spices from tier II and Umami at tier III; Umami can also be brewed at Laboratory II. Or simply buy it: the Brewery stocks 10 gold Wine at its third tier, at a 1 silver 5 bronze base.

What gold Wine is for:

• Inflation: the mercenaries accept 3 gold Wine per hire once their coin fee reaches 20 silver. How the switch works, and what is still disputed, is in wine and alcohol.
• The Lord’s Vintage: 2 gold Wine for the monk in the Royal Foundry.
• Supply: Wine crates for Tavern orders: a crate takes 8 bronze, 6 silver or only 4 gold Wine.

As a sale item it is weak: the Brewery buys gold Wine only at its third tier, for under 80 bronze a bottle. And never distil gold Wine: any grade gives the same 4 Alcohol at the Distillation Cube. The full chain, including Grape Juice, is in wine and alcohol.

Gold certificates and gold prayers

A gold Burial Certificate is worth a fixed 5 silver at Januarius, against 1 silver for bronze and 2 silver 50 bronze for silver. The grade depends on the corpse, and his purse (75 bronze a day at his first tier) is the real limit, so cash a few in every visit.

Gold prayers are the coin engine of the late game: a gold Money Prayer pays 30 bronze per parishioner plus 30 per graveyard point when the sermon succeeds, but it only becomes reliable at around 70 parishioners. Below that, lower grades and Prayer for Storms pay better. Which prayer fits which crowd is in the prayers list, and the sermon mechanics are in church and sermons.

Gold coins: how much you actually need

The coin is a different animal: 100 bronze make 1 silver and 100 silver make 1 gold, so a gold coin is 10,000 bronze. A full run usually spends only about 3 to 5 gold in total on steel, Special Wood and story payments, and most Keepers finish with gold to spare. Faith and Likes run out long before coins do.

The fastest coin earners once you have gold metal are the ones above: Fine Jewelry at about 3 gold 57 silver a piece and rings at about 75 silver. Late-game sermons add 2 to 6 gold a week, and Steel Swords sell to a tier III Smithy for a fixed 2 gold 50 silver. The full ranking by stage is in making money.

Common mistakes

• Hunting for a gold vein. There is none. Gold only comes from traders, the Sluice Box perk, looters, quest chests and transmutation.
• Transmuting Iron Ore. A Philosopher Stone on ore gives a nugget worth 1 silver; on an Iron Ingot it gives an ingot worth 1 gold. Same stone, same bench.
• Looking for the gold smelt in Metallurgy. It is Reanimation II, in the Anatomy and Alchemy tree, and it also needs the Bellows next to Furnace II.
• Confusing the Fine Jewelry technology with the recipe. The technology gives the Golden Talisman; the Fine Jewelry recipe comes from the Jeweler talent.
• Upgrading the Jeweler to tier III with jewelry unsold. Fine Jewelry drops from about 3 gold 57 silver to 1 bronze.
• Dumping a stack. Every unit sold lowers the next offer; two or three a day per buyer keeps you near full price.
• Crafting what you can buy cheaper. Golden Zombie Collars (10 to 30 silver at the Jeweler) and Blank Hardcover Notebooks (Alchemist III) both cost far less than the Golden ingot they would eat.
• Finishing Inflation without a Wine supply. Plan as if the mercenaries will want 3 gold Wine for every hire from then on.
• Skipping Fireman. One inspiration point means 50% more ingots from every nugget you will ever smelt.