TFT: Teamfight Tactics Guide for Beginners Part 2, Gameplay

Step 4: Getting Gold

So, you need gold to acquire more champions to build your army, but the question is how do you get gold? Other than getting gold from the loot drops in PVE rounds, you will get 5 gold at the start of every single round of play (other than the Carousels). Additionally, if you do win a round against another player, you’ll also get one bonus gold as a prize.

On top of these base gold levels, you can get more gold per round in one of two ways.

The first is through “streaking.” When you win or lose two games in a row, you will begin to get some extra gold for as long as your win or loss streak continues. The amount of gold scales with how long your win/loss streak is, so while you only get 1 gold extra for a two-game win streak, you can get a 4 gold bonus for a streak that goes five games or longer.

The second way to get additional gold is through “interest.” Above your shop, you will see how much gold you have available to spend (think of this as how much gold you have in the bank). For every 10 gold you do not spend during a round, you will acquire 1 gold worth of interest.

So, if you had 10 gold you will get an additional 1 gold interest, whereas if you had 50 gold you’ll get 5 gold interest. It’s important to know that the interest does not round up. That means that if you have 19 gold, you’re getting the same amount of interest as if you had 10 gold (1g).

Your interest is calculated at the end of every round, meaning that if you decide to sell some of your champions from your bench (you can’t sell any champions you put onto the board) and get to the next interest breakpoint your interest will go up! A popular strategy, therefore, is to hold a 1g unit on your bench and sell them after the round if you don’t win (if you do win, you get the 1 gold bonus) to push you to that next interest breakpoint.

Step 5: Leveling Up

After each round, you will not only gain some gold, but you’ll also gather 2 XP, which will allow you to level up throughout the course of a game. Leveling up is key in TFT because you can only have a certain number of champions out on the board at a time, corresponding to your level. That is to say, if you are Level 4, you can put four champions in play, then five at Level 5 and so on.

In addition, as you level up, the available champions in your shop will begin to shift from the more common grays and greens to the rarer blues, purples, and finally golds. For instance, the gold champions (Tier 5) cannot drop before Level 7 and only have a 1% chance to drop at Level 7. But at Level 8, you have a 5% chance to get one of the golds in your shop.

While you will level up passively, you also have the option to spend gold to purchase XP and accelerate the leveling process. You can only spend 4 gold at a time on experience, which will grant you 4 XP.