Where is the Gold?

Gold is hard to get, so spend it wisely. Every experienced Clash Royale player will tell you that. Gold is what is commonly known as the limiting resource; whenever you want to upgrade a card, gold is usually what you won’t have enough of.

If you are a new Clash Royale player or still grinding your way to a maxed account, this blog will be useful to learn about the best ways to earn this coveted resource.

Did you know that you can earn more than 1,000,000 gold every season? In this blog, we’ll break down the current gold economy and show you how much you can earn from each source. Maybe you’ve overlooked something that would make a big difference in your progression.

Even if you are already maxed, don’t forget that level 15 will be added to the game soon. Regardless of what the final upgrade costs are, gold will most likely be everyone’s concern. You still have several months to save gold, so this is a great time to go goblin mode.

Table of Contents

• Level 14 and Legendary Arena
• F2P vs Premium
• Pure Gold vs All Rewards
• Optimal Values
• Main Revenue Categories
• Gold Sources Comparison
• Just Gold
• Full Value: Gold + Reward Conversion
• Table of Rewards
• Conclusions
• Feedback

Level 14 and Legendary Arena

Breaking down the gold economy for all players can be very challenging because the progression pace evolves as you level up and reach higher arenas. In this blog, we’ll focus on players who have reached the Legendary Arena and are already at Level 42 (King Level 14).

Players spend most of their journey to become maxed in this stage: having a level 14 king tower but without a maxed card collection.

F2P vs Premium

We’ll distinguish between gold sources that are unlocked with purchases (premium sources) from those that you simply earn from playing (free to play or F2P sources). The main premium sources are Premium Pass Royale and Premium Global Tournament rewards.

The premium rewards in Global Tournaments can be unlocked with gems, which can be earned fairly easily with Mastery tasks, but we separated them regardless.

Pure Gold vs All Rewards

The main categories of resources needed to max an account are gold and cards. Once some of your cards are maxed (level 14), their value will be converted to gold whenever you get more.

As we’ll show later, this conversion gold is very significant, so it can be very useful to see the aggregate of these 2 categories to understand the total value that you are getting.

It can also be very useful to think of the total value needed to max an account. The gold needed for all the upgrades is 26M, and the card material costs have a value of 40M, so the total is 66M.

Optimal Values

The resources you earn from each source will range from 0 to the maximum available. We’ll focus our attention on that maximum. For example, in the chest cycle analysis, we assumed that chests are being unlocked at all times.

This means that not everyone will earn these optimal values, but they can be a good reference to understand how much value each source has available.

Main Revenue Categories

Values displayed are calculated for an average season, which lasts for ~30.5 days.

In each of the charts that we share in the next section, we display ~10 of the most relevant sources and group the rest as "Other". We list all the categories we’ve considered here in case you want to see more details:

• CW2 Battles: how much gold you earn here depends on the league that your clan is in. By winning every battle, you can earn 185K gold every season, but we’ve used an average of 99K that you’d get with 50% win rate. This amount of gold is earned by playing your 4 battles every day, not just on war days.

• Chest Cycle: the level 14 cycle had a significant boost when Silver chests were removed. Compared to the level 13 cycle, it has 15% more gold and 5% more cards. You can earn an average of 177K gold every season, and Magic Keys can boost that even more.

• Free Pass Royale: by completing the 35, tiers you earn 60K every season.

• Premium Pass Royale: there are more perks that come from this purchase; but if we focus on the gold rewards, they add up to 144K extra gold.

• Path of Legends: it can be challenging to climb all the steps of this game mode. It gives you a total of 75K gold if you reach Ultimate Champion.

• Gold Rush: these events usually happen 3 weekends every season. You can earn up to 12.5K gold in each of them, so 38K gold in total.

• Special Challenges: we haven’t counted this source because it doesn’t have consistent rewards. There are big changes every season; in February rewards had ~40K gold in total, but rare events like the 20W challenge have had more than 200K gold by themselves.

• Donations: giving cards is supposed to be a neutral exchange, but you can use it to convert cards into gold. If you donate a lot, you can get 125K gold per season.

• Daily and Weekly Tasks: if you thought that Silver and Gold chests weren’t a big boost to your progression, you weren’t wrong. They give you up to 8K gold each season.

• CW2 Weekly Chests: rewards change a lot from being first to getting the boot. On average, you can get 10K gold per season.

• CW2 Colosseum Duels: the difference with usual duels is negligible, but colosseum duels have slightly better rewards than usual duels, up to 2K extra gold each season.

• Global Tournament (Free rewards): there are always 2 of these tournaments each season. From free rewards you can earn 10K gold in each of them, so 20K in total.

• Global Tournament (Premium rewards): premium GT rewards are known as the most efficient way to spend gems to boost progression. A lot of the value is received in cards, but there’s also extra gold. 62K per tournament, 124K gold in total.

• Battle Bonus: do you play a lot? 60 coins per battle won doesn’t sound like much, but it adds up! More than 36K gold each season.

• Bank (Premium Pass Royale feature): after completing all the tiers you can collect an extra 25K gold.

• Clanmate Gifts: if you have 10 P2W clanmates you get 7.5K gold for free ever season.

Gold Sources Comparison

Most of the rewards you earn through a season have both cards and gold. These two resources are closely related, and you can convert one into the other under some circumstances. To account for the total value earned, it’s better to add them together. But if you are looking to cover upgrade costs, this abstract value concept isn’t as useful; you’ll just care about gold coins that can be used directly to pay for a card upgrade.

For this reason, we’ll be showing 2 kinds of charts: one that’s just for gold and another that covers the total value (converted into gold).

Just Gold

You can earn up to 952K gold each season. The chest cycle is the main contributor, so try to always have chests being unlocked. The premium Pass Royale is a very close second.

Full Value: Gold + Reward Conversion

For most players, the value earned with cards is higher than the one earned as direct gold. It ranges from 53% to 67%, so it’s always more than half. Eventually, all extra cards that you have are converted to gold; once you have maxed your whole collection, you’ll only earn gold.

Magic Books provide a lot of value when used properly. The Book of Books that is obtained with the Premium Pass Royale unlocks its full potential when exchanged for 20 champions. At a value of 40K each, this translates to a total value of 800K gold. Of course, you can only do this 5 times (once for each champion). After that, the maximum exchange value decreases to 400K gold.

When looking at the full value earned each season, Pass Royale clearly becomes the main contributor to max your account. The Chest Cycle and GT rewards remain relevant; CW2 falls behind because it mainly gives you gold for winning, but barely any cards.

Table of Rewards

Conclusions

As we explained earlier, the total value needed to complete all upgrades and max an account is 66M.

One-time rewards such as Masteries, Level-Up chests, Trophy Road... take a significant chuck away from this total, reducing it to 60M. They also provide more than 50K gems, enough to buy the premium rewards in Global Tournaments during 50 seasons.

How long does it take to max a Clash Royale account? These are the ballpark numbers:

• Premium Pass Royale and GT rewards: 2 years
• Free Pass Royale and premium GT rewards: 3 years
• Free Pass Royale and no GT rewards: 4 years

This chart helps you visualize how long it takes to reach the 60M with seasonal rewards:

Feedback

What surprised you the most in this blog? Will you play more in game modes that you had disregarded?

If you are an experienced player, you might have more tips for newcomers. Write them below to help them progress as efficiently as possible!

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