Advanced Economy: Interest Breakpoints, Gold Efficiency, and Controlled All-Ins

At the advanced level you stop thinking of gold as a number and start thinking of it as a rate. Your income per round is 5 (base) + up to 5 (interest) + up to 5 (streak) + misc. Every spending decision is really a decision about that rate — which brackets you keep, which you break, and how fast the pile refills afterward.

The interest curve

Interest is +1 gold per full 10 banked, capped at +5 (so 50 gold is the cap). This makes gold have hard breakpoints at 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. The value of a gold coin isn't constant:

• Gold below 10 earns nothing — it's "just money".
• Each 10 up to 50 is worth its face value plus +1/round income for as long as you hold it. Over a five-round hold, banking the coin that takes you from 40 to 50 is worth ~1 + 5 = 6 effective gold.
• Gold above 50 earns no extra interest — it's surplus. This is your "free to spend" pile: rolling or leveling with above-50 gold costs you only the coin, not the income.

So the default efficient play is spend down to 50, never below, letting the base 50 work every round. You break that only for a calculated reason.

Gold efficiency of each spend

• XP (4 gold / 4 XP): efficient when a level is a genuine board upgrade (a unit slot you'll fill well, a synergy tier, a rarity band you need). Inefficient as a "something to do". Remember you also gain 2 XP free per round.
• Rolls (1 gold): efficient at the right level for your target rarity with outs in the pool. The first ~10 gold of a roll-down (surplus above 50) is nearly free; past that you're paying interest per coin.
• Combines and buys that complete a breakpoint: the highest-efficiency spends in the game — a small gold cost for a large, discrete board-strength jump.

Streak gold as leverage

Streak gold (up to +5/round for a run of wins or losses) compounds with interest. A player on a long win streak at 50+ gold is earning 15/round and losing no health — the strongest economic position possible, and worth spending a little to protect. A player on a long loss streak is converting cheap early health into a bank that will fund a single overwhelming spend. Know which one you're running and lean into it.

The controlled all-in

A planned zero is a legitimate, calculable play. It has three parts:

1. A trigger. The specific game state that justifies it — a breakpoint that wins the game, a stabilization emergency, a hyper roll hitting its window, a contesting player just dying.
2. A target. Exactly what the gold buys — "3★ the carry and get to level 8", not "roll and see".
3. A recovery plan. What the board looks like the round after you're at 0 gold. If the answer is "strong enough to win the next few rounds while I rebuild off the base 5/round", it's a good all-in. If it's "I hope it works out", it isn't.

The difference between an advanced all-in and a tilted one is that the advanced player wrote all three parts down before spending the first coin, and stops at the target even if it means holding 8 gold rather than rolling it.