In-depth Guide and Analysis to Gold in Dota 2

Many players will ask this question whether they are supports, carry , offlane etc...
                                             

How do I get more gold in Dota 2?

Gold is an essential resource in Dota 2, with Gold you can acquire expensive items to dominate your opponents, get wards for map control and having timely buybacks to save your barracks from destruction.

First we have to understand the concept of Gold in Dota 2. In this Article I will cover on Reliable / Unreliable Gold and Gold regarding Hero Kills and Assists.

Part 1 - Understanding about Gold

It is not that simple as to killing Heroes or Creeps will get you gold but what are the types of Gold you can get? What are the other ways to get gold and which is the best way to get them?

Types of Gold

There are two types of Gold in Dota 2 

Reliable Gold

Unreliable Gold

- Facts about Reliable Gold 

  •You WILL NOT LOSE Reliable Gold when dying
  •You use Reliable Gold last when buying items 
  •You use Reliable Gold first when Buying Back
     •Can only be gained by
                 1) Killing / Getting Assists Heroes
                 2) Shared Gold from Towers (Not the lasthit)
                 3) Shared Gold from Roshan (Not the lasthit)
                 4) Hand of Midas 
                 5) Track Gold 
                             

 - Facts about Unreliable Gold

• You lose only Unreliable Gold when dying
• You spend Unreliable Gold first
• Can be obtained by

             1) Killing Creeps , Wards , Neutrals, Last hit on Tower / Roshan

             

             2) Gold per Second [ You get 1 Unreliable Gold every 0.6 Seconds]

             

             3) Skills such as Goblin Greed and Devour 

                                                       

             4) Selling items

Note : Buying and Selling Items

It is a known strategy that you can buy and sell items in the Side Shop as done by DK.Burning and other players to make use of the Regeneration Items in the Side shop (eg. Buying a Ring of Health for 9 Seconds and selling it away will allow you to regenerate a total of 45hp for free). There is a drawback to this strategy. If you were to spend Reliable Gold to buy the Ring of Health in the Sideshop and selling it, it will convert your Reliable Gold to Unreliable Gold which may affect certain scenarios. Do take note of this that buying and selling items in the side shop is not entirely 'Free'.

How do I check how much Reliable Gold and Unreliable Gold I have?

                         

Hover your mouse over your Gold in-game.

Spending Gold & Saving up Gold

So how can we use this knowledge to our advantage? Lets focus on this important difference between Reliable and Unreliable Gold

You will only lose Unreliable Gold when you die !

One technique we can use is for us to note around how much Unreliable Gold we have and how much Reliable Gold we have left. In certain situations it can be helpful to us.

1) When we are dying.

It is a strategy to buy items or to use our gold before we die to reduce the amount of Gold lost due to death, since we know that we will only lose Unreliable Gold due to hero deaths, we can spend up to all our Unreliable Gold only. This will allow us to keep a certain amount of Reliable Gold and not waste it to save up for our big items.

2) Planning ahead for big items. 

Assume that you are an Earthshaker saving for a blink but you realise that you are quite far ahead and need to buy some items such as Wards Dusts and Teleport scrolls etc. Watch you unreliable gold, try not to spend your reliable gold until you have your blink. Since you will not lose Reliable gold due to spending, you can use reliable gold to build up for your expensive items such as Blink Dagger.

Part 2 - Gold from Hero Kills

We now know that Hero Kills grant us Reliable Gold but the question is how much Gold do you get and how is Assist Gold split about?

The Formula to calculating the amount of Gold Gained for getting a last Hit on an enemy Hero is:

(Streak value + 200) + (Hero lvl*9)

Here's a Table showing what Streak Value is :

Example : Killing a Level 10 Hero with a Wicked Sick will grant : 625 + 200 + 90 = 915 Gold to the person who got the last hit of the enemy Hero.

Then what about Assists? 

An important note to know that only allied Heroes that are within 1300 Range within the Death of the Hero will get the Assist Gold [Excluding the killer]. This means that even if you dealt damage to the target and gold an Assist in your scoreboard, you will NOT get assist gold if you are not 1300 range within the target when he died.

How much Assist Gold am I getting?

Assist Gold is calculated differently from Hero kills, it is independent on the dying Hero's Streak meaning it doesnt matter if the dying hero has a Killing Spree or Beyond Godlike, your Assist Gold will still be the same.

Assist Gold is Dependent on 2 Factors :

          1) Number of Heroes sharing the Assist Gold

          2) Level of the dying Hero

The formulas are:

1 Hero nearby : 125 + (12 x Enemy Hero's Level)

2 Heroes nearby : 40 + (10 x Enemy Hero's Level)

3 Heroes nearby : 10 + (6 x Enemy Hero's Level)

4 or 5 Heroes nearby : (6 x Enemy Hero's Level)

This shows that the more Heroes getting assist gold on the same kill the lesser each player will get.

A graph will better explain this

Table :

(Click to Enlarge)

Graph:

As observed from the graph:

      • The difference between having 1 & 2 Assist Hero is significant
      • The difference between having 3 & 4 Assist Hero is significant
      • Going for Higher Level heroes grants more assist Gold.

Lets look at another set of data regarding TOTAL assist gold depending on how many nearby allied Heroes sharing the Assist Gold 

Click to Enlarge

Graph showing Total Assist gold gained for each Hero Level

The graph shows that the TOTAL Amount of Assist Gold earned by team differs greatly dependent on the target's Hero Level.

Observation made:

•  At Level 6 and above, having 2 Assist Heroes grants more total Assist gold than 1 Hero
•  At Level 6 and above, having 4+ Assist Heroes grants more total Assist gold than 3 Hero
•  At Level 11 and above, having 4+ Assist Heroes grants more total Assist gold than 1 Hero
•  At Level 16 and above, having 3 Assist Heroes grant more total Assist gold than 1 Hero
•  At Level 20 and above, having 4+ Assist Heroes grant more total Assist gold than 2 Heroes
•  Having 2 Assist Heroes ALWAYS grant more total Assist Gold than 3 Heroes

How this information can be useful to you is very limited though. An example could be your Sand King is close to a Blink and you as another support could consider moving 1300 range away if the kill has already been 99% ensured in order for your other support to get more gold. Or when your team is behind by quite a bit you want to maximise your entire team's gold by going for more 4-5 man ganks after certain levels.

Conclusion

Having better understanding of the concept of Gold in Dota 2 is important and works hand in hand with understanding the act of obtaining Gold itself from farming. There are many guides on farming and I will soon cover farming on this blog. So do check back !