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'''Gold ''' is the currency of all [[NPC ]] merchant transactions in [[Diablo II]], and is required to [[gamble]], to purchase new [[items]], to [[repair ]] damaged equipment, and to obtain necessities such as potions[[potion]]s, scrolls[[scroll]]s, and keys[[key]]s. Gold is readily available; [[monsters ]] drop it constantly, it falls in showers from chests [[chest]]s of all types, and loose piles of it can be found scattered about the ground in various dungeons.
While gold is required for NPC purchases, it's seldom used in the player to player economy. Gold is too common, too hard to carry in large quantities, and since none of the best items in the game can be purchased (a few extremely rare magical [[magic]]al items aside, which cost more time than gold, in the form of endless NPC merchant visits) with it, players generally engage in a barter-based economy, trading items for items, or else using small items such as [[Stone of Jordan|Stones of Jordan]], perfect gems, or [[runes]] for a sort of default currency that replaces or supplements straight item to item bartering.
==Gold Acquisition==
The easiest way to obtain gold is to pick it up when its dropped by monsters [[monster]]s or chests[[chest]]s. Gold picked up in multiplayer games shares evenly between all party members on that level. If there are 5 players in a party, but one of them is in town, and one character picks up 1000 gold, he and the other 3 on that level will instantly gain 250 gold.
Gold is not shared between players who are not in a friendly party, (this feature can not be disallowed) and it's not shared to players in the party who are not in the same area. In this usage, area = [[levels|level]], and the level is all that matters, not proximity. Two characters half a screen away from each other, but in different levels, will not share gold (or experience gain), while two characters ten screens apart, but in the same level, will.
===Gold from Item Sales===
Besides picking up gold, most characters make substantial profits by selling items to merchants. The maximum amount merchants will pay for any item is set by [[Act ]] during Normal Difficulty, and then increases another 5000 on Nightmare and Hell difficulty, in any act. * [[Normal ]] Difficulty:** [[Act One]]: 5000** [[Act Two]]: 10,000** [[Act Three]]: 15,000** [[Act Four]]: 20,000** [[Act Five]]: 25,000* [[Nightmare ]] Difficulty: 30,000* [[Hell ]] Difficulty: 35,000
The most expensive items to sell are pieces of body armor, helms, and magical weapons with +spell charges, such as wands, scepters, orbs, and claws. The most profitable items, by inventory space, are generally wands, which often go for 35,000 and require just two inventory spaces. Virtually all exceptional and elite body armor will sell for 35,000, but they all require six inventory spaces. Weapons are much more variable in value, depending entirely on the modifiers they spawn with. Set and Unique items are priced by fiat, with their sales values preset in the game code, and they are generally worth far less gold than magical or rare items with similar modifiers.
===Increased Gold Find===
Items with the "increases gold find" modifier increase the amount of gold dropped by monsters [[monster]]s and chests [[chest]]s by percentage. These items do not affect merchant prices (though some unique items will lower the prices charged by merchants) or change the mechanics of party gold sharing; they simply increase the total gold dropped. These increases can be quite substantial; it's not difficult to assemble equipment with more than 500% increased gold find -- over 1000% is quite possible -- and characters who wear such equipment and take the time to pick up levels full of 2000-3000 gold stacks almost invariably have better gear than most characters, thanks to all the incremental equipment improvements their constant [[gambling ]] creates.
Increased gold equipment creates wealth through a sort of psychological trick. Characters without any gold find tend not to pick up any gold once they're past the early levels of poverty, since the 200-300 stacks don't seem worth the trouble. In contrast, characters with good gold find tend to pick up most of the gold they see, since it drops in stacks of 1000 or more, an amount that motivates the collection. As a result characters with gold find don't simply make 400% or 600% more gold than others; they make far more than that, since they're picking up big stacks of gold while others aren't picking up anything at all.