How gold and item drops work in Teamfight Tactics

The newly-implemented gold and item drop system in Teamfight Tactics is a definite improvement over the previous iteration. It now ensures you get something for your efforts and that you aren’t left empty-handed after a PvE round. It’s far from ideal, though. RNG is still very much a factor.

Instead of having a chance to get nothing at all, you’re now guaranteed to at least receive something. You’ll always get either an item or gold. An item is usually the best bet, but gold isn’t always necessarily a bad option

First, it’s important to understand how gold drops are distributed. At the start of the game, in round one, you’ll either get an item or one gold. If one gold drops, you’ve drawn the short straw. That extra one gold will allow you to completely buy out the bench if you sell your unit from the carrousel, but other than that, you won’t have much to show for it.

Round two is where it gets interesting. If you received an item on the first round, you’ll once again either get another item (or more) or one gold. If you received gold in the first round, however, you’ll now get an item (or more) or two gold. 

This means if you receive gold in two or more consecutive PvE rounds, your gold will duplicate. The same goes for the third round in the game. If you received an item on round two, you’ll receive either an item (or more) or one gold. But if you received two gold from back-to-back rounds, you’ll now receive six gold. In total, after three rounds, you have the potential to receive nine gold as an alternative to item drops.

Here’s a visual representation of the system provided by Riot’s Mortdog.

After this point in the game, it smooths out a little. You’ll get an item (or more) or five gold for each PvE round after the initial three rounds. There’s a bug at the moment that’s allocating players lower gold than the amount intended, but this should be fixed shortly.