Shop Titans: 7 Fast Ways To Make Gold Without Spending a Dime

If you want to make money fast in Shop Titans, you’re in the right place. I’ve made something like a gadjillion billion gold on that game just to feed my hungry pets and my equally hungry guild.

Hey, gotta keep our top players happy.

As I write this, I’m sitting at 2.2 billion in guild donations and counting. Not the most amazing ever, but not too shabby. Our top investor is pushing 10 billion. I’m just trying to do my part, and I’m learning from some of the best.

So if you’re looking for some solid ways to make gold in Shop Titans, here’s how to do it.

7 Fast Ways to Get More Gold in Shop Titans (at Any Level)

Just like the post title says, you can use all these tricks without spending any real-life cash. One of the best things about Shop Titans is you really can play free forever if you want to—without ever slowing down.

To prove it, I leveled up from 1 to 50 without spending a dime.

Once I reached level 50, after playing several months for free, I figured Kabam Games had earned some real-life coin. So I bought a few gems and got a fancy pet for my shop. Then I bought some decorations and a holiday pack or two, and then I went a little crazy.

By now, Kabam’s headquarters probably has my avatar framed on a wall in gratitude—in a gold frame, proudly displaying the Last Airbender arrow on my head, thank you very much.

Still, that was a choice. You don’t have to spend money to make gold on Shop Titans, and all the methods I’ve listed here are 100% free.

#1. Use small talk, discounts & surcharges wisely

If you don’t know how these work yet, here’s the deal.

Surcharges

Surcharges double your money when you sell stuff in your shop, but they cost energy. A little for cheap items. A lot for expensive ones.

Discounts

Discounts work the other way. They cut the money you get for selling stuff in half, but they give you energy.A little for cheap items. A lot for expensive ones.

Small talk

Now, small talk is more complicated. I’ll walk through it, but if you want a quick rule, use small talk until you’re at 70% of your max energy. Then stop.

Okay, here’s how it works

Small talk gives you 10% of your “missing” energy if you succeed. It takes away 7% of your max if you fail. Here’s an example. Let’s say you have no energy right now, but your maximum possible energy is 1,000. If your small talk succeeds, you’ll get 100 energy. If it fails, you lose nothing because you’re already at zero.

Obviously, if you’re at zero energy, you should small talk give it a shot.

But let’s say your bar is already at 900 energy. Now, succeeding at small talk would only give you 10 more energy. Failing would lose 70. That’s bad.

So, what’s the cut off where small talk goes from good to bad? At 70% of your max energy. Thus, the rule.

Why is 70% the cutoff?

Because small talk has a 70% chance of success and a 30% chance of failure. At 70% of your max energy, your expected return from using small talk is zero (statistically speaking). Below 70%, your expected net is good. Above 70%, it’s bad.

BONUS TIP: Craft a mix of low-level and high-level stuff

Keep crafting plenty of low-level stuff even as you level up. Use small talk and sell low-level gear to build your energy, then surcharge your high-level items. Low-level crafting is super fast and takes very few materials. You don’t even need special quest items.

Don’t use more than one or two crafting slots for items with long timers. Use most of your slots for fast stuff. If you run out of good stuff to sell, look for deals on the market and buy stuff to sell instead of crafting your own—at least until you’re ready to quit for a while.

#2. Check the market before you craft or sell

Before you decide what to craft or sell, always check the auction house. Prices change a lot throughout the day. Champions come along with quests asking for certain items, and players with lots of gold buy those items instead of crafting them, which drives up the market price.

This is especially true for low-level gear. High-level players have a ton of gold, so paying ten times the base price for a low-level item doesn’t seem like much to them.

Also, some low-level items are used in higher patterns, so there’s constant demand for those, keeping the price high. It’s a great game design that helps players out as they’re getting started.

Kudos to the Shop Titans team.

So if you’re thinking about selling something, like a stack of axes, check the market price before you sell them in your shop.

If you’re deciding what to craft next, use the market filters to search all the normal gear across two or three levels at a time. That’s an easy way to compare items and see what’s selling for the most gold right now.

Over time, you’ll start to recognize the go-to items that command a high price most of the time.

#3. Get free gems and trade them for gold

The market for blues, epics, and legendaries in Shop Titans is pretty sweet, at least for the most part. If you take advantage of it the right way, you can get free gems in the game and trade them for gold.

Here’s how to do it.

Step 1

Figure out what gems are worth in terms of gold by comparing gem prices to gold prices on the market. Or just choose a benchmark. I like to use about 250,000 gold per gem.

Step 2

Trade low-level blues, epics, and legendaries for gems whenever the gem price is a better deal. For example, a level 2 blue item might sell for either 20,000 gold or 2 gems. You’re much better off selling for gems, even after the market cut.

Gem sales usually take longer than gold sales, but it’s worth tying up an auction slot or two to get cheap gems if you don’t want to buy them with real money.

Step 3

Trade those gems for items you can resell at a better rate.

For example, let’s say you sell 4 low-level blues (each worth 20,000 gold) and end up with 4 gems. If you buy a high-level item for those 4 gems and resell it for a million in gold (or more), you basically traded 4 items worth 20,000 gold each for a million gold instead.

Sweet deal, right?

Since every item on the market has a max gold price of 10x your standard shop price, the market price can get pretty high for items that are in demand.

#4. Sell, sell, sell (no hoarding)

When I first started playing Shop Titans, I made the mistaking of hoarding any gear that was above my level, thinkingI should hold onto it for when my heroes leveled up.

Don’t do that.

Here’s the thing. By the time your heroes can actually use that gear, most of it won’t seem impressive anymore. Plus, you’ll have better ways to make money by then, so the gold from selling it will help you more now than it will later.

Side note: when it comes to truly impressive legendary items, don’t use those for your heroes either unless you want to pay for the Royal Merchant subscription that lets you repair them with gold. If you’re playing for free, stick with normal and green items. Maybe the occasional blue.

If you remember to do quests and level your heroes, those will be plenty.

Another mistake I made was to hoard gear whenever market prices dropped, trying to hold onto it until the price went back up even if my trunks were full. Don’t do that either.

Without trunk space, you’re basically stuck. Sell off some inventory, even if it’s at a low rate, so you can keep doing quests and crafting.

#5. Do the special events

During most of the Shop Titans special events, everybody is crafting at the same time (or getting drops at the same time) and selling them all at once. That extra supply drives market prices down.

During those temporary price drops, remember rule number 4: No hoarding.

Craft the items for the event or do the quests, sell things off despite the low prices to keep your inventory moving, and earn the event prizes with your guild. They’re worth it.

#6. Do quests and fight bosses for chest keys

Keep your heroes out on quests all the time to level up your quest areas and characters—so you can keep getting the drops you need to make better patterns.

And don’t forget to fight the area bosses. They can drop keys that open chests for tons of great loot, including rare drops like new crafting patterns, ascension shards, or even legendary gear—which you can add to your collection book or sell in the auction house.

Also, once your champions get high enough, they can do quests and even fight bosses by themselves. You don’t have to send heroes with them. Sure, the timers take longer for solo quests, but champions can’t break their gear.

If you aren’t a Royal Merchant, sending your champions out by themselves is a huge money saver.

#7. Consider cornering the market, especially at night

Okay, here’s one last trick I used to make fast gold while I was leveling up. It’s super risky, but if you can corner the market late at night, you can make a serious fortune as a mid-level player.

Here’s an example:

• There are 10 Ruby Wands on the market
• They’re selling for 250,000 gold each
• Your base price is 100,000 gold each
• So your max market price is 10x that, or 1,000,000 each

If you buy all 10 for 250,000 gold each (investing 2.5 million), then put them right back on the market for a million each, you can turn that 2.5 million into 9 million overnight.

Why not 10 million? Because the auction house takes a 10% cut, partly to make it tougher to do this kind of thing. #MarketEconomics

So the first thing to realize is that the deck is stacked against you. Don’t get greedy. If you go too big or try to control the market for too long, you’ll lose your shirt.

Second, there are a couple of big risks you should think about before you try it.

Risk 1: The price can go up fast

Chances are good that you can only buy the first 2 or 3 items for the 250,000 you’re seeing now. The next few will be more. The last few might be at max price already, and that max price might be higher than yours. So be sure to stop buying when you hit 90% of your max price. If that happens, list everything back on the market at one gold under your max price and cross your fingers.

Risk 2: Someone else could undercut you

If someone else notices that the price on Ruby Wands just skyrocketed, they’re going to post all the Ruby Wands they have in stock just below your price and start crafting more. That’s why I only did this in the middle of the night, between midnight and 1:00 am Pacific (3:00 am – 4:00 am Eastern), when there aren’t a ton of players online.

It’s still a risk, but I used this trick successfully several times, once investing as much as 20 million gold and making somewhere between 50 and 60 million while I was sleeping.

If you’re willing to risk it, just make sure you’re choosing wisely.

1. Pick items that can sell at max price. Don’t do this until you really know the market. Some items often sell at max price. Others almost never do. Know what people are willing to pay full price for and what they aren’t.
2. Find items with low stacks. Use the market filters to look at every normal item across 2 or 3 item levels. Scan them for the ones with only about 1-30 items on the market so you know you can afford to buy all or most of them. If you can’t buy most of them, it won’t work.
3. Make sure the current price is low. Check your max price before you start buying to make sure the current price isn’t already close to your max. If the current price is low, the next few in the stack should be pretty low too, giving you room to make a solid profit and making the risk more likely to be worth it.

Final thoughts

I made some good money with that last trick, but I don’t do it anymore. After I hit level 50, I started spending real-life money on the game, which gave me better ways to make gold.

If you’re thinking about buying your way into more gold on Shop Titans, consider getting the Laboratory. Guns & crossbows are still selling well even with tons of new patterns in the game (partially because of them, actually), and opening the Lab reduces your breakage rate by a lot.

I didn’t pick up the Royal Merchant subscription until I was already level 60, with 2 full ascension trees so I could grab a ton of bounties at once. It does make the game easier, faster, and less expensive, but not enough to make things totally unfair for the free players.

That’s where I really have to hand it to the Kabam game designers. It’s tough to balance that in any game, making the free play fun while giving the paying players enough of a bonus to feel like it’s worth it.

Still, if you’re real-life wealthy, you should definitely buy all the things and spend lots of lovely gems on the auction house. I’ll be happy to sell you anything you need.