Item Dungeon vs Gold Dungeon

So this topic comes up a lot and I wanted to weigh-in on the usefulness of the two and the answer totally depends on where you are in the game. Let’s get into it!

While you push through the game on your way to final end-game progression you’ll hit varying stages of necessity. This makes the choice of Item vs Gold dungeon much easier as your progression requirements align with what one or the other dungeon provides.

The way I see it there are a few different “stages” of progression for the purposes of this choice.
  • Are your Sharpshooters MLB’d?
  • Are you filling out your collection bonuses?
  • Are you looking for epic weapons?
  • Are you trying to find that one single item (coughEARTHNECKLACEcough) that you need?
  • Are you converting gold into green hammers?
This list is in order of progression for most players and generally should happen after you’ve secured 5 stars on all the characters that you want to play with.

Are Gold Dungeon runs worth the same as Item Dungeons?

In terms of gold, no. 50 runs of a Gold Dungeon (lvl 85) will always net the same amount of gold which is 1,761,100. 50 runs of an Item Dungeon (lvl 85) will net you 310,850 gold. Now if you try to sell your hammers, you’re REALLY hoping you get a lot of higher tier hammers because they sell for more.
  • lvl 5 hammer = 390 gold
  • lvl 10 hammer = 1,275 gold
  • lvl 15 hammer = 3,090 gold
  • lvl 20 hammer = 6,170 gold
  • lvl 25 hammer = 11,125 gold
  • lvl 30 hammer = 24,250 gold
On 50 runs though, you most likely won’t get more than 5 level 30 hammers, if that. So that being said, if you sold -ALL- of your hammers from a typical Item Dungeon run, it would be worth around 1,000,000 gold but you would get some items to go along with it which in certain, very specific cases may be worth the difference but we’ll get into that a little later.

Sharpshooters & Collection Bonus: Item Dungeon

If you’re looking for Sharpshooters or your collection bonuses, Item Dungeon is a no brainer. You’ll get 5x more 3 star items, some 4 stars and a suuppper low chance at a 5 star item. It’ll put you on a fast-track to complete your bonuses and get some stat boosts. Since you’ll get so many 3 star items, some of which will be Sharpshooters and you can MLB those as you go.

Are you looking for Epic weapons or Earth Necklaces?

You’re looking in the wrong place. I cannot say this with any more exuberance but YOU WILL NOT GET THAT ONE ITEM YOU WANT FROM THE ITEM DUNGEON! The drop chance on a 5 star item is very, very low. The drop chance on a 5 star epic item is basically 0.01 (taken from various sources). Not only will you most likely never get an epic item but it certainly won’t be the one you want. At the time of writing this there are 73 5 star epic items in the game. Not only will it take a 0.01 to get one of them to drop, then it’s a 1 in 73 chance that you’ll get the one you want and that chance only gets lower the longer the game goes on.

So yeah, if you’ve got stam to burn and you’re not looking for collection bonuses, put it in Gold Dungeons.

Gold Dungeon Value & Green Hammers

So the conversion of gold into green hammers is probably your last step of end-game progression because you only spend stam on the heroes you need and have a lot of stam left over for item/gold dungeons.

If you’re unfamiliar how this process works, let’s go through the math:

* It takes 1,500 magic metals to buy a green hammer.
* It takes 50, 5 star items to Extract to get 1,500 magic metals.
* From only 4 - 5 stars, it takes 11,500,000 gold to evolve 50 5 star items
* If you’re evolving from 3 stars, it’ll take 17,000,000 gold to evolve enough items to get 1,500 mm

So if you’re only doing 4-5 star evolutions, it’ll take you 326 lvl 85 Gold Dungeon runs to get a green hammer. Which is 3,260 coffee.If you’re buying 100 coffee a day that’ll be 10 days of gold dungeons for 1 green hammer.

If you’re doing 3-5 star evolutions, it’ll take you 482 lvl 85 Gold Dungeon runs to get a green hammer which is 4,820 coffee. If you’re buying 100 coffee a day that’ll be almost 14 days of gold dungeons for 1 green hammer.

So the value of Gold Dungeons is very straightforward here. 1 green hammer in 10 days. Very nice.


Item Dungeon Value

So how do Item Dungeons even compare to this? Well, it’s a little less straightforward. When evaluating its worth to obtain green hammers, the Item Dungeons really shine with the potential for 4 and 5 star items, which, as the above states, are worth a lot of gold.

If your whole purpose is to get a green hammer, getting a 4 star item in an item dungeon is worth 110k gold and any 5 star item is worth 340k. When accompanied with selling all the hammer an Item Dungeon starts to get kind of close to the Gold Dungeon and in some cases, surpassing it’s value.

Item Dungeon does pull out ahead in terms of utility. So if you’ve got a few yellow items you use in the raid (off element weapons), perhaps you’re trying to MLB them. It’s not uncommon for yellow items to show up in your Item Dungeon and that may help you limit break those weapons.

Final Verdict

If you’re trying for Green Hammers though, both Item and Gold Dungeons have comparable value. Gold Dungeons being far less management and a slower, more consistent gain and Item Dungeons having a variable value but potentially faster progression, it’s just up to you to choose what you want.

I have probably spent more than 20k coffee into Item Dungeons over the last few months and I will say that I have maybe gotten 3 epic items, none of which were very useful. It’s insanely rare. So on the merit of obtaining Epics and you aren’t going for collections or green hammers, stop doing Item Dungeon runs. There are better places for your resources to be spent.