Boom Beach resource focus: Gold - how to get it, how to keep it, and how to spend it

Along with Wood, Gold is one of the most important resources in Boom Beach, especially early in the game. It's used for all sorts of things, and you can earn it in a number of different ways, not all of them immediately obvious.

Gold is used to upgrade troops, so if you want the second level of Rifleman, you'll have to pay for it. These upgrades can be very pricey, but they're worth it in the long run.

Gold is also used to buy troops to send into battle. Each unit has a Gold cost associated, as well as a timer to wait out. The better the unit, the higher the cost.

When you've purchased the troops, it will also cost you a (fairly nominal) fee to enter them into battle.

Once you're done fighting, you'll want to expand your base, as well as the area around the archipelago that you can travel to. If you want to do this you'll need, you guessed it, Gold.

It costs Gold to remove the trees and rocks in your Home Base, but doing so gives you more space to build. The same sort of concept applies to the archipelago, as you'll need Gold to remove cloud cover that obscures other parts of the map.

Because it's so valuable, you'll want to gather as much Gold as you can, and definitely have a regular stream coming in.

Residences earn you Gold over time: the longer you wait, the more money you'll be able to collect. You also get a bounty for winning battles with enemies, and once you begin to liberate the native people of the archipelago, you'll be sent gifts of money via a boat that visits your Home Base - the more free islands, the more free Gold.

You can only hold onto a limited quantity of Gold at any one time, but you can increase this amount by upgrading your Gold Storage.

Finally, you'll lose Gold if your Home Base is raided, so it's useful to have a Vault to keep a percentage of it safe, regardless of how badly you lose.