Gold has to be important in diablo iv, this is why

Maths says no.

I ran 10 Torment 16 Nephalem Rifts solo with a max rank Boon of the Hoarder gem equipped.

Gold before the T16 runs
12,084,127,220

Gold after each successive T16 run…

  1. 12,211,264,188
  2. 12,315,579,972
  3. 12,531,762,392
  4. 12,651,267,008
  5. 12,797,256,736
  6. 12,910,848,472
  7. 13,035,837,536
  8. 13,186,542,323
  9. 13,320,962,383
  10. 13,470,474,723

Okay, so the gold earned was…
13,470,474,723 - 12,084,127,220 = 1,386,347,503‬

At Torment 16, the Guardian is guaranteed to drop 3 GR keys, with a 50% chance of a 4th key.
That means, on average, running 10 T16 rifts will result in 35 GR keys.

Okay, so that brings us to running empowered GRs.
You said you’re running empowered GR105s.

Gold cost to empower a GR105…
96,000,000

Gold reward from completing a GR105…
32,032,586

Net gold cost to run an empowered GR105…
96,000,000 - 32,032,586 = 63,967,414

Net gold cost to run 35 empowered GR105s…
35 * 63,967,414 = 2,238,859,490

Gold earned whilst farming 35 GR keys = 1,386,347,503‬
Gold spent whilst running 35 GR105s = 2,238,859,490

That’s a gold deficit of…
852,511,987

In order to break even, the net cost to run 35 GRs has to be no more than this much per GR…
1,386,347,503‬ / 35 = 39,609,928

The gold reward for completion of a GR is approximately a third of the cost to empower it.
That means to break even the cost to empower each GR can be no more than…
( 39,609,928 / 2 ) * 3 = 59,414,892

The cost to empower GR89 is 59,000,000
The cost to empower GR90 is 61,000,000

So, running T16 Nephalem Rifts, even with a max level Boon of the Hoarder, will only supply enough gold to fund the empowering of GR89s. Once you’re empowering GRs at any level higher than that, and you’ll run out of gold very rapidly.

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