Gold is the single hardest resource to accumulate in Far Far West. The gap between what a standard run pays out and what the Saloon demands is steep enough to stall most players cold.
This guide covers every reliable gold source in the game. Learn the critical pickaxe vs. explosives rule, the Gold Tooth Joker stack, the Hard+ difficulty routing, and the Canyon Medallion secret to maximize your payouts and fix your economy.
1. How Gold Works in Far Far West
Character Upgrades menu
Gold is the only currency that covers meaningful permanent progression. Souls serve a separate function for Joker and perk purchases and cannot substitute for gold.
The cost structure at the Saloon makes early gold scarcity especially punishing across these categories:
- Weapon assembly: 500 gold per weapon at the Weaponsmith.
- Weapon stat upgrades: Ongoing gold investment as the weapon levels up.
- Joker Slot unlocks: Tied to weapon rank, requiring repeated gold spending.
- Character upgrades: Health, movement speed, and other permanent improvements.
Every run needs a single clear objective. Trying to farm gold, spell XP, and blueprints simultaneously stretches your time across too many targets and reduces efficiency.
Gold Prospector Joker Card
Gold Prospector
One of the highest long-term value investments available early in the game is the Gold Prospector Joker Card, which increases your acquired Gold by 20% at the end of a mission. Because this acts as a flat multiplier applied to your total haul, it significantly compounds your overall earnings across every future run.
2. Gold Veins: Pickaxe vs. Explosives
Mining gold veins is the most consistent passive income source on any map. The tool you use determines how much gold you actually walk away with, and the difference heavily impacts your overall session yield. Use the right equipment to ensure maximum returns:
- Pickaxe: Yields approximately 40 gold per vein.
- Explosives or fire spells: Yields approximately 20 gold per vein.
Detonating a gold node halves the yield every time. Over a full farming run across a map with multiple veins, that lost income adds up quickly. Always close the distance and mine manually with your pickaxe.
When Explosives Are Acceptable
There is one situation where blowing up a vein is the right call. If the boss is dead, the extraction zone timer is active, and a vein sits between you and the exit, using explosives is acceptable. In that scenario, 20 gold is better than leaving it entirely.
3. The Gold Tooth Joker
Gold Tooth
The Gold Tooth Joker is the most important card to equip on any dedicated gold farming run. It adds extra gold drops to every enemy kill, and the effect stacks with each additional copy equipped. Stacking 10 Gold Tooth Jokers gives a minimum of 200 extra gold per run purely from kills.
The trade-off is honest since Gold Tooth adds no combat power. It makes every run less exciting and more lucrative, which is exactly the point of a farming session.
How to Set Up a Gold Tooth Run
Before dropping into the map on a gold farming session, lock in these loadout and route settings:
- Fill every available Joker Slot with Gold Tooth copies.
- Set your primary kill target to marauder camps instead of generic enemies.
- Verify you have your pickaxe available for vein mining.
- Check the map layout for gold vein clusters before committing to a route.
Gold Tooth procs stack on top of the gold-on-kill Soul perk if you have already unlocked it. Both systems trigger independently per kill.
4. Hard+ Difficulty Routing for Gold Farming
Gold Chest loot
Greater difficulty in Far Far West increases gold returns per run only when the loadout can survive it cleanly. A failed Hard+ run returns less than a completed Normal run, making consistency of extraction the actual metric that matters.
- Easy: Best for boss fragment farming and route practice. Avoid for gold runs.
- Normal: Reliable gold output and stable extracts. Good for early-game farming.
- Hard+: Best gold returns per run, but only when clean extracts are consistent. Random modifiers punish sloppy routing.
Hard+ also adds value through marauder encounters. Enemy health and damage output increase, but Gold Tooth procs scale with kill count rather than enemy difficulty. A clean Hard+ marauder sweep with a stacked Gold Tooth build returns massive yields.
How to Run the Hard+ Gold Route
- Equip all available Gold Tooth Jokers before boarding the train.
- Land and immediately open the map to locate gold vein clusters and marauder camps.
- Clear the marauder camp nearest your landing zone first to start stacking Gold Tooth procs early.
- Work through every gold vein along the route using only your pickaxe.
- Complete white question mark side objectives that award direct gold.
- Fight the boss only after the map sweep is complete.
- Extract immediately after the boss dies to avoid endless enemy waves.
5. Canyon Medallions Secret Route
“Pick Pick” Joker
The Canyon Medallion secret mission is one of the highest-value gold sources available from a single run. It is repeatable, and players who learn the route can complete it in 10 to 15 minutes on top of a normal gold sweep.
The objective involves collecting four scattered medallions on the Canyon map and depositing them into a locked door. Completing it rewards a large gold haul, the Elder Pickaxe, and the Pick Pick Joker.
How to Complete the Canyon Medallion Route
Hawkeye’s Medallion
Start by heading to the south-central section of the Canyon map. The four-slot medallion door is marked by a dead sheriff holding a wanted note. Follow these steps to collect all the pieces:
- Pick up the Sheriff’s Medallion from the body beside the door.
- Go to the prospector dig area under the bridge and dig up the Prospector’s Medallion.
- Use dynamite to break the red rocks at the marked dynamite mine and collect Bobby’s Medallion.
- Shoot all 10 Hawkeye bullseye targets near the marked area and loot the safe for Hawkeye’s Medallion.
- Return to the door and insert all four medallions.
- Enter the cave and collect the gold reward alongside the Elder Pickaxe.
Complete this route before triggering the boss. Once the boss phase begins, the map becomes far harder to navigate safely.
Elder Pickaxe Long-Term Value
The Elder Pickaxe earned from this secret has direct synergy with vein farming on all future runs. Paired with a Gold Tooth Joker setup and a Hard+ route, the Canyon run is the most time-efficient gold source for advanced players.
6. Marauder Farming
Marauder Camp
Marauder camps are the primary enemy-based gold source on any farming run. Treat these camps as gold nodes that fight back rather than optional combat encounters. Integrate them into your sweeps using the following strategies:
- Guaranteed Spawns: They appear as marked locations on the map during every drop, making them highly reliable targets.
- Gold Tooth Synergy: Each camp contains four to eight enemies. On a Gold Tooth build, every single kill is a lucrative proc opportunity.
- Route Optimization: Routing your vein sweep through these camps combines both income streams into a single efficient path.
- Prioritize Core Targets: Marauders and gold veins are your main objectives. Side tasks and graves are strictly secondary unless they award direct gold.
7. Dedicated Gold Runs vs. Hybrid Runs
Mission Success
Not every session needs to be a pure gold farm. You must strip your objective list down based on the type of run you are executing. On a dedicated gold run, focus exclusively on these targets:
- All gold veins are reachable along a logical route.
- All marauder camps along the same route.
- Any white question mark objectives confirmed to award gold.
- The Canyon Medallion route when running the Canyon map.
On a hybrid run, gold is a secondary benefit alongside spell XP or Soul farming. Hybrid runs are appropriate when the loadout is not yet ready for Hard+ or when a specific resource other than gold is the primary need.
When to Switch to Hard+
Stack up to Hard+ gold routing only when all of the following conditions are met:
- You can complete Hard+ extracts consistently.
- You have at least several copies of Gold Tooth Joker equipped.
- You have unlocked the gold-on-kill Soul perk.
- Your current weapon is upgraded enough to clear marauder camps efficiently.
If any of those conditions are not yet met, Normal difficulty returns more gold per hour than a failed Hard+ attempt.
8. Common Gold Farming Mistakes to Avoid
Shotgun Fragment Reward
Most players hit the gold wall not because good sources are hidden but because repeated habits quietly kill per-run income. Eliminating these unforced errors is the fastest way to accelerate your progression at the Saloon.
Avoid these costly mistakes during your farming sessions:
- Mining gold veins with explosives or fire spells. This drops vein yield from around 40 gold to around 20 gold every single time.
- Triggering the boss before sweeping the map. Once the boss is dead, endless waves of enemies make clean exploration impossible.
- Dropping in without Gold Tooth Jokers. Every marauder camp cleared without Gold Tooth active is a stack of missed procs.
- Staying on the map after extraction begins. The endless wave spawns after the boss has no additional gold reward attached to it.
- Skipping the Canyon Medallion route. This is the largest repeatable single-run gold payout in the game.
- Never invest in the gold-on-kill Soul perk. This passive compounds across every future run and pays back its Soul cost quickly.
- Trying to farm gold, blueprints, and spell XP at once. Splitting focus across all three in a single run reduces each’s output.
