Gold tanks

It is fortunate that I don't mind spending money on games I like, and that I can afford these relatively small sums. Because my explorer nature always makes me curious about the kind of content that is hidden behind a paywall, and sooner or later I end up buying lots of virtual goodies. So it happened in World of Tanks that after playing a good while without them, I finally decided to buy some gold tanks.

Gold tanks are the tanks in WoT which can only be acquired through the gold currency, which you buy for real money. For reference, €99.95 on the European servers buys you 30,000 gold, thus 1 gold is a third of a Euro-cent at the best exchange rate. There are currently 11 gold tanks in the game, ranging from tier II to tier VIII, out of 10 tiers possible.

The most important thing to know about gold tanks is that they operate outside of the regular tech tree. Thus you don't need any research paid for with experience points to access gold tanks. The downside of that is that you can do any further research on gold tanks either, thus you can neither unlock better equipment, nor can you unlock new tanks by playing them. As a consequence most of the experience points you accumulate with gold tanks is useless, unless you pay more gold to convert it to free experience.

The reason I bought my first gold tank was my clan. They were running platoons in different tiers, and if I wanted to play with the big boys sometimes, I needed a high-level tank. While I was pondering that decision a clanmate pointed out that the tier VIII gold tanks are wonderful money makers. Basically a gold tank earns more credits in a fight, and has lower repair cost. A high-level gold tank in combination with 50% credit increase from a subscription can make over 50k profit in a battle, and still makes 30k if the battle doesn't go all that well.

But while it is profitable, the tier VIII Löwe heavy tank I bought for 7,500 gold isn't all that good. He'll do okay against lower tier opponents, but is much less good than the regular tier VIII tanks, due to their upgraded equipment. So I bought another gold tank for a tenth of the price of the Löwe, the PzKpfw 38H735 (f), Hotchkiss tier II light tank for 750 gold, just for fun. While it will be nerfed in the future, right now this is probably the best tier II tank around. Makes a lot less credits per battle, but kicks some serious ass in its class.

So, gold tanks are available between €2.50 and €25, are useful to make credits, but don't make the regular leveling game of working your way up the tech tree obsolete. I do find the big ones too expensive, but I hear that one needs a credit-farming tank for the higher tiers, so I don't really regret having already bought it.