Forum: gaming.stackexchange.com
Tags: <terraria>
Title: How do I earn gold?
Question: I want to buy the Mining Helmet from the Merchant, but it costs 8 Gold Coins, and I do not have any. How do I get Gold Coins?

Answers:
sents: text: 1 Gold Coin is simply 100 Silver Coins.
text: They're automatically created when you pick up 100 Silver Coins, but they can also be manually crafted.
text: If you're looking for good ways to farm coins, have a look at this question .
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/9752/a cat
score: 13
sents: text: One of the quickest ways to rake in the coins is farming meteor heads .
text: You'll need to break a single shadow orb to spawn the meteor .
text: Shadow orb harvesting is hard but you can do it much earlier with clever tunneling and a couple sticks of dynamite.
text: For continued quick coins an artificial meteorite biome can be used instead.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/1317/deft_code
score: 6
sents: text: I find that blood moons are excellent opportunities for making some money.
text: Build upwards into a hill and simply stay there and let the zombies climb up to you whereby you can hit them back down until they're (un)dead.
text: It should be upwards because too many zombies on a flat surface during blood moons can overpower you despite swinging your sword non-stop.
text: Similarly, goblin armies are useful for making money (albeit perhaps a bit later in the game).
text: However you can also follow the safer routes mentioned in the wiki.
text: I would strongly advise you to invest in a piggy bank where you should store your coins so that you don't lose half during a battle.
text: It costs 1 gold coin though.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/10375/Neil
score: 5
sents: text: You can sell precious stones (amethysts, rubies, etc).
text: They sell for a good amount of money and don't currently have a lot of uses.
text: If you want to make a phase blade or jungle armor later in the game, make sure to set aside what you need for those first.
text: Note that you also risk missing out on any other uses for them that could be added in future updates.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/10089/Brandon
score: 2
sents: text: An easy way after you've gone into the Dungeon and got the Mechanic (or otherwise have a friend capable of wiring) is to do the following: Put a Goldfish statue (or several) at the bottom of a 2 x n pit Add a hostile mob statue about 10 blocks above it off to the side, in its own 3x2 hole -- I prefer crab statues but any will work Wire them up to a 1-second timer and stand underneath the fish spawner Optional: Add in a Dart Trap or two to take care of Blood Moons.
text: You can effectively stand underneath the spawner and farm Goldfish as long as you want.
text: If you throw in a Heart statue where you're standing, you'll probably never die if you're above ground.
text: Just return every hour or so, sell off your piles of goldfish, and rake in a ton of gold per trip.
text: Blood Moons become even more profitable because the fish will immediately turn into Corrupt Goldfish, which drop plenty of money, no sales trip needed.
text: (You will have to add the dart trap, though.
text: Otherwise, well...) ...
text: This isn't the most effective method (by far), but it's something you can pretty much set-and-forget for an hour at a time, no further interaction necessary.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/11581/Xkeeper
score: 2
sents: text: If you're needing a mining helmet then this probably isn't going to be applicable for you, but the dungeon is a great way to make cash.
text: So many things spawn there that you keep raking in cash drops as you kill.
text: By the point you get there though, you probably aren't worried about just 8 gold.
text: I figured I would toss this answer in since people may want gold for other things than a mining helmet.
text: I believe I made my early money just mining a bunch and selling off gems.
text: I never bothered with the mining helmet personally, I just used torches until I found an orb of light.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/4714/DHayes
score: 1
sents: text: I've found the best early(ish) way to make money is to farm the Eater of Worlds, he drops over 99 Demonite per encounter, which sells for rougly 8 gold a stack.
text: If you use a Vilethorn he's extremely easy to kill repeatedly.
text: The only part about this is getting enough vile powder to repeatedly summon him, but such powder can be bought from the dryad during a blood moon at the price of 1 silver per powder.
text: IE: 30 silver per summon, with each summoning gaining you almost 8 gold.
text: So it easily pays for itself if you drop 3-5 gold into vile powder.
text: Between that and a mediocre Vile Mushroom farm you should be fine.
text: The EoW drops enough rotten meat himself to supply that half of the crafting reqs for the Worm Food to summon him.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/15095/Ender
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
They are automatically created when you pick up 100 silver coins. You can also farm meteor head or sell precious stones.
For gaining gold, these ways may be of use: exchanging silver coins or selling precious stones and or even crafting it manually.