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Money Multiplier - TV Tropes

  • ️Fri Mar 11 2011

Money Multiplier (trope)

In Video Games and Game Shows this is an item/ability/situation that increases the amount of money gained. Some versions instead give you loot upon activation/during use.

Compare Score Multiplier, Experience Booster, Random Drop Booster. See also Luck Stat, Meta Power-Up, and Discount Card.

Examples:

  • Colin and Sasha from Advance Wars both have money multiplier powers, though in slightly different ways. Colin's CO Power, Gold Rush, multiplies his current stash of money by 1.5. Meanwhile, Sasha passively gets 100 more gold per turn from allied cities than other COs would, and her Super CO power grants her extra cash when attacking enemy units. Unsurprisingly, teaming them up as tag partners in Dual Strike is monumentally Game Breaking.
    • There are also two CO Skills that function similarly to Sasha's powers that anyone can equip. And, yes, you can give them to her and have them stack with her natural powers, making things even more ludicrous.
  • Age of Empires III: The Japanese can send a card from their home city which increases the amount of resources gathered from treasures.
  • Alice: Madness Returns: The game's currency is "teeth". The Steam dress increases breakables teeth drops. The Silk Maiden dress increases enemy teeth drops.
  • Two Artix Entertainment minigames Ninja Shadow Adventure and Undead Assault. In these Web Games you can buy weapons that will increase the amount of gold you receive from killing monsters.
  • In Balatro, some tags, Jokers, and tarot cards increase your payout, with a few such as the Hermit and the Economy Tag doubling your current amount.
  • The Lucky Keyring item in Battlerite Royale boosts the amount of gold you find in chests and loot orbs, making it useful in the early game for filling your last ability and item slots at vendors.
  • Bendy in Nightmare Run: When playing as Alice, every now and then a can of bacon soup will randomly double, triple, quadruple or even sextuple in amount, making her ideal for gathering more cans of bacon soup quickly. The trade-off is that she has the lowest health pool in the game.
  • BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm has the Altcoin, an accessory that doubles the amount of karma (the game’s term for gold) you get after battle, but only if the party member holding it is on-screen when the battle ends.
  • Bug Fables:
    • The Hard Hits Medal doubles the berries dropped by enemies, with the tradeoff that enemies deal increased damage.
    • The Berry Finder Medal gives a 25% increase to berries dropped by enemies. It does not make enemies stronger, but unlike the Hard Hits Medal, it costs Medal Points to equip.
  • Chantelise: The Coin Emblem multiples the value of the coins dropped by enemies, turning some of them from 10pix coins to 50pix coins.
  • Chrono Trigger has an accessory that turns experience gained into money instead.
  • In Danganronpa, spending enough time with Celestia Ludenberg will give the protagonist one of the rare skills usable outside of trials, "Raise." It triples the amount of Monocoins found hidden in the school, and increases the coins won during class trials by 10%. Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony has "Fundraising," which you earn from spending time with Maki Harukawa, which doubles the coins you get from class trials.
  • The Dark Souls series:
    • The Covetous Silver Serpent Ring increases the amount of souls gained from killing enemies (which function as both money and experience points), and the Covetous Gold Serpent Ring increases item drop chance from enemies. There's also the Symbol of Avarice, which is a Mimic that you wear on your head, that does both of these things. It stacks with the Silver Serpent Ring too, but not the Gold for some reason.
    • Dark Souls 2 has the Agape Ring, which multiplies any souls you pick up by a big fat zero. It has an actual use despite its immediate face value: multiplayer matchmaking is determined through the total number of souls a player has collected during their entire playthrough thus far, so the Agape Ring can be used to stay at a certain total.
  • The Antiquarian in Darkest Dungeon doesn't multiply the amount of gold you get, but rather increases the amount you can carry. Normally, in DD, a stack of 1,750 gold takes up one slot in your inventory, and you have a strictly limited number of slots you can put things in, meaning that you end up having to abandon a lot of spare change unless you're willing to drop a resource that might mean the difference between life and death later (and once dropped something is lost for good). The Antiquarian has a passive effect that buffs that to 2,500 gold per stack (an increase of about 40%), as well as letting you pick up small artifacts that are financially valuable but only drop with her in the party; one of them, the Minor Antique, is worth 500 gold and can be stacked 20 times per slot. When you put all this together with the Antiquarian's relative lack of combat power, you get a situation where Antiquarian runs can be harder than runs without them due to a hero slot being spent on comparatively little actual damage, but you end up doing a lot of them anyway because she invariably comes out holding a sack of cash larger than herself.
  • A fun example in Deep Rock Galactic: if the company bar offers the Pots O' Gold brew as the daily special, you can buy and down a big ol' mug of the stuff and be granted double the value of any gold you mine. However, due to a Good Bad Bug, buff beers are applied twice... so this stuff gives you four times the listed value of gold! If you're super lucky, you can get the Gold Rush cave mutation that doubles the size of all gold veins in the mission, or you might run across the Crassus Detonator during the mission, which turns the terrain around it into gold upon death, as all of that gold is also affected by Pots O' Gold's buff. It's been documented that some Dwarves have left the mines with over ten thousand gold in such circumstances (where the normal payout is maybe two thousand on a good run).
  • Diablo III has Gold Find, increases the amount of gold found, and Magic Find, increases the value of magical items found.
  • In Dice & Fold, the Scribe has a once-per-run ability that doubles your Gold.
  • In Disco Elysium, the "Indirect Mode of Taxation" Thought will grant you one réal whenever you select an "Ultraliberal" (i.e. libertarian) dialog option. The "Wompty-Dompty-Dom Center" Thought will similarly grant 2 réal every time your Encyclopedia skill chimes in.
  • The Broker specialist in the Disgaea series can be put in a piece of equipment, increasing the money you gain from defeating enemies by up to three times per specialist.
  • Doofus Drop: Star Grinder doubles the worth of each star collected. Super Star Grinder triples it.
  • Deadly Rooms of Death RPG has two money-doubling items: the Lucky Greckle (an accessory) and the Lucky Blade (a weak weapon, with the same ATK as your starting weapon). Of the two, only the Lucky Blade exists in the main campain, Tendry's Tale. However, usermade holds may include both items, and they stack for a 4x increase if both are worn together.
  • An item called "Dwarven Merchant's Belt" in Dragon Age: Origins gives you a +5% bonus to monetary gains.
  • The Black Emporium DLC for Dragon Age II introduces the Rune of Fortune, which can be embedded into each piece of armor that Hawke wears (up to four). It increases the likelihood of enemies dropping money when they're killed, and the effect stacks. There are also a number of amulets, rings, and belts which make enemies more likely to drop money or valuable equipment.
  • Dubloon features an equippable glove that gives money with each successful melee attack.
  • In Eagle Island, one can find and equip two types of perks that increase the amount of golden seeds obtained: Treasure Hunter for chests, and Scavenger for defeated enemies.
  • The Imperials in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim have a special inborn ability Imperial Luck, which adds a 100% chance of 2-10 gold in any chest or corpse that has gold. The only problem is that while the ability works as it should, a bug results in it secretly being added to characters of all races after passing through the starting dungeon, Helgen Keep. There is also the Thieves' Guild-only quest No Stone Unturned, which if completed (it involves finding 24 specific gems with no clues where they are) grants the Prowler's Profit ability, which adds 1-4 gems in mostly the same way as Imperial Luck.
  • In the Fallout series, the perk Fortune Finder increases the amount of bottle caps (currency of the wasteland) that can be found on dead enemies and in containers (and in Fallout 4, even causes enemies to sometimes explode in a shower of caps), while the perk Scrounger does the same for finding additional ammunition to use and/or sell.
  • Final Fantasy:
  • Flight: Getting cranes multiplies the amount of money earned for a short time for a maximum of 5x.
  • For the King: The Sanctum of Wealth blesses a single player character with a 20% boost to all gold they obtain until their next death. Several equippable items also grant a stackable gold multiplier to the bearer, such as the Golden Lute, Princess hat, and Lucky Coin.
  • In FTL: Faster Than Light, you can find a scrap recovery arm which rises the amount of scrap earned from any source by 10%. This scrap can be used to upgrade your systems or buy equipment.
  • zOMG!: Fortune's Favor ring passively increases the amount of gold obtained in battle.
  • Stern Pinball's Game of Thrones:
    • One of the Awards that can be purchased is the Golden Hand, which gives an extra 750,000 bonus points at the end of each ball.
    • Choosing House Lannister at the beginning of the game puts a x2 multiplier on all Gold earned in the game. This can also be achieved by choosing House Greyjoy at the beginning and then defeating House Lannister, as Greyjoy takes the abilities of all houses it defeats.
  • Going Under: Tappi's first mentor level lets Jackie scrounge up the leftover small change that enemies carry in addition to the dollar bills they have on hand, increasing the amount of money gained from defeated enemies.
  • Granblue Fantasy: An effect in the Journey Drop Shop allows players to increase the amount of Rupies earned during battles.
  • In Grand Theft Auto 2, completing a mission (and collecting a few pickups in the second level) rises the game multiplier, which is the number every amount of money is multiplied every time you complete a mission or just cause mayhem. Thus, it's wise to complete the easiest missions first to rise the multiplier, and save the hardest missions for the end to get the most benefit from them.
  • In Hoard, all monetary gains are doubled if you survive for 30 seconds without losing all of your health, and tripled if you survive for 60 seconds.
  • I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: The Popular status gained from winning a Vertumnalia festival contest results in Kudos earnings being doubled for three months.
  • A key consideration in Kingdom of Loathing is magnifying loot drops. The main method is increasing the drop rate on items by a percentage (of its normal rate). You can also magnify the meat gains, too, but quests don't normally need meat drops. Most players consider a familiar that increases item drop rates to be, at minimum, essential, unless sheer XP grinding is needed. (Oh, by the way, while not as easy, you can magnify XP too.)
  • League of Legends has a "keystone rune" called "First Strike". When equipped, landing the first hit on an enemy grants a brief window of bonus damage, as well as some bonus gold based on said bonus damage dealt. Ideally, this is to be used by fast, combo-heavy characters who can get the early drop on an enemy and snowball gold to their advantage, but the catch is that if the enemy hits them first (even with just a modicum of Scratch Damage), the rune goes on a massive cooldown, requiring a great deal of risk to use and gain value from.
  • Of Pen and Paper: Multiple ways, different in each game:
  • In La-Mulana, a certain MSX ROM combination gives you an extra coin every time you pick up coins.
    • In the Video Game Remake of the game, luck fairies increase the amount of drops from both enemies AND various breakable things. This makes grinding money incredibly easy.
  • In most of the Lego Adaptation Games, you can get stud multipliers, which stack, meaning you can collect as much as 3840 times the studs.
  • In Lost But Found, some upgrades increase the amount of tips you get or your starting income when you begin the shift.
  • In Lost Odyssey, Sed has passive abilities that increase the amount of money and experience gained from battles, which is why he's typically the one chosen to fill the useless fifth slot in the party, since the other four slots will obviously be taken by the four immortal party members who are just plain better than the mortals since all four of them can learn every ability in the game.
  • The Factor and Pirate hirelings in Might and Magic VI and VII increase all gold found by +10% (and take a 5% cut themselves), under the idea that they know how to spot rare and valuable coins amongst the common ones,note  while the Banker hireling increases all gold found by +20% and takes a 10% cut on the logic that they're even better at spotting valuable coinage.
  • Mike Shadow: I Paid for It!: The "Show Me The Money!" bonus increases money chance by 20/30/50%, depending on the level. The move's animation displays Mike talking to a rich guy who decides to give him money, with higher levels involving stronger negotiation.
  • In No Man's Sky, you can find upgrades to your scanner visor that multiply the monetary reward for scanning animals, plants or rocks. These multipliers are very generous and they stack together, easily turning an act of documenting strange new worlds from a side gig into your primary income.
  • In Painkiller, the Greed Black Tarot card doubles the money gained from destroying items. However, it is the most expensive card to place and enough coins are already gotten without that card to place the rest of them.
  • Persona 4 has two Arcana Chance effects: 2X Yen and increased treasure gains.
  • In Persona 5, one ability of the Star Confidant doubles the money earned in battle if you attack from ambush and defeat the enemy in one round. The Sun Confidant has several powers that give you a chance of being able to ask for extra money during a Hold Up, but if you fail then the enemy will beak off negotiations and either attack you again or summon reinforcements.
  • Pokémon:
    • The Amulet Coin and Luck Incense items double the amount of money gained from defeating Trainers.
    • The Gen VI move Happy Hour doubles the amount of prize money earned after a battle.
      • In Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire Versions, there is a glitch where the wrong amount of money will be displayed if the Amulet Coin is held when Pay Day is used, leaving the impression that the Amulet Coin does not affect Pay Day. However, if the player checks their Trainer Card, it will be discovered that the money earned from Pay Day has correctly been doubled and added to the player's total savings. This error was fixed in Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen Versions, as well as all subsequent games.
    • Pass Powers, introduced in Generation V, include increasing the reward money from winning Trainer battles.
    • Generation VI games have the Prize Money O-Power, which increases the amount of money gained from winning a trainer battle depending on the level of the O-Power used, up to triple the amount with a level 3 O-Power. You can stack it with the Amulet Coin and Luck Incense items for even more money.
  • Puzzle Quest: Anything that raises your Cunning score raises the percentage of gold won during victory and the amount of gold that appears on the puzzle board. Forging items with the Rune of Greed gives you a base +20 on gold won, to a base max of +80 (for all four equitable items). Modifier Runes will increase that gain by 50%, 75%, 100%, 200% or -50%, depending on the rune used.
  • Ratchet & Clank:
    • Most games in the series have a New Game Plus known as Challenge Mode. In Ratchet & Clank (2002), all bolt values are doubled. In every other game that has the mode, you start with no multiplier and gain a multiplier that goes higher and higher as you kill more enemies, but the multiplier disappears if you get hit. The multiplier usually caps at x20, but some of the other games have a lower cap.
    • After beating Ratchet: Deadlocked, you unlock the ability to buy Jackpot Mods, which will increase enemy money drops by 50% if they're killed on a weapon with the mod on it.
    • Some of the games have boxes that will double the amount of money you earn for a limited time. In Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, it also doubles the Raritanium you receive. In games that have Challenge Mode, the box will multiply your multiplier by 2, so in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, you could max out your bolt at x20, and hit the crate to get a x40 multiplier!
  • In Rogue Legacy, you can spend money to increase the amount of money you get from collecting gold. The spelunker class, made specifically for collecting loot, also has such a bonus.
  • The Rich Board in the Snowboard Kids series adds 1 G to your money for every roughly one-fifth of a second you spend in a race any time you're not incapacitated. It does not increase the amount of G you earn doing anything else, however. The Poverty Board, meanwhile, is its inverted counterpart, which removes 1 G from your money at a slightly slower rate. The Poverty Board does not have any advantages to make up for that.
  • Soma Spirits: In Rebalance, the Easy difficulty increases the amount of money acquired, compared to Normal or Hero.
  • The Sonic Riders series has the Gambler gear: it doubles the Rings earned in a race if you win, but halves them if you place poorly. Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity introduces the Wanted gear, which gives additional rings (+25% in ZG) if you finish a race without taking damage.
  • Star of Providence has one that starts at 1.0x and increases gradually as enemies are killed, slowing down once it reaches 2.5 and maxing out at 3.0. The multiplier drops down a point (or back to 1 if under 2.0) if any damage is taken without a Single-Use Shield. Defeating a boss on the first four floors with 2.5 or more multiplier will open the ability to visit the Temple.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: The Green Wallet doubles the amount of money gained from battles.
    • The first Mario Party game has two alternate boxes to store your coins: The Casino Box will either double or halve the number that's actually deposited and the Lucky Box will add 10% more coins to those that you earned.
    • In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, you can use the Money Money badge to multiply your battle winnings. And the growth is exponential; by the time you can get this, it probably isn't too hard to free up 5 BP, and since each costs the same, it becomes progressively easier to get more of these badges. The Gold Bar ×3 item presumably was created just so that you could store all the money you get from these, as each is worth 300 coins for purchase and sale, and your coin limit is a measly 999 in the original GameCube version.
    • In Super Mario RPG, the Coin Trick is an accessory that doubles all coins dropped by enemies.
  • The Super Robot Wars series has the "Luck" and "Bless" SP commands, which doubles the money earned by one unit the next time it fights an enemy. Luck works on the caster, while Bless can affect any allied unit.
    • A few characters in certain titles (e.g., Crow in SRW Z2 or Kyosuke in the Original Generation games) have special skills that earn 20% more money when they get a kill.
  • In Shadow Hearts games, the Bandit Earrings increase money won by 20% but decrease item acquisition by the same amount. From the New World goes a extra mile and justifies this via Flavor Text: the bandits only stole money because they didn't want to carry heavy stuff back home.
  • Team Fortress 2: the Administrator rewards 100 extra credits to all players if all credits are obtained in a wave in Mann vs Machine game mode.

    Administrator: Greed is good. Have a bonus.

  • Terra Battle: The Money Bag skill increases Coin gain.
  • Terraria:
    • Certain tools can inflict the Midas debuff on enemies, which makes them drop more coins than that enemy type's usual range.
    • The Lucky Coin and its upgrades is an accessory that makes all enemies have a chance at dropping coins when hit.
  • The Tower - Idle Tower Defense:
    • The Utility upgrades include "Cash Bonus" and "Coins / Kill Bonus" stats that respectively increase the amount of cash and coins you can earn.
    • The Golden Tower ultimate weapon primarily provides a temporary boost to your Cash and Coin earnings from enemy kills.
    • Some Ultimate Weapons have their own "Coin Bonus" Lab Upgrade (i.e. Death Wave Coin Bonus, Black Hole Coin Bonus, Spotlight Coin Bonus) that temporarily increases the amount of Coins earned while the Ultimate Weapon is in effect.
  • Toontown: Corporate Clash: Playing the game on Wednesday increases the amount of Jellybeans you earn by 25%. This is also one of the boosters you can buy from the GUMBALL Machine.
  • Tower of the Sorcerer has the Lucky Gold item, which doubles all money rewards from monsters once you find it.
  • An Untitled Story has an ability that increases the number of crystals received from crashing pots.
  • Warframe:
    • The Credit Booster doubles the amount of credits on pickup. It can be purchased or obtained from Daily Tributes or rare storage containers.
    • Enemies killed with the Secura Lecta whip drop additional credits, scaling with mastery rank.
    • Enemies killed by Chroma's Effigy ability have an increased chance of dropping credits, and any credits picked up within a 10 meter radius of the Effigy itself will be doubled. This is intended to reference the Dragon Hoard trope, to go with Chroma's dragon motif.
    • The Resource Boosters doubles the amount of resources earned on pickup. It can be purchased or obtained from Daily Tributes.
    • Beast companions have access to "Retriever" mods. While "Loyal Retriever" is equipped, any credits and resources picked up have a 13% chance to be doubled. "Resourceful Retriever" and "Prosperous Retriever" up the chance to 18%, but restricted to resources/credits respectively. Only one "Retriever" mod can be equipped at once.
  • Wario Land has a money multiplier minigame at the end of each level (which can be bypassed, either in favor of an extra-lives minigame, or going straight to the coin-total room). It consists of two buckets; one held a money bag, while the other held a heavy weight. Getting the money bag doubles the cash the player gained during the level (up to the limit of 999), while the weight cuts the player's cash-on-hand in half (rounding down). The buckets can be picked up to 3 times. The setup favors the player, as the potential gain from this minigame will almost always be higher than the potential loss, and the odds of both a gain and a loss are equal. (For example, if a player gets to the minigame with 80 coins, the worst possible result is walking out with 10 coins [a loss of 70], while the best possible result is a whopping 640 coins [a gain of 560].)
    • Virtual Boy Wario Land takes this MUCH further. At the end of each level the money multiplier minigame now can multiply the coins you have from that level by choosing the correct bucket holding money bags: how much it's multiplied depends on how many buckets you want to choose from. Getting Triple the coins means picking correctly from two buckets above you, getting Six Times the coins means picking correctly from three buckets, and the big Ten Times the coins means you must pick correctly from FOUR buckets! A wrong guess again halves your coins, so if you choose wrongly three times in a row, you leave with an eighth of what you came in with! But if you get three consecutive correct picks, you could leave with anywhere from twenty-seven times the coins (for three triple-coin games) to ONE THOUSAND times the coins (for picking the right bucket out of four each of three ten-times-coin games)!
  • Wildfrost:
    • The Bling Bank gains 4 Blings each time an enemy is killed, and it adds that many Blings to your satchel when it's destroyed.
    • The Bling Charm makes the user gain 5 Blings each time they kill an enemy.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • Warlords of Draenor has Treasure Seeker and Scavenger followers who increase gold and resource returns respectively. Due to the sheer amount of gold it was possible to gather in this way, the two abilities were condensed into one and gold rewards were replaced with resources.
    • Legion has two variants on this related to Champions. If one of their missions is run with more than a 100% chance of success, the additional percentage goes towards winning a bonus such as extra gold from treasure missions. Additionally, bodyguard Champions can be equipped with items that cause the completion of World Quests to award gold or Order Hall resources.
  • Yo-kai Watch: A recurring mechanic throughout the franchise are wisps. Wisps can be popped by the pin mechanic, and one of the possible rewards is a multiplier to the amount of money you will receive after the battle.
  • Yoku's Island Express: Completing one of the optional sidequests will grant you the Boon of Plenty, which doubles the value of all fruit picked up.
  • Zombidle: The Pillage and Plunder skill increases how fast the game's currency, Skulls, are gained.