Any action RPG veteran knows not to bother buying items from shopkeepers. It's because if you give them gold to buy a magic sword, you're sure to find a better sword lying on the ground two minutes later. In most action RPGs, gold is better spent elsewhere, especially in "Diablo 4," which does its best to find ways to pull coins away from unwary adventurers before the moment they suddenly need them.

Once you reach level 10, a couple of priority quests come to your quest log, one telling you how to upgrade your healing potions and the other how to upgrade your items. One is totally worth paying one hefty gold after another to the local alchemist to increase the effectiveness of the healing potion, while the other is a kind of trap for beginners. The other is a sort of beginner's trap. Do the priority quests and take it out of the log, but don't bother upgrading items until you are more advanced.

The same goes for jewelry crafting, which is a priority quest at level 20. The Horadric Cube business seems to have been privatized, and in Diablo 3 you had to pay gold for it. If you were trained to upgrade gems as a matter of course in previous Diablos, you'll be begging on the streets of Kyobashad in no time. Let's refrain from paying to upgrade our chipped skulls.

The worst beginner trap, however, is the occultist. This is a craftsman who extracts an aspect from a legendary item and imprints that aspect on the item. At the end of the game, you will regularly use these services to create legendary gear, but you do not need to do so while leveling. Even at world Tier 2, Diablo 4 is not challenging enough to demand such optimization.

Diablo 4 has many ways to milk gold from the pockets of unwary adventurers, and the Respec fee in particular is a painful price to pay for those willing to try out builds. And if you're a gear hoarder, you'll probably save up 100,000 gold to upgrade your stash ASAP. But what you really want to save your gold for is the endgame aspect-shifting costs.

Fortunately, it's not that hard to get cash. You can feed your gold and XP by running dungeons, selling gear, and praying for treasure goblins to cross your path. Still, it is better to finish the campaign with money in the bank than to earn it desperately when you need it.