This article will focus on ways to earn gold in Modern Warships using active, not passive (AFK) grinding. I will focus on the methods you can use to get the most gold per match.
You can do this in tier 2 or tier 3, although I recommend tier 3 because of its ship and equipment variety.
Tips for farming gold
The basics for earning gold are simple. For regular ships, 1 kill = 1 gold bar. Keep that in mind.
If you can, choose premium ships for gold grinding. They give you 20% more gold and dollars per match. This means they give you 6 gold bars for 5 kills.
Having a premium account also boosts your earnings by 50%. You can get premium by buying it in the store or getting it for free from the battle pass or missions.
Playing with a ship first time in the day also doubles your reward. You can see if the effect is active by looking at the ship icons. If they have a “2X” mark in the top left corner, they will give you double rewards for one match.
You can also watch ads at the end of a match to increase your earnings.
All these things combined can get you 32 gold per match once a day.
Best tier 3 method: Yamato on Arctic
IJN Yamato is a good tool for many things, but undoubtedly works best for kill missions and grinding gold. Its cannons do a lot of shock damage and are unblockable, therefore best for securing kills. Yamato is also a premium ship.
You need to get the enemy ship to about 40% HP with your secondary and small guns, then fire all guns at once to deal about 180k damage at once and certainly destroy the ship. It works best at medium range, as in close range the enemy might outrun your main cannons’ turning speed (yes this does happen), therefore unfocusing them, leading to a lack of accuracy and in some cases half of your shells missing the target. Also, when firing at carriers at long range, to avoid taking too much time to kill them, fire one burst of all cannons first, then followed up by only secondaries and small guns until the enemy is almost dead. Then you can fire main cannons as a finishing move.
This is most effectively done on the map Arctic due to the map’s center (where all the bots go) being a close-quarters combat area (perfect for Yamato). Use your hydroplanes to spot and kill the vulnerable, fast targets first (to avoid bots stealing your kills once the enemies enter the center of the map), then proceed to kill the heavy cruisers, battleships, and lastly aircraft carriers.
One important thing to mention is that you should prioritize targets that are on their way to hide behind glaciers on your left. They will really prolong the match because you will need to chase them down after the other ships are dead, and Yamato isn’t a good seeker.
(Yes, this method does work with Pyotr Velikiy and USS Missouri too).
An alternative technique for people without a Pyotr, Missouri, or Yamato
For this one, a ship with high burst damage should work, such as ROKS Jeongjo The Great, Admiral Ushakov, or USS CG(X)-21. The map should be Storm or Arctic.
All you need to do is be careful which ships to shoot, when and with what weapons. Shoot ships with low HP, be careful not to miss any of your shots. This method will not be as consistent as you’re relying on weapons bots can counter such as missiles. You’re also more vulnerable to damage because of the lower HP compared to Yamato. This is especially noticeable with Jeongjo The Great, as it only has half of Yamato’s HP.
Carrier grinding
People often use carriers for this as well due to their flexibility and the matches being shorter than if you use any other type of vessel. This is because planes can hit targets behind obstacles. However, I find my kills are often stolen by bots after I damage ships enough due to aircraft having a limited damage output compared to ships. So, if you are trying to maximize your gold earnings, carriers are not the best way to do that.
Tier 2 gold grinding
The problem with tier 2 is that you can’t really guarantee a kill using any kind of ship except the CN Type 053H JiuJiang at close range. This is because tier 2 was carefully designed so as to not give any ship too much firepower you can’t counter.
The ship I’d recommend for grinding dollars is JiuJiang on Arctic. This is because JiuJiang’s firepower at close range is comparable to Yamato in tier 2. However, its problem lies in the efficiency against very fast-moving targets such as XWind 4000, USS Independence, RF Loon, etc. that are extremely difficult to hit at medium to long-range. JiuJiang also lacks health points, so you’ll often find yourself in situations where you win the firefight, but are left with so little HP you need to actually put some thought into your next move, and in offline, that’s a sign of bad performance. Btw, it’s a premium ship.
No other tier 2 ship has the same kill consistency as JiuJiang tho, so that should say something in terms of grinding in tier 2. Not recommended.
Be sure to also check our article on the best ways to grind dollars in Modern Warships!
