# Talk:Zorkmid
There is a clear difference between Zorkmid and gold piece, Zorkmid is the currency and gold pieces are the coinage. In American English an item may cost 1 dollar, but you pay with a 1 dollar bill. E.g. nethack could possibly have silver coins as well, being worth less Zorkmids than a gold piece but still be allowed as method of payment.
The gold piece is an object, the Zorkmid not. The DevTeam separated them very well I think. Since the concepts are different, it could possibly be split into two articles, but that might also be confusing. Maybe the page could be called "gold piece" since it might be preferred that every object in the game has its own page.
The term "coin(s)" for gold pieces (used often on the wiki) is maybe a little misleading. I doubt there will be a face of Rodney on every piece even before it is digged up by a dwarf&nbsp;:-).
Just my thoughts, --BlackShift 07:14, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

$       a pile of coins (gold piece)
the game itself refers to gold pieces as coins, so we should to! there's no description of what is printed on the head or tail side though! --BlackShift 07:26, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Contents

1 Inventory letters...
2 Uses
3 Generation
4 BUC status

Inventory letters...
What happens if your inventory is full, you pick up a loadstone (letter adjusted to #) and you want to drop your zm? [unsigned]
Just type "d", for dropping a single item or stack, and then select $, which will always refer to the gold coins in your base inventory.  But regardless, I do not believe you can pick up a loadstone if your pack is full, and if a loadstone is adjusted to #, and you have coins in your pack, the coins have their own letter already, and the loadstone does not hinder this in any way. Natso 16:30, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Uses
I think this page could benefit from a brief list of uses?  Paying shopkeeper, buying protection, buying prophecies, buying passage through Demon Lord levels, making leprechauns teleport etc...
Yidda 03:38, February 28, 2010 (UTC)

Done. Please improve it. -Tjr 13:41, February 28, 2010 (UTC)
Generation
I know that piles of gold laying around the dungeon grow greater in some proportion to the level you're on -- i.e., a pile of gold on level 1 is, on average, far less than a pile of gold on level 48.  How is it calculated?  I suspect it's a number of (x)-sided dice, which would explain why you don't see them generated at random on levels -1 and above... Delbow 02:49, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

BUC status
The page mentions that zorkmids have no BUC status, but it can be polymorphed, and there the BUC status matters. I assume it is Uncursed for that purpose? If so, that should be mentioned on the page --PQ (talk) 16:25, 21 February 2018 (UTC)