Are the gold mines actually worth it?

[Angelus BR]

It takes around 2 nights for it to start to give profits even if it's the first thing you build.

Is there an upgrade somewhere that makes it more useful?

[Bumc]

Not really.
As a rule of the thumb anything you can do with gold mines you can do without them as well.
Investing this gold into making sure you have weapons to kill stuff and enough mana to use them is superior in that regard.

However, for that to work you have to get economy in different ways -- namely corpses (by killing everything in more or less the same pile) and panic regulation.

If you have enough corpses or ruins, building more workers is also better until you hit the cap, and by that time you might as well start working on production buildings.

[Magnus075]

They do pay off in the long run. How many you build and how quick is a matter of

- how many nights that are left (can be seen by clicking the Magic Circle, the tiny boxes shown there informs about how many nights in total there is).

- what amounts of corpse piles (preferable the "mountain" size) you aim or manage to create from slaying monsters

- choosing to go with production buildings and upgrading the item quality (choice firthest to the right) to max (at this point you get lvl 4 or 5 items, if done right quicker than the amount of nights before equally strong ones show up in shop...and if shop sell price (when you sell items to shop) is upgraded then come night 9-10ish you'll sell so much that will be main income)

Combining, in different ways,
upgrading amount of workers needed (2-->1),
amount that will be produced (25-->40)
and
how many times it can be mined each day (1-->2)
together with
building houses
and. maybe,
selling some starting equipment (that sometimes can immediatly be bought back after getting enough gold to get a new worker that then can mine for enough gold to buy back the items) or scavanging corpse piles or ruins)
is how mines are made to work best at early stage.

The earlier investements goes into mines the more time they have to repay.
Its a risk/reward challenge sometimes spending all gold on economy upgrades first 2-3 nights and nothing on better items...this choice depending on the sense of security you have for your current heroes, the map and your knowledge.

[Myth Alric]

Well you said it yourself, it takes two nights to pay itself off. Everything after that is free gold. I personally don't like leaving a large pile of gold unused between each nights, so if I have nothing else to get, then I would get it. If you got like 70 gold and nothing else to buy except maybe a mana potion in the shop or something, then I would get the mine over that.

If it is before half way through the game, I think gold mines are better than the item producing buildings. The gold you get for the rest of the game is way more valuable than a couple of low level items(and I only factor the first couple items you get since the increased gold lets you buy those shops anyway, and you would still be getting the items and gold from then on).

Late game, I probably wouldn't bother, unless again you have the money left over. If you have 60 gold left over, 3 nights before the end, there is probably nothing else to get. Rather than save 60 gold, I would just buy the gold mine.

[Samseng Yik]

No, so far I only build gold mine after no more other buildings can build (ElderLitch)
Day 1 I start with armorer and house etc etc

[Flavalicious]

I always go houses and house upgrades on the first 2-3 nights. The unlocked workers generate a ton of gold from corpses and material from ruins, really jump starts the early game economy. If i have everything else i want ill get the mines because why not, but ill almost always use workers on the salvage camps over the mines. Max level walls count for more then a few RNG rolls at the shop in most cases

[some guy]

i get 1-2 gold mines fairly early. if you fully employ an upgraded gold mine it also starts giving profits on the third night. i think having 1 fully upgraded and 2 passive is fine or 2 fully upgrade and 0-1 passive. roughly something like focus on 8 workers, then gold mines, then production or stone, while continuing to add workers up to max should work in general. The fourth haven basically allows you to build every building because of the length of the map.

Get shrines and temples if you please at any point in between. Either because you need the regen or because you want to stack the passive. E.g. Having one maxed mana upgrade shrine can make you hit the mana max on a hero fairly easy, which is great for the max mana damage perk or as reserve for the last night.