Every time I see gold armor I like to pretend the gold help the smith to enchant some protective magic which makes it better than any iron armor but this is just me trying to put some sense because the bronze / silver / gold progression seen to be clearly based purely on the metal value, not it's efficiency.

Honestly, the wood weapons always bothered me more, specially because you had wood armor and weapons which make pretty clear they just splash an element on a tier and moved on instead of pretending the wood weapons were training ones.

Still, what bothers lots of people like wolves carrying gold for me is a metaphor of the adventures collecting the fur or meat and selling at a shop. Doesn't explain why they have an iron hammer inside them tho.