User blog comment:The Milkman/Phantasy Philosophy: Elder Scrolls/@comment-3025184-20120913195304/@comment-5280592-20120914230357

This is in a desert environment though. Salt is harder to come by than in Europe. There are salt deposits all over the place, but you need other methods of getting to it than in Europe(Strike the Earth!).

Gold isn't really an "excellent conductor" so much as "an alright conductor", the quality of never tarnishing makes it outlast everything else, but it's not the best.

@ The Joker~

Well gold is used because of its rarity in coin form. It's rare enough that it probably won't be refined by every farmer and his son; yet common and maliable enough that it can be produced in large quantities, and has litterally nothing else it could have been used for at the time.

It may just be my fetish for aluminum and its rarity, but I would enjoy a tower of solid aluminum in a TES game. I want the developers to prove to me that they know basic (not that basic now that I think about it. It's a bit more like intermediate) history.