Im creating dragons for my fantasy/sci fi story. Basically, they are able to eat metals and gems in order to incorporate them into their bones and scales to strengthen their scales, as a result of this many dragons have distinct deposits on their scales of various different kinds of mineral.

One of the main characters has golden deposits on her scales and I was wondering if there was a way to make the gold be more functional, because even though it looks cool, it would be a shame if her scale strength was compromised because of the softness of gold.

I've thought about maybe finding a way the gold could be alloyed with some other metals but im not sure how that would work, any suggestions?

I'm creating dragons for my fantasy/sci fi story. They are able to eat metals and gems in order to incorporate them into their bones and scales to strengthen their scales. As a result of this many dragons have distinct deposits on their scales of various different kinds of minerals.

One of the main characters has golden deposits on her scales and I was wondering if there was a way to make the gold be more functional, because even though it looks cool, it would be a shame if her scale strength was compromised because of the softness of gold.

I've thought about maybe finding a way the gold could be alloyed with some other metals but I'm not sure how that would work, any suggestions?