Well it has been like waiting for Christmas, but it appears the update is finally going to be with us in a couple of hours. The maintenance break has just started and I’ve been collecting as much loot as I can ready to go straight to TH11 and get a couple of the new items.
Here’s what my base currently looks like with almost all storages maxed, but also full drills and mines, and 15 cauldrons storing 750,000 elixir….
How about two back to back wars with every attack a three star ? It’s hard to even get one never mind four in a row. Check out how Glider from Lost Phoenix does it…
So the sneak peeks have started for the December upgrade, the biggest one ever in Clash history. We’ve only had one sneak peak of up to fourteen so there’s nothing we can judge about how the game will change at the moment. There seems to be mass hysteria coming in from the farming community, but all I can say is let this play out over the next couple of weeks and don’t assume anything until we know everything.
Anyway, while you are waiting for all the information here’s a very entertaining video of attacks on troll bases. Please watch and do not copy these attacks yourself 🙂
A couple of people in the clan have wondered how I manage to loot so much dark elixir so that I can level up one of my heroes almost every week. Given that they are both over level 25 I need 120,000-145,000 for each upgrade and that’s a lot of dark elixir to farm in six days (a war takes the seventh day and costs dark elixir no matter if we win or not).
There are five main factors in getting decent amounts of dark elixir –
So let’s look at each of those factors in turn. Finally I’ll show my attack log from the first nine attacks I did today to see how these factors work.
This is potentially the biggest factor in how much you can loot. You need to be where lots of other players are hoarding dark elixir. Who would those players be ? Well those who are trying to get expensive dark elixir upgrades (low-mid and up heroes, top level dark elixir troops). Unfortunately that means TH9s and in particular TH10s. Unfortunately you can’t get away from this and that means you need to be in Crystal 2 at a minimum and preferably in Crystal 1 or Masters 3 where the majority of players are TH9 and TH10.
They seem to produce so little dark elixir… but when you start adding it up your opinion will change. Let’s look at the top end. I have three drills all maxed at level 6. Mine produce 100 per hour; which doesn’t sound like much. But how much is that per week; (100 x 24 x 7) x 3 = 50,400 per week ! Now that’s a substantial amount. At TH9 you can have two maxed drills so can generate 33,600 per week. Let’s say though that you haven’t prioritised upgrading your drills, two at level 2 only produce 30 per hour so that’s 10,080 per week, a huge difference. The thing to take away from this point is that if you haven’t upgraded your drills you are missing out on significant dark elixir.
Dark elixir is available for league win bonuses from Crystal 3 and up with the amount ramping up substantially the higher you go. Let’s look at the amounts (image courtesy of the Clash of Clans wiki) :
Now the key thing to notice is that there is no dark elixir bonus below Crystal 3 so there’s no point in being in Gold leagues and below for dark elixir farmers. However those +200-500 bonuses add up so it looks like Crystal 2 to Masters 3 is a sweet spot, balanced between beatable bases and some dark elixir. Note also from the first point this is where you’ll also find the players who are hoarding dark elixir so it looks like we’re seeing an optimum trophy range.
If you are farming dark elixir this is an obvious point, but don’t spend any on your army at all, with one exception, a poison spell is always handy and is also very cheap. So elixir only troops are the key.
Now this final point is the most complex one. We are looking for a time to farm when most players haven’t been on the game for a while (asleep, at school/work) so their drills / collectors / mines have been filling up before they have a chance to empty them. We need to factor in the entire world; so different time zones, national holidays, working patterns, the number of players likely to be online in each country at any time etc.. This sounds like a really hard task, luckily, like most things on the internet, someone has done all the hard work for us. Welcome to the Clash of Clans Forecaster. This uses a Farming Index to gauge how much loot you are likely to find. For those of us in the UK the optimum time seems to be from 7-9am in the morning. I suspect this the range when the USA is asleep and eastern Asia is at work/school so there is a solid build up of loot. Now for most of us there’s very little opportunity to control when you can raid, but it is worth bearing in mind. Here’s a snapshot I took this afternoon during a terrible loot drought…
So let’s now look at my first nine attacks of the day, with the most recent at the top :
The first thing to note is the first four attacks; just look at the amount of dark elixir I managed to take ! It was everywhere and then tailed off sharply within a couple of hours. This might be the “Time of Day” factor in play. Ignore the third attack from the top, I’d just bought a level 9 wall so had hardly any gold and just raided for a gold win bonus. Now I’m in Masters 3 so I get a +500 dark elixir bonus so in nine raids spread over 7 hours I managed to take 15,771 plus 4,500 win bonuses for 20,271, and then add on the 2,500 my drills generated for approximately 23,500 taken in one raid sequence. And that’s how I manage to get big amounts of dark elixir week in week out.
As you’ll appreciate there isn’t much here that’s positive for those players who are TH8 and below, but for TH9s and TH10s there’s a clear indication of which leagues you should be in. Also getting those drills levelled up is really important. Finally make sure you get the win bonuses and that means attacking the right bases. If might require a few more spins than you are used to, but the loot is out there if you have patience.
Galadon of Lost Phoenix just posted some more information on the next update. It looks like there will be changes that impact all TH levels and the sneak peeks will start on 23rd of November. The rumour is that the sneak peeks might last for two weeks so the first week of December looks likely for the update. I can’t wait to get TH11 !
It was a crazy day here today; one of our war leaders, and therefore a co, Salad Fingers, tried to ruin our clan that we’ve built up over the last 18 months. He promoted his mate to co and they just kept kicking everyone from the clan until only the cos were left. As clan leader I wasn’t around for 20 minutes but put a stop to it once I got back online. Anyway, no damage done, the rest of our clan managed to invite back everyone who was kicked (thanks team for the super quick response!) and we are back at full strength with the exception of one or two players. Of course this is quite a bitter experience and apparently this is not the first time Salad Fingers has done this to a clan having wrecked one previously. A plan has been hatched to sort this out… let the games begin !
Our good set of results continues with fairly comfortable wins in all three of our wars this week. We are now up to 5 back to back wins.
For the weekend war we decided to play a bigger war than usual and took along most of the clan. Despite a very shaky start we ended up with a comfortable win taking 69 of 75 stars; with 3 star wins on 19 bases and 2 star wins on the other 6, so solid play right across the clan.
I hope you are all having a fun Hallowe’en. Here are the pumpkins we carved earlier today.
From left to right :
spencer23$ has posted his latest troll base video, well worth watching for the entertainment value. Remember, always attack troll bases from the opposite side unless you can seriously overpower the defender.
Toxic Whales - A family of clans 