Does it feel like you're constantly getting raided in Clash of Clans? It's like clockwork - every time your storages fill up, some jerk with a horde of Barbarians swoops in and steals it all. Chances are there are some simple changes you can make to your base to make it less appealing to raiders! In this article, I'll teach you how to harden your base and avoid the most opportunistic raiders. If you're constantly losing stars and resources to raiders, this guide will help you fix that!
# # 6: Don't Rush to Upgrade Your Town Hall
Holy cow is this a big one. You wouldn't believe the number of Town Hall 8 bases that still have level 1 wooden walls.
Relative Town Hall levels determine how many resources a raider can take from your base. For instance, if you are Town Hall 9 and a raider is Town Hall 8, they can take 110% of the resources they normally would be able to. If your base is mostly low level except for your Town Hall, heck yeah they're raiding you and taking your stuff.
Related Guide If you're not sure what to upgrade, go read our upgrade guide!
The short version is that you should upgrade everything before upgrading your Town Hall. Max out those walls even. Yeah, it's painful, but you've got to do it sometime and you might as well do it now.
# # 5: Check In Two to Three Times a Day
Collector raids are by far the most common raid in Clash of Clans. Collector raiders are using cheap troops to hit your collectors when they're full of resources. Obviously, the best way to avoid collector raids in Clash of Clans is to keep your collectors empty.
Checking in a couple of times a day and tapping collectors, even if you can't raid, is a good way to keep the free loot the enemy can take from you to a minimum.
When you're checking in, though, do more than just tap your collectors. What you want to do is make the free shield work for you. For instance, I check my base right before going to bed. Tap all the collectors, and then I will break my shield even if I don't plan to raid. Then I go to bed. Someone is bound to come along and hit my base and give me a shield before my collectors become ripe enough to be raided.
Same thing in the late morning - by that time of day, my shield is running low and I can tap my collectors again and break my shield, just so that I can get a new free one on my schedule.
Of course, if you're hard-core raiding, you're going to be breaking your shield more often than this. This strategy is more for when you're mostly idle and just waiting for builders to finish.
# # 4: Don't Cluster Your Resources
A lot of people who play Clash of Clans get the desire to line up their collectors (elixir or gold) along one side of their base. This is bad. This makes it easier for raiders to swoop in and knock them out. A line of Barbarians will just go from one to another, taking each collector in a long line without much resistance.
Instead, distribute them around the outside of your base, and mix in your other buildings (barracks, builders, camps, etc) to break them up a bit. That way, a raider has to drop troops all the way around the outside of the base in order to hit all the collectors.
This "don't cluster" advice counts double for storages. A lot of people will make a little area in the center of their base and put all their storages in it. This is another terrible idea.
For one, it means a raider don't have to hit the defenses that don't cover the center. A lot of bases are big enough that there are defenses that can't hit this area. Second, it makes you very vulnerable to cheesy Lightning spell raids.
Once you hit Town Hall 7 or so, consider putting at least 3 squares between each storage, just so that you can avoid cheesy lightning strikes. You can't always keep the storages far apart, but it helps when you can.