If you've been away from Clash of Clans for a while and decided to blow the dust of your beloved Town Hall, you might feel like a little overwhelmed. The recent December Patch made huge changes to the balance of the game, especially defensively, and what used to be an effective Clash of Clans farming strategy may now be completely worthless. In this article we'll break down some farming tips that take advantage of the recent changes, and we'll also highlight some base defense strategies that you'll want to keep in mind to protect your own resources.
Farming Tip # 1: Move that Town Hall In!
Exposing TH is now heavily penalized. If your attacker does less than 30% damage OR uses less than 33% of their troops, they can acheive a 1 star victory even though you will not receive a shield. This means you can get hit with many back to back raids before someone pounds you hard enough to buy you a shield, and all that hard earned loot will go to other Chieftains. To add insult to injury, your TH now holds a significant amount of loot so you are doubly incented to keep it protected. This is probably what SuperCell always intended, but they've finally found some mechanics to put it into force. The time has come Chief - MOVE IN YOUR TOWN HALL!
Farming Tip # 2: Hunt Big Game
League bonuses make more worth it than ever to climb in rank while farming. Given that you have to take steps to protect your Town Hall already, you will gain more trophies defensively than you might expect. Work this to your advantage, and try to push up a few tiers from your more comfortable old farming grounds. At TH9 I found I was able to push to Masters and even Champions - something I would not have expected was ever within my reach. At those higher levels, pulling in 200-300k Gold/Elixir and 2500+ Dark Elixir per fight is common (especially when considering the league bonus). In my experience it now proves a more reliable way to pull in big gains than trolling the lower leagues in the hopes of finding abandoned or rushed bases in my range.
Farming Tip # 3: Maximize Shield and Guard Value
The new Shield and Guard system is another way that SuperCell has tried to shake things up. Instead of immediately losing a Shield, you can now attack and keep your Shield active for the cost of few hours of protection. You can also attack an unlimited amount once you get down to the last bit of protection called "Guard". There are various nuanced ways you can schedule attacks to take advantage of this mechanic, but I find that generally its good to always be attacking. With League bonuses you should be hitting opponents for close to the resource cap every time you win, but troop costs will offset that slightly. Still, if you are lucky one attack should about offset what you'll take from a loss, and the Shield mechanic allows you to get 3 and sometimes even 4 attacks before it completly runs out if you are obsessing and always ready when troop and spell training complete. Get those attacks in, and you'll keep making farming progress toward your next big upgrade.
Pro Tip Even if an attack costs you more than your remaining Shield time, you'll still get the full Guard time after that fight - so get one in right before the bell.
Pro Tip "Nexting" does not eat time on your Shield, so if you don't see anything you like, you can bail out of matchmaking and not lose any time. This means you can be very picky about who you attack.
Farming Tip # 4: Leverage the Treasury
The new Treasury is hands down the safest way to store mass quanities of resources. Clan level unlocks that expand its capacity make it even better. The loot available to attackers in the Treasury is a flat 3%, regardless of how much you have or what your attackers level is. At higher Clan Castle levels you can store millions of Gold/Elixir and 10k+ of Dark Elixir, and even when your base is wiped you lose only the tiniest fraction. As you grind to save for those expensive upgrades, leave your resources in the Treasury until it is absolutely full.
Farming Tip # 5: Remember The Old Ways
One of the few farming tips that still applies from the pre-December 2015 era, is that it is still not a good idea to have huge quantities of all 3 resources. If anything, this has become even more the case because big fish will be swimming in your league at all times and it is much harder to get a cheap shield and hide from them. The more full your coffers get, the more of a target you become for a 100% from one of the big boys. Try to keep at least one resource low, and ideally two if you can manage it. That way at least some of the toughest attackers may seek juicer prey and if you are lucky a plucky minnow might bash his face on your defenses without taking to much of your candy.
Pro Tip Just like always, it is still a good idea to move your storages around to protect your most precious resources. Bury the good stuff deep, Chief.
Pro Tip You can shape your resource pools somewhat by altering your farming troop loadout. When you are farming Elixir, lean on some of those expensive DE troops to keep your DE total low. When farming DE, take some Dragons and PEKKAs out to play.
Farming Tip # 6: Always Get Your Star Bonus and Loot Cart
After the Big Bang December patch, SuperCell bided their time and kept us happy for about a month with collector boosts - but when that was over they revealed another trick up their sleeve. In a follow up January patch, SuperCell introduced "Star Bonuses" for accumlating wins each day, and a Loot Cart to recoup 20% of the losses from those evil Chieftain that think this game is about taking YOUR hard earned loot. This is a further step in the direction of "attack-based" farming. Losses hurt a little less as long as you are active enough to pick up your loot cart every 12-16 hours, and the Star Bonus makes it very worthwhile to shoot for 2-3 wins per day. When you are farming, even a low loot base is worthwhile to attack if you can score some stars towards your Star Bonus.
Pro Tip Grab the Loot Cart as soon as you see it. If you get attacked more than once before you claim it, only the 20% of the loot from the last attack will be saved.
Pro Tip The Star Bonus can only be received "once per day", but it seems it is on some type of 24 hour rolling timer. As such, you can sometimes become eligible for it again very shortly after you got it the last time if you sometimes take more than a day to get it. You can tell whether you are eligible by looking for the "empty" star indicators above the "Attack" button. If no "empty" stars are present, you are currently on cool down and need to wait.
Time to Get Farming
Clash of Clans Farming is definitely a whole different ball game since the December patch, but there is still plenty of opportunity to loot and pillage. Use these tips and you'll be raking in resources and starting the big upgrades in no time! See any tips we missed? Leave a comment below and let us know!