Tips and tricks for new players in Clash of Clans

Clash of Clans is a surprisingly strategic base-building game that offers a deeper battle system than its simple aesthetic suggests. For new players, there are a lot of things to learn, and it takes time to understand some of the more complex strategies and systems in the game.

It’s easy to trip up at the beginning of a new village. You will be tempted to do some actions that you think will benefit you faster. We’re here to make sure that this doesn’t happen to you with a number of good practices that will have you building a new village like a pro. 

Here are six essential tips and tricks to help you with your new town in Clash of Clans.

Don’t rush upgrades to your town hall

One of the biggest mistakes that new players make is looking to upgrade their town hall as quickly as possible, a method known as rushing. This can unlock new buildings, but it’s something that can put you at a significant disadvantage if you have not built up and upgraded your existing buildings first.

The strength of buildings scale by level as you go up in the town hall levels, as does the strength of troops that can be unlocked and upgraded. Matchmaking for multiplayer battles will not place you against similar strength of troops and buildings. It matchmakes against others of a similar townhall level.

This means that if you don’t upgrade everything else before upgrading your town hall, you will face against players who are close in town hall level, and also against players with upgraded troops that will devastate your lower level defenses. Not only this, but all loot is reduced against lower-level town halls, so catching back up with upgrades is incredibly difficult.

Before going for town hall upgrades, make sure everything else is at its highest level to ensure that you don’t put yourself at a big disadvantage against similarly leveled players.

Don’t worry about climbing leagues yet

The competitive types will want to show that they are the best. The more trophies that the opponent you are facing in a multiplayer battle has over your total, the more trophies on offer for beating them, while the opposite is true if they are lower than you in league trophies. But in order to maximize your early growth, you should consider avoiding looking to rank up past Silver I. 

The higher up the leagues you go, the more likely you are to only find players who are active or will have full upgrades with carefully constructed bases, and the harder it will be to take down bases that will offer some more significant loot. Attacking bigger bases and losing isn’t the worst thing that you can do, but make sure that there is at least enough elixir loot available to cover the cost of the army that you’re using while also gaining the same amount in gold. Once you start getting to around town hall level 7 or 8, you will start getting harder to find less fortified bases, and this is when you can start to focus more on trophies with bigger armies.

Save your gems for builders 

Gems are the game’s premium currency, and you can use them for a number of things, such as finishing upgrades or production of armies. But as much as the temptation is there to spend your gems, don’t.

Gems are also the currency used to purchase builders. Unless you are happy to spend actual money in the game to unlock them or purchase more gems to unlock them, you’re going to need to save your gems to help buy them. 

Related: How to get free gems in Clash of Clans

The builders are your gateway to progress. The quicker that you can unlock the extra builders, the faster you can maximize your base improvements. It might not make much of a difference in the early base levels, but you will be thankful that you saved for them as you progress, where you will need to manage and upgrade a much higher number of buildings at the same time. If you are frugal enough and can focus on gem collecting, you can reach five builders by about town hall level 8.

Repair your Clan Castle and join a clan

Being in a clan has a number of benefits. Not only can you join a community of other players and find or join friends, but you may also be picked to participate in clan wars. This is helpful to you for several reasons. Not only do you pick up some valuable experience in attacking players for later levels as you get two attacks per war without losing any of your own loot, but you also get rewarded loot for beating others once the war has concluded.

You can also make a request from other players in your clan to provide troops to be stored in your own clan castle. These can then either be used in attacks against other players or to help defend your own base when you get attacked. Joining a clan that is a higher level also allows you access to clan perks, such as a level upgrade to troops that are donated to you if the clan is level five. As clans are the main premise of the game, getting into a clan is one of the first things you should do once you can afford the 10,000 gold cost to repair the clan castle, usually achievable at town hall level 3.

Don’t ignore your walls

Of all the buildings in your village, the walls are the easiest to neglect for upgrades. They can get expensive to upgrade later in the game, but they are worth the cost because of the protection that they provide.

For the first few levels, they see less influence as you typically have a limit on the number of walls available to you, and you won’t have enough to protect your entire village. But if you can put them around your key buildings, such as your town hall, resource storage or defenses, they will prove invaluable to keeping enemies from taking three stars from you. The more powerful your walls, the longer they will take to get through them to your resources.

It also forces players in the higher levels to resort to aerial tactics as it becomes harder to protect enemy Wall Breakers from your defense buildings. It might just be enough to stop them from taking all of your resources, but you need to get on top of your walls early, as the longer you leave them without upgrades, the higher the costs of bringing them up to speed will spiral. 

Need resources? Play the tutorials

Once you reach town hall level 3, you will start to gain access to tutorials for the town hall in the level above yours. They give some fairly basic strategies for taking out bases with the troops that are available in that level. The strategies can be helpful, but you can usually learn more by studying your own attacks and see where you could improve.

But the great thing about the tutorials is that they mention loot numbers. This is free loot that you will receive by completing each tutorial and seeing as they take no more than a few minutes, and they don’t use any of your own troops, it’s free resources for you. And hey, you may still learn something.