Clash of Clans TH9 Farming Guide: How to Farm Fast Without Spending Gems

Here's a guide on Clash of Clans written by Unitysharp on CoC forums which tackles on how to farm very fast at Town Hall Level 10.

This image is an exampe of how effective this guide is. I only farmed those Elixir and DE in one raid.

I. Macro Strategy:

1) Preparation for TH 9

So it used to be that maxing TH8 completely (defense, walls, BK 10) was highly recommended before upgrading to TH9, however, ever since TH 10 came out along with new troops for TH 9 - such as Healer lv 4, Balloons lv 6, it is no longer recommended to max TH8 completely before upgrading to TH9.

What you need to do is to max all the defenses, get BK to lv 9 at least, and have at least all lv 7 walls (purple). Because with pink walls you would be attacked quite often as it is perceived to be an obvious mark of "premie". Purple walls is the perceived boundary between "premie" and "well developed" bases at the time of me writing this guide. Also because you want to max your 2 heroes ASAP, so sitting in TH 8 waiting to max walls with sleeping heroes will slow down your progression.

You should go into TH 9 will full storage of DE and elixir - DE for hero upgrades, and elixir for offensive upgrades as well as the 2nd drill.

2) Prioritization of resource farming

After you reach TH 9, the first resource you should be focusing on is actually all 3 resources, with less emphasis on gold:

- You need to be getting DE because you want to keep upgrading 2 heroes non-stop

- You need to be getting elixir so that you can upgrade the lab and camps, as well as the 2nd DE drill. Then there are a bunch of upgrades requiring elixir- troops in the lab, spell factory, and nearly 30 million elixir to max both DE drills.

According to Wikia, the total cost of elixir upgrades for TH 9 is about 85 million (84,948,550):

Once you are done with all the elixir upgrades or nearly done with them, you should then focus on gold & DE at the same time. The main reason is to minimize gem usage. If you focus on gold exclusively at this time, your heroes haven't upgraded to max (lv 30), and your gold farming rate won't be as efficient as it can be. If you focus on DE exclusively at this time then you will have full DE storage tanks a lot of times, and you will need to use gems to speed up hero upgrades in order to accumulate more DE. Lv 30 BK requires 140k DE, Lv 30 AQ requires 150k DE, that is a total of 290k DE to be made within 7 days. But since I was averaging 50k DE per day when I farmed for DE exclusively, I would be sitting on max DE storage for many days wasting precious farming time. Another reason for farming both resources is to save search cost. If you farm for both resources then you wouldn't pass up either a juicy gold base or DE base when it comes up - so you press the Next fewer times for a raid.

Once the heroes are maxed, then you should farm gold exclusively with my Hog Healer strategy (section 3 of this guide), because they are a key part of this strategy and only gets better with the new hero abilities. I was able to farm all lv 10 walls within 6 weeks without boosting.

Then you should be done with maxing TH 9 Congrats!

3) Upgrade Order

The first upgrades you should take on are:

- Lab: upgrading the lab opens up the lab for more troop upgrades, which help you farm faster and also the lab is like a builder, not utilizing it is like keeping a builder sleeping

- Camps: With increased camp space your army becomes more powerful and more successful at grabbing DE, so this should be a no brainer.

- Heroes: Because there are 292.5 days of builder time required (135 days for BK, and 157.5 days for AQ), you should be upgrading AQ non-stop and upgrade BK as 2nd priority. Both should be upgrading almost non-stop until you max them.

- DE Drill: a maxed out DE drill gets you 2400 per day of DE production, over a course of 157.5 days that equals to about BK lv 1-13. So 1 single maxed drill is extremely powerful in saving you time from raiding DE. Get it maxed ASAP without hesitation.

The other upgrades you should focus on would be Xbows, Splash towers, and Air Defense. Those are your key defense weapons so maxing them early on would help you defending on the long run. However, never upgrade more than 1 of the same key defense weapons at the same time to avoid being crippled (i.e. upgrading all air defenses at the same time is a huge no no).

Whenever you find yourself making more gold than you can spend per day, then keep a builder for free to dump gold to walls ASAP. Don't get to the point where you have to wait a day for builders and stop farming. The total builder time for TH 9 is 799 days:

- 506.5 for buildings

- 135 for BK

- 157.5 for AQ

799 builder days / 5 builders = 159.8 builder days. 

The total cost for gold upgrades for TH 9 is about 1.2 billion (178,229,050 for buildings and 1,020,530,000 for walls), and the cost of DE upgrades for TH 9 is 4.6 million (4,617,500).

So assuming that you farm 12 million gold or 30k DE per day (I am just estimating the average farming speed over the course of entire TH9 - in the beginning of TH9 your farming speed should be lower due to weaker troops and smaller camps), then it would take you:

4617k / 30k (DE) + 1199 million / 12 million (gold) = 254days

So there is really no rush to finish all building upgrades ASAP and always keep all builders busy. You can have a builder free for walls just fine.

Now onto the next section about how to get the Dark Elixir at TH9 for your heroes!

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