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My name is Gibson Vasela. I am a freelance writer who has been playing video games for almost 20 years now. I play all kinds of games, but I especially love immersive sims and RPGs.
Reviewed by Benjamin Barr
In the world of Clash of Clans, progression is everything. You will be constantly upgrading things, from your buildings to your troops and everything in between. It is vital to know what you should prioritize when upgrading and what you shouldn’t worry about until much later. But that begs the question… What upgrades should you prioritize? Should you upgrade your troops first, or your army camps? Should you upgrade your defensive towers first, or your walls? We will be answering all of these questions and much more in this Clash of Clans upgrades guide.
Building Upgrade Priority: Ranked from Most to Least Important
Without further delay, let’s jump right into the guide!
1/8
Resource Extractors
First and foremost, the most important thing that you should upgrade above all else are your resource extractors. This includes gold mines, elixir extractors, and dark elixir extractors. All three of these buildings (but especially the first two) are extremely vital in making sure that you are successful. The reason for this is obvious: resources are needed to upgrade things. And if you don’t have a lot of resources, you will be left behind progression-wise.
If you upgrade them as soon as possible, you will have an abundance of resources before long. This will be especially true if all of your extractors and mines are upgraded as high as they can go. This will enable you to purchase expensive upgrades for other buildings. And you will have more freedom in the units you want to train for your army. This makes a defeat much less punishing as you can easily train more units with your resources.
From my experience, enemy players do not take that many resources if they manage to destroy your base. Even if you are regularly losing defensive battles, it will not put that big of a dent in your coffers, especially if you are constantly producing more resources to refill them. Simply put, you can afford to upgrade your defensive buildings later on.
2/8
Resource Storage Buildings
What good is producing so many resources if you don’t have any place to put them? The next thing that you should prioritize upgrading in Clash of Clans are buildings that store your resources. The three buildings in this category are gold, elixir, and dark elixir storages. Town Halls also affect how many resources you can have, but generally you’ll want to make sure you have all your core upgrades completed (such as farming troops, spells unlocked/upgraded, army camps upgraded, and basic hero levels) before upgrading your Town Hall.
If your storage buildings are all full, then you will not be able to collect any more resources from your mines and extractors. Soon, your resource-gathering buildings will become backed up and will be unable to collect any more resources, effectively halting your production! This is a very inefficient. In order to combat this you should always make sure that your storage buildings are well-upgraded.
Not to mention that as you progress through Clash of Clans, upgrades will gradually get more and more expensive. Sometimes an upgrade will cost so much that even if your coffers were completely full, you wouldn’t have enough resources to purchase the upgrade. This may become evident when you go to upgrade certain late-game defensive towers as well as your town hall.
3/8
Army Camps
Army camps are the buildings that are responsible for housing your units. Each unit will take up a certain amount of space inside of your army camps, and more powerful units will require more space. Because of this, it is imperative that you keep all of your army camps as upgraded as possible. It’s more important to upgrade camps over barracks. Having more troops to choose from is nice, but what’s the point if you have nowhere to put them?
Not to mention, early-game units in larger numbers can be just as effective in certain scenarios as fewer amount of late-game troops. So if you plan on doing PvP or PvE regularly, then you are definitely going to want to keep your army camps nice and upgraded. I recommend upgrading them after your resource storage units are upgraded as if you are going to be pillaging a lot, you will need a place to store all of your stuff.
As your army camps get bigger and bigger, you will gradually be able to experiment with different unit load outs. This is because you have more space, and can house stronger units without them entirely pushing out your weaker ones. Being able to try out different compositions of armies is very important in Clash of Clans, as not every army will do well in every situation. But what good is having a big army if your troops aren’t up to the task…?
4/8
Troops
Next up on this Clash of Clans: Upgrades Guide, we have Troops. Troops are the bread and butter of Clash of Clans. They are needed in order to raid enemy clans, both in single-player and multiplayer. Troops can be used to destroy buildings and steal valuable loot from your enemies, which is in turn needed to upgrade other things in your play through of the game. Did you know that you can upgrade your units using your resources?
It’s true! If you place down a laboratory, you can then interact with it in order to upgrade a specific unit type. These unit upgrades will cost either elixir or dark elixir, depending on the unit. When you upgrade a unit, they will gain increased stats. Their health and damage output will be increased, allowing them to be much more effective in combat scenarios. So as you can imagine, you are going to want to make sure they are nice and upgraded.
As for specific troops that you should upgrade, it really depends on where you are in your playthrough. For those of you still in the early game, archers and Giants are a good place to start. You can create an army that consists of these two units, deploying giants first so they can tank damage from enemy towers, and deploying archers second so they can safely fire their bows from behind the giants. This is a great army composition that can be made even better when you upgrade them!
5/8
Heroes
Clash of Clans features a special, unique unit type known as Heroes. Heroes are special units that can be used both to defend your base from enemy players and to raid enemy camps. They include the Barbarian King, the Archer Queen, the Royal Champion, and much more. You can add these units to your clan by placing their respective buildings in your base using dark elixir, one of the currency types mentioned earlier in this guide.
These buildings can also be upgraded to improve their effectiveness, giving them higher stats that allow them to deal more damage and stay alive for longer. It’s a great idea to upgrade Heros since they can be used both defensively and offensively. They will protect your base from enemy raids while you are away. And when you come back, you can bring them with you to raid an enemy camp.
The first Hero unit that you will unlock is the Barbarian King, so make sure to upgrade him as soon as you can. The Archer Queen is the Hero unit that you unlock after the Barbarian King. I would consider the Archer Queen to be better, as she can do a ranged attack and can temporarily turn invisible. Because of that, I would recommend that you prioritize upgrading her over the Barbarian King.
6/8
Defensive Towers
Next up, we have Defensive Towers. “Defensive Towers” refers to defensive structures that are not traps, walls, or Hero units. This includes buildings such as cannons, archer towers, wizard towers, etc. They make up the bulk of your defenses and are needed in order to help repeal enemy attacks on your base. So as you can imagine, they are extremely important to have and should be upgraded as often as possible.
When you upgrade these buildings, they will often gain both more damage and more range. But as you level them up more and more, eventually you will unlock special options for how you want them to function. For example, once you upgrade the cannon to level 7, you will then be given the option to gear it up. If you decide to gear up a cannon, it will have increased damage at the cost of decreased attack range.
As for which defensive buildings you should upgrade first, generally I’d say the Archer Tower should be prioritized. This is because it is a versatile building that is (relatively) inexpensive to upgrade. Archer Towers will attack both ground and air units, making it good to have for a solid defense against all enemy units. You should try to upgrade towers that target ground units and towers that target air units equally as often.
7/8
Spell Factory
A Spell Factory is a special building type that allows you to produce and store various different spells. Spells are consumable items that you can drop on the map during a battle for a wide variety of different effects. Some spells will support your troops, healing them or giving them various buffs. Other spells can be used to deal damage to enemy units or buildings, which can be a lifesaver in certain situations.
Spells are an easy way to boost the effectiveness of your army. While having high-tier units and more of them is what will make or break a fight, having the right spells can push your chances of success up even higher. That is why it is so important that you make sure to level up your Spell Factory as much as you possibly can. The earlier spells are still very useful, but the higher-tier ones are really great.
The first spell I recommend you use is the Rage Spell. This will buff the damage and speed of your troops, allowing them to tear through defenses much more easily. Another great spell is the Jump Spell. You can place it down on top of your units, and every troop in its radius will be able to jump over walls and get inside the enemy base. Lastly, we have the Earthquake Spell. This will summon a mighty earthquake that does damage to all buildings within its radius (except storage buildings).
8/8
Walls
Walls are the last building type we’ll discuss in our Clash of Clans upgrades guide. Walls act as defensive barriers that are responsible for keeping enemy units out of your base. They have a limited health bar that enemies can break through, meaning they are not invulnerable. However, even if they are not invincible, they are still very valuable to have. This is because they will slow down enemy units. This maximizes a defensive tower’s time to deal damage to enemy units, increasing your chances of victory.
There really isn’t a lot to it when it comes to upgrading walls. Their upgrade paths are very linear, and the only thing that is increased when you upgrade a wall is the amount of health that it has and it’s visual appearance. I would recommend that you always upgrade your walls to their highest level currently possible before upgrading the town hall. You can use both elixir and gold to upgrade walls, so use whichever one you have the most of.
I recommend that every base have at least two layers of walls. You can have one wall around your town hall, and then another wall towards the edge of your base. Keep some towers behind the walls to allow them some protection from enemy units. You can also consider adding certain buildings in front of the walls in order to get enemy units to attack those first instead of the wall. Just make sure you only do buildings like resource extractors and builders’ huts, not towers or storage units.
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We hope that you found this Upgrades Guide for Clash of Clans informative! What are your thoughts on our recommendations? Did you have any questions for us? Fire away down in the comments! And make sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter. We offer regular guides, features, and much more.
Happy gaming!
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