Clash of Clans Farming Maxed Queen (TH9) Guide

Clash of Clans Farming Maxed Queen (TH9) Guide by Valhalla

So I’ve been seeing quite few posts recently about farming a maxed queen at TH9, and as I’m one of the many masochistic bastards that have done this grind, I thought I’d put something together that I wish I had had as a new TH9. To start, there are many ways of accomplishing this, and I’m just going to go through a few strategies that have helped me along the way. I’ve linked some base examples and explained some attack strategies, but they are only examples, you’ll want to adjust them for your particular situation.

Background

I’ve started playing since December of 2013, and upgraded to TH9 in July of 2014 (as a maxed 8, sans troops—I actually only recently unlocked lvl 3 Pekkas). I didn’t realize how long it was going to take to max the queen for TH9 until late August (for your reference it is 6½ weeks to lvl 15, then 15 weeks to lvl 30, for a total of 21½ weeks) and she has been almost consistently upgrading from August until last week (farming has been a whole lot easier since!). I’ve posted my bases below (and in a previous post) so I won’t go much detail as to how they work here. I’ve farmed all the way up to champs (or more accurately got to champs and then did DE dives all the way back to Crystal) so I have an idea of what to expect across the trophy range farming wise. My GG/EE/HH is: 1.03B/1.08B/5.05M. I have a lvl 27 king (going to 28) and 204 lava walls.

Keep in mind that this entire post assumes that you have maxed TH9 farming troops/offensive capabilities.

I. First steps – Minimizing Losses – Have lvl 6 Drills

To minimize DE losses to other raiders, you’re going to want to have 3 farming bases. One that has maximum protection for your DE (for when you have above 40k-which is around the point where your DE is capped to raiders to around 2.4-3k depending on their th lvl), another for protecting both resources as well as your DE, and a third that protects your DE and one resource. When you log off, check your resource situation and select the base that makes the most sense. Over time, adjust the bases defensively according to what attacks you see the most. Additionally, you may not care if you lose a couple hundred thousand gold/elixir if your DE is safer. This is personal, and you’ll have to make that decision based on your playing style.

You want to increase the chances of someone sniping your TH each time you log off. To this end, each of your three bases should utilize decorations to indicate the TH is NOT trapped, and I suggest putting the TH in the north corner so it is easier to locate for nexters (its arguable which corner is the best, but the southern is undoubtedly the worst, as nexters’ troop bars cover it).

Lvl 6 drills. Have them. They will net you 4.8k DE per DAY. 33.6k a week, or a significant portion of those upgrades. No excuse not to have them.

II. Gems—to Buy or Not to Buy

You’re going to have a difficult time getting the DE before each upgrade you need unless you either play for upwards of 8 hours every day, or you gem your barracks for 2 hour “gem sessions.” I highly suggest the latter. They are a ton of fun, and you can make a TON of DE quickly, and without the possibility of it being raided right away after you log off. Depending on your trophy count, you can reasonably expect to get between 20-40k DE for each 2 hour session, once you get the hang of it. This is particularly important once your queen approaches level 30, because those upgrades are PRICEY (lvl 25 queen is 125k, and a lvl 30 is 150k). Luckily she takes a week to upgrade for those upper levels, so you will have some time to get it. In short, having gems makes your coc life a lot easier, and a lot more fun.

However, that doesn’t mean you have to buy them (but if you can afford it, good for you). Unless you were an accomplished TH sniper as a TH8 and below, you have 3k gems waiting for you at th9: 1k for the masters push, and 2k for the champs push (enough for 75 gem sessions, or approximately 1.875mil DE, assuming you just boost barracks). Masters is not exceedingly difficult to reach and can be accomplished with barch, however, I found loonion to be easier. Pushing to champs as a TH9 is a different beast altogether (I did it almost exclusively with lavaloonion), but many have accomplished it, and there are far better guides for that on this sub than I could write. I made the push to champs over the winter holidays, when you could boost offense for 1 gem each. Supercell will likely have a similar event at some point during the year. (Where is our 1 gem update boooost, supercell???) Take full advantage these gem promos to earn more achievement gems!

A quick note on gemming queen upgrade time: unless you are farming insane amounts of DE by doing multiple gem sessions a day, the bottleneck is not going to be queen upgrade time, its going to be getting DE. So save it for gem sessions. If you’re in a hardcore war clan (though less important now that you can sit out wars) you may want to gem those upgrade times, but this is all personal preference and is largely influenced by financial constraints or lack of them. I really don’t know what the point of saying this is, if you’ve read this far you’re probably not going to just buy a lvl 30 queen.

III. DE Farming Attack Strategies—Find What Works for You

I’m just going to focus on 3 attack strategies that I used to get my queen to 30, so keep in mind there are many others (and I hope other redditors will post theirs below as well). When deciding on a strategy, or when switching between them, time is the major consideration. Each farming strategy is effective at farming DE, but you’ll want to choose one based on how much time you have to play and with what you’re comfortable. As with all farming, base selection is HUGE. Be prepared to next to find the right base for each attack style. Because I’ve been consistently farming lavas throughout TH9, my general rule of thumb is I’ll attack if it’s a collector base with 200k+/200k+ (or less if I don’t have to use a whole army) or 1k+ of easily gettable DE. I’ll admit, I still take more chances than I should, but now I have that disgustingly good Queen to save the day.

Again, keep in mind, each of these strategies was effective for me and the way I’ve learned how to attack. You may play very differently than me, and are probably even better at getting that sweet, sweet, dark juice. If you choose to try these out, you will still, in all likelihood, want to adjust these trophy range/builds/strategies to fit your attack style. You WILL fail at all of these strategies when you first try them and throughout the entire process from time to time. Learn from your mistakes by rewatching replays and thinking critically about how could have improved each attack. (The shear number of people that don’t do this amazes me-especially in war.)

1. Barch (no wbs)

Timing: Best when you can play in 2+ hour sessions, frequently

Trophy Range: Best between 1700-1900, but still very good up to 2400 (note that you will likely want 6-10 wbs if you are going to farm in higher leagues). You will not have to worry about keeping your trophies up using this strategy, unless you are taking many DE dives (which you don’t have to).

Build: 2 barracks barbs, 2 barracks archers. Spells: 1-2 heals, 1-2 rage, 1 jump. Note that you can sub in some giants for barbs without a huge hit to the build time. Up to you.

Base selection: Best when the DE storage is in the first or second layer. Avoid deep lvl 6 mortars/wizzie towers

General strategy: Check, and if necessary, pull and kill the cc. Funnel your troops into the DE by taking out outside buildings on either side of the entry point. Send in small waves of barbs followed by archers to help negate splash damage

2. Giawi-barch (+healer(s) with the new update?)

Timing: Best when you have some shit to do, but can still log on fairly frequently, every half hour-45 minutes or so.

Trophy Range: Best between 2000-2600. Though very effective in lower cup ranges as well.

Build: 8-14 giants, 6-10wbs, 8-12 wizzies, rest barch. Spells: 1 jump, 1-2 rage, 1-2 heal)

Base selection: You can get a little deeper into bases with this, assuming proper funneling and you can kill the enemy cc without sacrificing much troop space, so central DE storages can be taken in most situations. Mortars/wizzie towers are less of a consideration as long as you can have your giants tank them.

General strategy: Use giants in two groups along one side of a base to soak up splash, funnel in wibarch to get to the core. Spells are very helpful in keeping your troops up long enough to get that sweet DE. If you run across a collector base, use 1-2 giants to tank for barch to pick off collectors. Try to save wbs and wizzies for next attack.

3. Loonion

Timing: Best when you have 1+ hour(s) between attacks, mostly for spells (though not strictly necessary if farming at lower trophy counts.

Trophy Range: Best between 2200-2700 (for higher DE offerings), but is generally good anywhere.

Build: 16-32 loons, 70-30 minions. My go-to is a 20/60 split, for timing purposes, but I like to play around with higher loon counts too when I have the time. I generally don’t like making hounds because of the DE cost, but I do for overnight armies/war practice. Generally 3 hounds, sometimes 4 or 5, depending how many IPAs Ive during the course of the evening.

Base selection: Almost any TH8 can be 3 starred if done well, and if there is an easy cc draw and/or low air Ds and the queen is not centralized, TH9s and TH10s (look for single target infernos for 10s) can be done effectively too.

General Strategy: Get the CC draw as cheaply as possible and kill the AQ at the same time if you can. If you can take out an Air D during this process for a couple extra loons, do it. Attack the side where the DE is closest with a wide swath of loons, followed immediately by rage spells. Drop minions in behind. For collector bases, drop in a few loons, followed by minions on all of the mines/pumps/drills around the base.

IV. Zapping DE Storages: Some Considerations

Can you zap effectively to get enough DE to fully upgrade your queen? Probably, but it will likely take longer, and you’re more prone to revenge. Also, IMO it’s slimy, and most of all, it’s fucking boring.

You could augment any of the above strategies with different degrees of effectiveness and bring 4 lightnings instead (although loonion would be much more difficult). However, any time you find a base with 2-2.5k+ DE, you’re going to use 2 hours of spell build time to zap it for roughly 1-1.5k DE, perhaps a little more if they don’t have a maxed DE storage. Not only is that a lot of build time for spells, but you will likely find that you will sit on full spells for quite a while if you’re farming in the lower cup ranges because you’re not going to find as many bases offering huge amounts of DE. To use zaps effectively you have to sit up at higher trophy ranges (made harder because you can’t lose as much and you have no other offensive spells to help out) and you would almost certaintly have to gem your spell factory to make the same gains utilizing other spells.

I suppose the best way of doing this (don’t know, haven’t tried it) would be to boost spell factory, and snipe THs in crystal 1-2 then take a DE dive whenever you find a base with 2.5k+ DE with 3-4 lightning spells. It would take no skill, just patience. Sound like fun?

An additional consideration is the amount you’ll lose to revenges. As you’ve probably noticed, people on this sub LOATH having their DE zapped. Some understand when you’re a th7 (though now they have their own drills), but if you’re a fellow 9 or even a 10, people will despise you if you come through and zap DE. It doesn’t happen as frequently when you’re up in cups and you have a maxed DE storage, but when it does happen I for one go out of my way to make their life as miserable as possible. If I have a DE zapper in my defense log, I will check to see if they are revengable every time I have a bigger army (or if they’re a th7-8 when I have any army). I will then proceed to get all of their DE (even if it’s less than they stole from me) and I try to leave before I reach 40% so someone else they have zapped can come along and take them again. I’d say I get to around 40% of these folks before they leave my defense log. If you’re good about playing in sessions, this likely won’t have a huge effect on you over time, but you will take hits every now and again.

Conclusion

I hope this helps, and if you have any questions or comments, please post them below. I’ll respond to most if not all of them.

TL;DR minimize DE/resource losses with effective farming baseS and have lvl 6 drills; get achievement gems by trophy pushing to champs for easier farming; find an attack style/cup count that works for your schedule; don’t zap DE storages you slimy fuck