5 Quick Tips for Clash of Clans Farming

Clash of Clans Farming: A Guilty Pleasure

If you've been playing for a while, you'll quickly learn that in Clash of Clans farming is a way of life. Many buildings, and even some higher end troops are a huge drain on your pocket book, and the passive methods that SuperCell provides to earn resources just don't scale with the ravenous consumption of your village. Eventually you'll need to start looking beyond the walls of your village for the resources you need. However, another quick realization is that when you are playing at higher trophy levels it's scary out there. Every win is extremely hard fought, and it may be extremely difficult to gain the resources you need to fuel village improvements.

So what do you do? Well you drop some trophies (lose on purpose), and then you curb stomp some lower level villages. At this point you might be feeling pretty good about your new-found approach, but it will quickly become apparent that "farming" can be tougher than it first sounds. SuperCell intentionally designed the possibility of a Pyrrhic Victory - the case in which you win but lose more resources by winning then you gained. So how do you decide who to attack? Keep these 5 quick tips in mind when farming for resources, and you'll be a master at Clash of Clans farming in no time.

Tip # 1: Know Your Troop Cost

When you are looking at resources available in a village, keep in mind how much your attacking army costs. Two good figures to keep in mind are the total cost of your whole army, and 1/3 of that number. This can be particularly helpful when farming for elixir, so you don't make negative progress from a botched assault. There is a pretty good calculator for pricing out different army scenarios here. In particular, be very careful about use of spells when farming for gold. The loots need to be pretty phat for spells to be worth it.

Tip # 2: Know Your Train Rate

Since I'm sure you are following our advice and overtraining, it's a great idea to keep in mind how many troops you'll return to. If you are in an active raiding session and you are leaving your village without full camps, you can count on troops training that full time. That could mean ~5 seconds looking for a target + 30 seconds planning out your attack + 3 minutes beating on your unsuspecting victim. Your mileage will vary depending on various factors, so I consider 3 minutes of troop training to be a good typical value. So for example if you've got four barracks, that means you can spend 28 archers on a raid and return to your village full and ready to raid again immediately. I look at these troops as disposable farmers for quick smash and grabs on exposed resource collectors.

Tip # 3: Have a Goal

Seeing an enemy base with a large cache of resources can present a psychological challenge during the tense 30 seconds you have to decide about whether to attack. When farming for higher level upgrades, it helps to focus on one of the three resource types as a goal and make that your singular focus for several reasons:

For all these reasons it pays to be single-minded and pass on villages that don't have much of your goal resource, even though it hurts a little.

Tip # 4: Float in a Range

The difference of a few hundred trophies can have various impacts on your farming effectiveness. For example:

Once you find a range that seems to be working for you stay there. Since you may lose trophies frequently when focusing on resources, be sure to mix in the occasional raid for trophies to keep you in the range. It is easier to do a little bit at a time, then all at once when you realize you are hundreds of trophies away from where you want to be.

Tip # 5: Know when to hold, when to fold

In many ways Clash of Clans farming raids are like a poker hand played against another player. Neither of you know exactly what the other is packing when the raid starts, money is on the line, and there is an element of chance even when one side starts with the advantage. As time passes during the encounter, what once seemed an easy mark might become a bigger challenge then you expected. In these cases, a good farmer knows when to hold 'em (with spells or larger or more expensive troop deployments) and when to fold 'em (minimize losses and move on to the next raid).

If you keep these tips in mind you'll be racking up some resources in no time. (And don't forget to protect your winnings by leaving your town hall out in the cold.)