At Town Hall 7, you get a Dark Barracks and Dark Elixir storage. However, you do not get a Dark Elixir drill. Without this collector, is it practical to train these troops?
Clash-of-clans – Are dark troops practical to train at town hall 7
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Related Solutions
The Dark Elixir storage is where Dark elixir is stored and is similar to Elixir and Gold storage buildings. Dark Elixir is used to train Dark Elixir Troops through the Dark Barracks, as well as buy and upgrade Heroes.
Dark Elixir Troops are extremely expensive to train (because of the rarity of Dark Elixir), but are also generally more powerful than normal troops. Dark Elixir troops reside in the Army Camp, similar to normal troops e.g. Barbarian, archer etc.
Heroes are super powerful troops that do a lot of damage. They are immortal, but if injured in battle must sleep to regenerate their health. There are two heroes, the Barbarian King and the Archer Queen.
You can acquire Dark Elixir from raiding, or with the Dark Elixir Drill which is first unlocked at town hall 7 and a second one at town hall 8.
As of the Dark Spell Factory Update (1/7/15), Dark Elixir can also be spent on Dark Spells which are simpler spells which although are more specialized, are more powerful (compared power-per-storage-space to their elixir counterparts) and take up less space.
I wouldn't really classify a base as "mature" or "premature". Even if you upgraded too early, it just means you've got to be a little more careful with spending your elixir. At 1300 trophies, I would have to say that you're doing just fine.
Remember that the difference in Town Hall level will change how much loot you get off other players. Taken directly from the wiki:
- 0 - 100%
- 1 - 90%
- 2 - 50%
- 3 - 25%
- 4+ - 5%
I also got to TH8 relatively recently, and I can tell you the difference in available loot from when I was using TH7 was definitely daunting. However it isn't anything significant to fret over. As long as you can maintain relatively decent income, you shouldn't have any issues continuing to upgrade. Remember that even if you maxed out your TH7 upgrades before hitting TH8, you'll still hit a slump as you progress out of early TH8.
Attacking
Trophy range:
- For early TH8, I would recommend Silver 1 through Gold 2.
- For late TH8 where you are near the end of the upgrade path for your defenses, I would recommend Gold 1 through Crystal 3 as the optimal farming.
Attack strategies:
For earning resources, I would recommend the Barch attack pattern. Essentially this attack pattern consists of the following:
- 60-80 Barbarians
- 60-80 Archers
- 60-80 Goblins
- 3-4 Giants
The idea behind this strategy is to "snipe" the resource collectors of a given opponent. Many base layouts push the resource collectors outside of all walls, while heavily protecting the storages within the walls. You're looking for those towns with a resource count generally 60k+, nearly empty storages, and high-level collectors that are full. Using the barbarians as meat shields, you would throw down a line of barbarians to attack the collectors, and follow up with a line of goblins, then archers to snipe them from safety. If you decide the barbarians aren't enough, you can throw in a giant or two as extra meat shields.
With this strategy, I can easily nab over a million of both gold and elixer in just a couple of hours playing. If I really sat down and focused on farming, I would say this strategy would easily bring in 1 million gold/elixer per hour.
Here is a popular YouTube video demonstrating a variant of this strategy with just archers and goblins:
Now one thing you'll want to learn is how to lure a clan castle. Many players with a higher trophy count will have troops waiting for you. It only takes a handful of wizards or archers to completely annihilate your giants regardless of what healing you do.
To lure out a clan castle, place a single archer within range of the castle. If troops come out, then place another archer also within range. Keep placing archers until ALL the clan castle troops have come out. Then, place an archer further away from the base or at a corner building, you might need more archers if the first dies. The idea here is to get the clan castle troops out of the way from those pesky mortars and anything else that might stomp down your fragile archers. Once you've gotten the troops out of the range of cannons, archer towers, or wizard towers, place a giant and a semi-circle of archers to mow down the troops. This should clear up any unwanted visitors.
Defending
At TH8, you're now more susceptible to those dangerous TH9 troops more than ever. Players at TH9 get level 6 troops, and are more likely to employ heavy use of Hog Ridgers, Dragons, and the occasional balloon run.
- At Silver 3 to Gold 2, you're going to be attacked more by heavy combinations of barbarians, archers, goblins, and minions.
- At Gold 3 to Crystal 1 you'll start seeing heavier use of hog riders and dragons.
Currently I sit at Gold 1. Out of my last 10 attacks, 3 utilized Hog Riders, 1 utilized Dragons and Goblins, and the rest were a combination of barbarians, archers, goblins, and minions. What this means for you is that your base layout is going to need to be able to protect against a wide array of possible attacks. Luckily you'll continue to see more updated base layouts directly at the Supercell forums, there's plenty of people there that are constantly coming up with new base layouts for various purposes. At this point, you'll want a Farming base to minimize loss of resources while trading off trophies instead.
In no particular order of preference, here's a few good farming layouts to help you get started:
Of course I would suggest always looking around on the forums if you're looking for something different to work with. These bases typically get updated every once in a while as things get improved. Some bases may work better at early TH8 than others, so try out a couple and see what works best for you.
Related Topic
- Clash-of-clans – Maxout at town hall 8, or move on to level 9
- Clash-of-clans – Is it possible to get dark elixir before Town Hall 7
- Clash-of-clans – Town Hall – No Gold/Elixir/Dark Elixir Received
- Clash-of-clans – How is dark elixir distributed among storage buildings
- Clash of Clans – Strategy When Both Dark Barracks Are Under Upgrade
Best Answer
The answer is... kinda. DE troops aren't going to be the backbone of your army at TH7, but they can still be useful anyhow.
You can earn dark elixir, either through clan wars or via raiding other bases. So if you train DE troops and use that to raid/win DE, technically that's a win.
Minions are by far the cheapest flying unit in the game, in terms of both resources and camp space. Combining them with the barbs and archers in the "BARCH" farming strategy makes the also popular BAM troop combo. The minions allow you to pierce deeper into bases your barbs & archers couldn't normally get into. This can help you hit DE drills and storages you wouldn't normally be able to otherwise.
Also it's worth noting that you can use overtraining to store your DE in your Dark Barracks when you're not playing. (the tip is about regular elixir, but DE works the same way) Just queue up DE troops when your camps are full and the elixir will be spent, but you can cancel them and get the DE back later.
This can help you save up or protect quantities of DE that you would otherwise lose to raiding. Whether or not you consider this "training DE troops" is kind of questionable, since you'll generally cancel the troops rather than train them.
In my personal experience at TH7, I used minions occasionally (usually I had around 10-15 trained at any given time) to hit DE storages during raids. I managed to earn my Barbarian King this way before ever having a drill.