Ultimate Town Hall 8 Guide: No Grind, No Shine!

Whether you are a Town Hall 8 player or not, I think that this awesome guide will be extremely useful for you!

First off, You should also max all your farming troop upgrades and also key defenses (Mortars, Wizar Towers,…) before going to Town Hall 8. If you are upgrading your Town Hall to level 8, try to farm Gold and Elixir during this time as you will need to use them a lot after getting to Town Hall 8. Then, If you are looking for a good TH8 Farming Base, please give this base a try.

TH8 Building Upgrade Order

I started Town Hall 8 with 4 builders. The fifth builder is great but I think 4 guys are enough at TH8, truly you really need the last one when you reach Town Hall 9 in the future. I prefer boosting Barracks/Spell Factory to buying the 5th builder.

Don’t use all those builders to upgrade defensive buildings at a time otherwise your village will be very weak! Also, you shouldn’t upgrade more than 1 building of a defense type at a time.

What should be upgraded first?

• Laboratory: New troop upgrades are always the most interesting thing we care about after upgrading Town Hall. By upgrading your Laboratory at first, you can farm much easier. This is the most important building you need to care about at all TH levels.
• Dark Spell Factory: I am pretty sure that most Town Hall 7 players really want to get thePoison Spell because of its use. It’s extremely useful in both farming and Clan Wars. 1 Poison Spell is enough to protect from most Clan Castle troops. You will also should upgrade this to level 2 as soon as possible to get the Earthquake Spell and dominate with your the comboZapQuake.
• Clan Castle: The higher level your Clan Castle is, the more Treasure Loot and Clan troops you can hold. A lot of players like upgrading Army Camps before this, that’s not always great. Upgrading 1 Army Camp gives you 5 more housing spaces, upgrading the Clan Castle can give you 5 more housing spaces, more loot space and you can use that 5 housing spaces in defense. It’s much better, right?
• Dark Elixir Drill: Having an extra Dark Elixir Drill is one of the best things at this level. With 2 maxed Drills, you can earn 1,080 DE everyday. That’s so sweet.
• New Defenses: After upgrading to Town Hall 8, you can buy some new defensive buildings (Archer Tower, Wizard Tower, Mortar, Tesla, Air Defense,…). Don’t leave them at level 1, keep upgrading them to at least level 5 as they will increase the overall strength of your base in both Clan Wars and normal matchmaking system.
• Others: Barbarian King to level 10 -> Dark Barrack to level 4 (optional) -> Skeleton Traps ->Air Defenses -> Wizard Towers -> Hidden Teslas -> Air Sweeper -> Archer Towers -> Mortars -> Cannons -> Giant Bombs and Small Bombs -> Walls. I have posted a detailed guide for TH8 Upgrade Order. You can take a look at here for more details.

Tips:

1. Upgrading Tesla: Tesla is one of the most important defenses in Town Hall 9. You should upgrade them all to level 6 before upgrading to hit level 9.  You need to have at least 1 builder working on them most of the time since they take a very long time to upgrade.
2. Level 10 Barbarian King: Upgrading your Barbarian King to at least level 5 is the most important task you should do with your Dark Elixir first before upgrading your Hogs orMinions. He and his special ability will  help you skyrocket your farming speed. You can see why this is so important in my Barbarian King Guide.
3. Walls: Upgrade them when you have nothing to build with your builders or when you are upgrading more than 3 defenses and don’t want anybody touch your loot.

Laboratory Upgrades:

Always be sure that you always have enough Elixir to use in Laboratory to keep it working. A fun fact for you: The time you need for upgrading troops/spells is much longer than the time 4 Buildings need to finish all building upgrades at Town Hall 8.

How should I upgrade my troops?

At this time, I recommend using this order

           then your favorite troops.

Why? You will definitely need either Archer or Goblin (If you like the Milking Strategy) for farming. Dragon attack strategies are still very over-powered at early-mid Town Hall 8 with the ZapQuake combo. After upgrading the Dragons, you will have enough  to upgrade your Hogs (keep working on your Barbarian King at this time). You should get them to level 4 as soon as possible. With level 4 Hogs and level 2 Golem, you can 3 star most Town Hall 8 War Bases at the late TH8 game. The most popular Army Compositions at this time are GoWiPe and GoHogs.

If your Clan are at level 5 or above, level 5 Balloons and level 4 Hog Riders will be very useful for donating.

Town Hall 8 Army Composition

Farming: There are a dozen of good farming strategies for Town Hall 8.

• If you don’t mind to spend hours for farming, you definitely should try the Milking farming strategy. It’s one of the best strategies you can use at any Town Hall level.
• GiBAM is another great choice. It’s one of the fastest-to-train army compositions in Clash of Clans, and very effective of course. With this farming army, you just need about 15 minutes to train a full army (while Barch takes up to 20 minutes). Less time = more loot. At Town Hall 8, I can easily make 2 million loot every hour with this army composition. Why don’t give it a try? Take a look at this guide for more details.
• B.A.M is the fastest-to-train farming army in game. With this strategy, you can easily get the Dark Elixir Storage of most TH8 farming bases. You can take a look at here for more information.

Clan Wars: I have mentioned couples of the best War strategies in the Laboratory Uprades section above, please take a look!

When you finish your buildings, troop upgrades and Walls, and you don’t want to stay at TH8 anymore, want bigger camps, bigger troops, want to own the X-bow and want to see the black castle. It’s time for Town Hall 9!

9. Your top Clash of Clans tips, tricks, and cheats!

9. Your top Clash of Clans tips, tricks, and cheats!

For a casual game, Clash of Clans has a surprising amount of depth. If you've got any personal strategies for winning bigger, faster, and better, leave them in the comments, or sing out for help with particularly tricky situations.

8. Tailor your armies in Clan Wars

8. Tailor your armies in Clan Wars

You've got a whole day to prepare before war kicks off. Use the scout function for your target enemy encampment to get a lay of the land, and build your army around defeating it. If the walls are low level, go land. If the air defense isn't upgraded, get balloons. Make specific requests in your clan chat for the types of troops you want to send in. Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of who you are attacking will help you build the best army to take it on.

7. Punch your weight in Clan Wars

7. Punch your weight in Clan Wars

Attack unstarred villages first, since you and your clan have the most to gain from attacking them. When picking targets for the first time in Clan Wars, let the game's matchmaking figure out a good opponent for you. If you end up succeeding against tougher opponents, your lower level allies may have a hard time dealing with an equivalent increase in challenge. If you go for easy ones, then you're taking away good opponents for those lower-level allies, forcing them into battles they can't win. Punch your weight, and the whole clan wins.

6. Get raiding buddies

6. Get raiding buddies

Once you've maxed-out your Town Hall level, gone through the single-player levels, and rebuilt your castle, you're probably pretty hardcore about the game and ready to start getting into organized clan play. Not only are these great ways to socialize in the game, but coordinated attacks can help you bring in some pretty good loot hauls, too.

Keep in mind that although you can use clans to call in back-up both for attacks and defense, you'll be expected to contribute troops too - it's a team effort, after all. Communicate regularly about what you're up to, get advice from senior members when you're trying to figure out what to do next, and have fun! Your clan may have aspirations for competitive league play, which can get pretty intense.

5. Pick your targets

5. Pick your targets

When finding opponents, there are a few things you want to take into account before you start dropping troops. First, look at their Town Hall level - if it's far lower than yours, you'll be getting a smaller cut of the spoils. You'll get to see exactly how many resources are available for plundering. At the very least, you want to be able to earn back the resources you spend on troops. If resources are all you're after, it's often more profitable to send in a handful of goblins and ultimately lose the battle than win a full-blown assault that costs a lot of resources.

Before you deploy your first troop, be aware of which resources you're going for. If you're going for trophies to climb the ranks, you'll need to be investing a lot of troops to get two or three stars on your raid. You'll also want to hit elixir reserves if you want to replenish (or earn back) resources for troops. Once you've done that, it's simply a matter of targeting the most powerful defenses for those resources. Use giants to draw fire from towers initially, then wall breakers to breach, then more giants to mop up defenses. Barbarians, wizards, and archers can chew on structures once areas have been cleared of cannon and mortar fire, while goblins can bee-line for resources. Be mindful of how many troops you drop in, though. You want to be able to pull off a win while burning through as few as possible.

Remember that you have no direct control over your troops. Know what the unit's favorite targets are and deploy accordingly. Barbarians will run head-first at the nearest building, which isn't great news if there's a well-defended mortar just a little further in. Send the wall breakers and giants in to open new avenues of attack. Smart players will create bases that funnel troops right into areas with a ton of traps, which can blunt your offensive very quickly.

4. Learn the lay of the land

4. Learn the lay of the land

The core strategic mechanic of Clash of Clans combat is to have as many walls between your resources and the outside as possible. To do this, you'll want to make sure there are no gaps in your perimeter, and definitely make sure that there are no spawnable tiles within your base. You'll want to make sure that structures are tight together, so cannons and other defensive structures can cover as many of them as possible.

Putting your buildings into small compartments formed by upgraded walls is vital to slowing an enemy's advance. Piling up multiple layers of walls makes them more susceptible from the splash damage of Wall breakers, so be sure to fill cells with buildings. You'll also want to have your most powerful defenses positioned more closely to the center of your base; provide as much of a buffer zone with other buildings and walls as possible, so attacking troops have to take longer chewing on other stuff to get to the guns. This maximizes the amount of time your defenses are working, and increases your odds of successfully repelling an attack.