Clash of Clans: Barbarian King Altar

This colossal menace soaks up huge amounts of damage and bashes everything in his path. He guards his territory fiercely when defending, and can launch into devastating rage when attacking once his Iron Fist ability is unlocked

The Barbarian King Altar is basically a Barracks/Army Camp/Laboratory for the Barbarian King. When he isn't engaged in battle, the Barbarian King can be seen pacing around the Altar, or sleeping on top of it to regenerate health.

You need a free Builder and at least 10,000 Dark Elixir to build the Altar. Once the Altar has been placed, the Barbarian King is summoned immediately. The placement of the Altar is instantaneous and no additional resources are required to summon the Barbarian King.

If you wish to see the Barbarian King's targeting range, tap either on him or on his Altar

Clash of Clans: Dark Spell Factory

The Dark Spell Factory allows the player to create Dark Spells using Dark Elixir. There are currently three Dark Spells: the Poison Spell, Earthquake Spell, and Haste Spell. It was released on the update that came at July 1, 2015.

All existing dark spells take up one housing space in the spell storage, whereas elixir spells take two spaces. The total spell storage capacity is shared between the Spell Factory and the Dark Spell Factory. The Dark Spell Factory adds one spell storage capacity to the total spell storage capacity.

Clash of Clans: Spell Factory

The Spell Factory allows the player to create spells using Elixir. There are currently 5 permanently in-the-game spells: the Lightning Spell, Healing Spell, Rage Spell, Jump Spell and the Freeze Spell. There was one limited edition holiday-themed spell called the Santa's Surprise that was released around Christmas 2012.

The Spell Factory takes up a 3x3 space. The spells themselves can be used in battle by selecting a previously created spell and clicking on the enemy's village. The spell can be placed anywhere, bypassing walls or buildings, and it cannot be destroyed by any defenses. Although multiple instances of a single spell may be created (up to the maximum 5 a maxed Spell Factory can hold), each spell instance can only be used once. Once you have used a spell, you must create it again in order to use it in your next battle.

You will not lose your spells if your Spell Factory is destroyed during the defense of your village, nor will its destruction disrupt or pause spell creation in any way. If you upgrade the Spell Factory while it is creating a spell, the spell continues building during the upgrade, and will be available as soon as the upgrade completes. It is not possible to start building new spells during the upgrade. If you have any spells already created when you start the upgrade, you will be able to use these in a raid.

You can speed up the creation of spells with gems and there is also an ability to boost spell production for 2 hours. The boost option costs 10 Gems and will increase the speed of the boosted Spell Factory by a factor of four. Note: The boost timer will continue to count down even if you aren't creating spells, so don't boost your Spell Factory until you are ready to use it. When you click to boost the Spell Factory a clock appears for a few seconds.

Clash of Clans: Laboratory

The Laboratory is the facility where you go to upgrade your Troops and Spells. For a single research fee of Elixir or Dark Elixir, a chosen unit's health, damage and cost will increase by a small amount. If you decide to upgrade your Laboratory while there's a research going on, it will continue the research progression. If you happen to be logged on when the lab upgrade completes, it may appear that the upgrade picks up where it left off. Log out and back on to see your troop upgrade progress reach its proper progress level.

You cannot cancel the research while it is in progress, but you can immediately complete the upgrade (usually for a rather substantial amount of Gems).Laboratories emit a purple (level 1-6), blue (level 7) or red (level 8) glow from the entrances when upgrading troops or spells.

You do not need an available builder to upgrade troops or spells. Different levels of Troops will receive graphical changes. However, when you are upgrading a troop, the laboratory interface doesn't show what it looks like after the upgrade.

Clash of Clans: Dark Barracks

Dark Barracks allow you to train Dark Elixir Troops using Dark Elixir. These troops will be stationed in Army Camps. Dark Barracks are unable to function while being upgraded, considerably increasing the time it takes to train your armies; this should be taken into consideration when deciding to upgrade a Dark Barracks. Any Troops that are queued up inside will start training when the upgrade has been finished.
Once you have queued Troops in your Dark Barracks, you can instantly complete their training with Gems; the amount required is directly proportional to the amount of time remaining to finish training normally.

There is also an option to boost Troop production for 2 hours. The boost option costs 10 Gems and will increase the training speed of the boosted Dark Barracks by a factor of 4.
The boost timer will continue to count down even if you aren't making troops, so don't boost your Dark Barracks until you are ready to use it. When you click to boost the Dark Barracks a clock appears for a few seconds. Similar to the normal Barracks, Troops may be removed from the Dark Barracks training queue at no penalty; 100% of the Dark Elixir cost will be refunded to you.

You may queue more Troops than your Army Camps can hold. This is useful for two reasons:
You may queue Troops prior to engaging in combat (either single-player or multiplayer). Your Dark Barracks will begin creating Troops proportional to the amount of time you spent from when you start searching for opponent to completing an attack, significantly reducing your downtime between battles

You may queue Troops to 'hide' Dark Elixir while you are offline, as long as your Army Camps are full. Currently up to at least 5,030 Dark Elixir can be hidden in this fashion (seven level 2 Witches and one level 5 Hog Rider in each of the two level 6 Dark Barracks). When you return you simply un-queue all of your Dark Barracks to reclaim your hidden Dark Elixir.

A Dark Barracks will maintain its queue if destroyed by enemy Troops, and will even continue to produce new units if your Army Camps have sufficient space.
The Dark Barracks is the only Barracks in which you are allowed to create Dark Elixir Troops. 

Clash of Clans: Army Camps

The Army Camp takes up a 5x5 space, making it the largest structure in the game. They continue to function even when they are being upgraded, allowing you to keep your armies at full capacity at all times. Unlike Clan Castle troops, troops stationed in the Army Camp do not defend your village during siege. In fact, they do not appear on the attacker's map at all (all Army Camps, full or not, appear empty to an attacker).

Prior to the Halloween 2012 update, troops would die/disappear if their Army Camp was destroyed in a raid. In the update, troops were allowed to remain even if their camp was destroyed. Due to widespread player support towards keeping this feature, Supercell made it permanent. As a result, troops stationed in Army Camps are no longer at risk if their camp is destroyed by an attacker.

The Army Camp is where your troops go when they're done training. Most troops will take up more than one space (Barbarians, Archers, and Goblins do only take up one space though). Upgrading and building more Army Camps allow more troops to be stored, allowing higher chances of victory in raids.
The maximum amount of housing space you can have for your Troops is 240 (4 Army Camps x 60 spaces). This increases to 275 if you include the extra 35 in a fully upgraded Clan Castle.
The Barbarian King does not take up space in the Army Camps; neither does the Archer Queen. Both Heroes either patrol the village or sleep on their own Altar.

You should not surround your Army Camps with Walls, as they do not need protecting. Also, the Army Camps occupy a lot of space (5 x 5). More walls are needed to contain them when the extra walls can be used to surround defensive buildings that are already inside the wall, strengthening the defense.
It is always preferable to initially build all available Army Camps, and then upgrade the lowest-level ones first. Every time you upgrade (except upgrading to level 2) the camp only gains 5 more housing space and it costs more elixir the more you upgrade. The next level is at least 2.5 times more expensive than the one before it.

Army Camps have a unique hitbox, unlike other Buildings. That means that attacking Troops will have to walk right to the center where the campfire is located in order to attack the Army Camp. The Army Camps can still hold troops while they are upgrading. Clan Castle troops do not go into the Army Camp when donated and do not take housing space in the Army Camp.If you look closely, you can see reactions from some Troops when you tap on the Army Camp. After the Christmas 2014 update the Army Camp's hitpoints has been significantly reduced on all levels.

Focus on Dark Elixir

Once you reach Town Hall 7 and beyond, your limiting resource will always be Dark Elixir. Through normal play, you typically will max out all gold and elixir-based upgrades long before you acquire enough Dark Elixir to max out your heroes and Dark Barracks troop upgrades. As a result, you need to place a priority on Dark Elixir above all other resources, saving your spells and hero units for when you stand to gain a large chunk of Dark Elixir.

Put the Clan Castle in the Center of Your Base

The Clan Castle is perhaps the best defensive structures in Clash of Clans, but only if you place it in the center of your base. The way the structure works is that when enemy units enter the Clan Castle's range (it has a very long range), the units will pour out of the Clan Castle and attack the enemy's attacking units. Note that your Clan Castle troops arc capable of hopping over your own walls.

If you place the Clan Castle outside of your base, the enemy can simply lure away the units inside the Clan Castle and easily kill them out of range of your towers. If you keep the Clan Castle inside your base, the enemy will have to take damage from both your Clan Castle units as well as your defensive structures in order to take out your base.

Generally, it is best to ask for Archers to keep in your Town Hall for defensive purposes. This works very well because Archers will often shoot at melee units from behind your walls, allowing them to shoot down Giants and Barbarians without taking damage. Very high level players may choose different units, such as Dragons or Golems, but this requires a clan where members will donate these tioops.

Note that this tip really only applies to players at Town Hall 7 or above. At earlier Town Mali levels, you do not have enough buildings to actually prevent the enemy from luring out units in your Clan Castle. Town Hall 7 units can still be lured, but it is tougher. At Town Hall 8 and up the enemy will have to destroy some buildings or a decent number of units to force troops out of your Clan Castle.

Start Matchmaking Early

When you first start playing Clash of Clans, you get a three-day shield. However, thanks to the previously-mentioned Loot Penalty, very few players will want to attack you even if you drop your shield. As a result, you can start matchmaking right away when you need resources with no fear of reprisal. You can skip around and look for a base with exposed resource collectors and use a handful of Barbarians. Goblins, or Archers to attack them.

Even if you do get attacked, low-level Town Hall players have very little to lose. You will only lose a tiny bit of resources that can be more than made up for with a single attack.

When farming either resources or trophies, you should always be skipping around with the "next” button in order to find the perfect base to attack. It only costs a tiny bit of gold to jump to the next base, so make sure you have a good base before you spend all your units attacking one. Also, be careful never to spend every last bit of gold you have on an upgrade - you need to save some gold in order to be able to use the "next” ability to continue farming!

Slowly Upgrade Your Town Hall

The Town Hall "loot penally” is one of the most important things to know about in Clash of Clans, yet it is not a publicly advertised feature in the game. It is not even mentioned during the tutorial or anywhere in the game, yet it is extremely important to how the game plays out.

This penalty reduces the amount of loot you can get from enemies if your Town Hall is a higher level than your opponent's Town Hall. If your Town Hall is one level higher than your enemy's, you will only be able to steal 90'S of the normal amount available for loot. If your Town Hall is two levels higher, you will only be able to steal 50‘S of the loot. For three levels, only 25%, and lor 4 levels or more, only 5% of the total available loot. The penalty is reflected in "Loot Available” - you do not have to do any calculations on your own.

As a result, we recommend getting up to Town Hall level 4 and then sitting in this range while you max out your defensive structures, your army camps, and your research. You can even max out your walls for extra credit before moving on to Town Hall 5. Repeat this process for every level.

Clash of Clans: Clan War Strategy

Clan war strategy determines whether we win glory and loot or fall as flat as a pancake below the stove.

Beyond communication, the aspiration of all clan warriors is: attack the most-difficult base you can three-star. By attacking a base you can three-star, you will make sure the clan benefits from your attacks (i.e. you put points on the board, and no one needs to clean up your mess).

By attacking the most-difficult base in that range, you will do your best not to steal targets from lower-level clan members.

Our most strong and fearsome warriors (top five or so) have a special responsibility, because they can attack bases that no one else can. Top warriors often wait until late in the war to see where their powerful attacks are most needed. (And when they attack an enemy fortress, they are not necessarily aiming for three stars.)

Finally, make sure you are familiar with the Clan's basic war rules !

Clash of Clans: Army Buildings

Army structures are buildings that are used to execute attacks on other players. There are many different buildings in this category. For example, a Barracks is a structure that trains troops that you’ll deploy when executing an attack. And then you can find Army Camp, Dark Barracks, Laboratory, Spell Factory, Dark Spell Factory, Barbarian King Altar and Archer Queen Altar. They are also an Army Structures.

To find out what army structures are available to you, touch the shop icon located in the bottom right corner of the screen and select, “Army.” You need both elixir and dark elixir to construct and upgrade Army structures, so make sure you collect enough to build your army.

Clash of Clans: Clan War Basic

After each two-day war, the clan with the most stars wins. Stars on the easy bases count the same as stars on hard bases toward the team total.

Each participant receives a loot bonus for any base successfully defeated. One-star, two-star, and three-star attacks return the same loot bonus. The winning team receives a full bonus. The losing team receives only 20% of the advertised bonus (40% for a tie).

Each participant has two attacks. You may only attack the same base once, but the clan may launch any number of attacks against the same base.

Clans wage wars in multiples of five. (E.g. 30 vs. 30; 15 vs. 15). If the clan membership is not a multiple of five, then only the top members — based on trophy count — will participate. (E.g. if a clan has 38 members, then only the top 35 will go to war.)