Originally Posted by
TehMikester
I got the BK through farming, and collecting those 10k DE was one of the most exiciting experiences of playing this game. I'm still TH7, I'm almost finished upgrading the minions to lvl 2 (also took 10k through farming) and I actually already have enough DE from farming to upgrade the BK to lvl 2. Just waiting for a builder to finish.
So in essence: at least in my experience it's perfectly possible to get BK and minion/BK upgrades at TH7 without gemming.
How do I do it? For one, my regular troops are almost all maxed out, and I do a lot of 8-10 dragon raids. You'll raid less often, but you can take villages that get you 1-3k of DE. Being over 1200 cups is also important for this (the more the better for DE).
But my main success strategy is: when farming DE, focus exclusively on this task. I skipped villages with easy 300k gold if they didn't have the black stuff. It took me 2 days to get over 10k DE.