NEW Guide for Rushing to TH9!
This guide is outdated, read the new guide in my blog instead:
https://clashguideswithdusk.wordpres...9-guide-early/
Hello, SinOfDusk here. Since my old TH9 rushing guide is outdated and I was still a newbie when writing that guide, I've decided to rewrite a new guide to help new players rush to TH9 comfortably and maximise their progress speed so that players who max at TH8 will have a hard time catching up to your progress when they finally max TH9
Link to old guide: http://forum.supercell.net/showthrea...my-experiences
Link to the TH10 rushing guide: http://forum.supercell.net/showthrea...ushing-to-TH10!
Index:
(I) Misconceptions
(II) Advantages
(III) Rationale
(IV) Types of rushing
(V) TH8 journey
(VI) TH9 journey
(VII) War considerations
(I) Misconceptions
1) Your weak defenses are going to get smashed
Counter: No matter how maxed you are in TH8, you cannot stop a TH9 attack, only bad TH9s. No matter how maxed you were in TH8, as a new TH9, you'll be smashed regardless. Another point is, strong bases attract strong attackers, weak bases attract relatively weaker attackers.
Defenses are a futile effort:
http://forum.supercell.net/showthrea...-now?p=6313486
2) You'll progress slower by rushing
Counter: As long as you keep all builders busy all the time, you're going to reach maxed regardless of time. But a maxer would stay in TH8 for a longer time, have idle builders; while the rusher will not have this problem provided you farm enough
3) Since it takes the exact same amount of time to upgrade, you gain no time by rushing
Counter: A maxer will stay in TH8 for longer time and eventually have idle builders while working on lab. The maxer is also more likely to have idle builders towards the end of TH9
4) Loot penalty
Counter: If you're farming correctly, TH9 gains more loot per hour than TH8 and TH10 gains more loot per hour than TH9. Only TH11 so far suffers from any form of loot penalty
5) Weak in wars
Counter: Doing it correctly, you'll always perform better in wars. You, as a rusher, will meet with premmie TH9s or maxed TH8s. Both easy enough to demolish. A properly rushed TH9 can hit way up and take out a maxed TH9 with almost the same ease of a maxed TH9
6) A rusher needs to catch up, a maxer does not
Counter: Yes, a maxer will be in a better spot on day one of TH9. But by the time that has happened, a rusher would have been a 2-3 month old TH9. So who is better? New TH9 with 200 camp spaces, TH8 maxed troops, 10/0 royals, maxed skulls; or a rushed TH9 with 220 spaces, lvl 6 farming troops and TH9 war troops, 15/15 royals, half legos.
Now, the maxer has to catch up to loss progress
(II) Advantages:
1) Much better offense, much earlier
You get to farm faster than a maxed TH8, utilise wasted elixir and gain AQ levels earlier
2) Balanced builder and lab times
TH8 has longer lab time, TH9 has longer builder time. Combine them both and you won't have too much idle time. TH8 lab is 4.5 months, builders (5 buildes) are 3.5 months. TH9 builder time in total (add both heroes) is 6-7 months, lab is 6 months.
3) Resource management
As a TH8, you're self inflicting a 50% loot penalty, since all elixir is wasted. If you plan to max lab, your collectors would have gathered enough so that you need not raid to max TH8
By utilising wasted elixir, you can max all TH9 offenses and gain a few troops levels instead of wasting it. A TH9 can also dump gold, elixir and DE into walls and heroes so that they do not offer loot for any TH10 attacker
4) Dark Elxiir
DE is the resource which significantly increases when you go up in TH. 60k DE for golems might be tough for a TH8, but is a breeze for any TH9, with additional troops, spell, troop levels and AQ.
5) Everyone is forced to defend
With the removal of sniping, maxed and rushed accounts alike are getting clobbered. Yes, a maxed account only loses 3/5 of their loot, hurray! A rushed base can only maximum lose 4 or 5 out of 5 storages, not much difference if you compare the effort of maxing defenses
(III) Rationale
What is a rusher here?
A rusher is a player who moves up in TH, before maxing out every structure in their base.
Indication for rushing! If you already maxed your walls before finishing everything else, go upgrade your TH now before reading on.
Reason: To farm that much that you max walls, you're at least doing 2million gold per day. Once you maxed walls, you will not have any reason to farm that much and it drops to maximum 600k per day. That's a loss of 1.4mill gold per day, enough to do many things if you rushed your TH. No amount of being raided or loot penalty can compare to this amount of lost loot. If it comforts you, this is the main reason why I rushed
How does rushing make you progress faster?
Imagine a bug, it grows by steps. Every time it is ready, it shed an exoskeleton and grows in size. A human grows very differently, which grows continually until maturity. A maxer grows like a bug, you grow in a TH, max it then move on and become bigger. A rusher smoothens the curve and allows you to progress at the optimal rate.
Since TH8 has longer lab time and has a huge gold vs elixir disparity, you're wasting builder time and elixir on things you can spend in TH9. A rusher does not speed up any upgrades, but reshuffles it into a coherent pathway. Instead of doing BK to lvl 10 and have him stuck there for the entirety of TH8, you allow yourself to get him a partner and upgrade her as well. And you can increase them further even before a TH8 maxer reaches TH9
Let's take an example, player A and player B. They're maxed TH7s, moving on to TH8. Player A decides to rush to TH9 after spending 1.5 months after reading this guide, player B scoffs at his friend and continues to max.
3 months later,
Player A: 220 camp space, lvl 9 AT, cannons, maxed TH8 defenses otherwise + lvl 2 xbows, maxed all TH9 elixir buildings, maxed lvl 6 gibarch, maxed TH9 laloon, 1/2-full skulls, 15/15 royals
Player B: 200 camp space, maxed TH8 defenses, maxed TH8 elixir buildings, maxed TH8 troops, full skulls, 10/0 royals
See the vast difference in player strength? This is because Player B wasted a ton of elixir and 1.5 months to max TH8 skulls and lab. While B is doing valks lvl 2, EQ lvl 2; A is doing giants lvl 6, arch lvl 6. Its not necessarily speeding up, but reshuffling an optimal upgrade path
Note: A rusher is required to farm more and be active. Raiding in sessions and proper shield management are mandatory. I do not recommend this path unless you can farm at least 2 hours straight per day, the more the better
(IV) Types of rushing
This guide is mainly speaking about strategic rushing (aka min-maxing, minimax)
This is knowingly upgrading to the next TH, so that you can improve upon your offensive capabilities in the game.
Other types:
Premmie: a clueless player who upgrades TH just for fun and hard to recover
Optimiser: A type of strategic rushing. The player only upgrades to new TH upon reaching a bottleneck. In TH8 case, when they overflow elixir or finish all builder upgrades
If anyone has any other types of rushing, please feel free to share
(V) TH8 Journey
Here, I assume you begin with having maxed all TH7 buildings, all TH7 elixir troops (assume lvl 1 minions and hogs) and have at least maxed lvl 6 walls.
Recommended stay: 15 days to 1.5 months
For the fastest route, you can upgrade your TH as soon as TH8 lab completes. Do barch, then do balloons lvl 5 right before upgrading lab. I do not recommend this route unless this is your second account and you want to reach TH9 asap.
For TH8, begin by building and upgrading every single elixir based upgrade. Do it in this order: Offense > Resources > Defense. Remember this order, you will follow it till the end of your clashing journey. So work on CC, lab, drills, new storages, barracks, dark barracks and dark spell factory. Then, all collectors before defenses. At that point, just place 2 collectors perpetually for collectors and 3 other builders on defenses.
First upgrades should be CC, lab, Dark Rax, DSF, Dark storage. Try to keep your BK down all the time from the beginning. If your designated time frame for TH8, try to max him out. But no shame if you cannot manage, I personally only had lvl 8 when I upgraded. Defensive suggestions are: Wizard towers + mortar/AD. Mortar for farming, AD for war.
Your entire TH8 journey should be dictated by your lab upgrades. Just make sure to max all offense related structures, all storages to max, everything else is optional building-wise.
Must max structures: lab, dark spell factory, dark storage, dark elixir drill, all storages, cc
Good to max: barracks (more for 75 space than pekkas), wizard tower, bk
Optional: mortar or AD, all collectors
Skipped: all other defenses
Lab troops: (importance by tier)
Tier 1 (compulsory) - barb, arch, loon
Tier 2 (recommended) - giants, wb, wiz, goblins/minions
Tier 3 (good to have) - hogs, healer, golem, valk (these upgrades are too costly or too long for you to feel any benefit, healer is not really required until you get a decent queen level)
Tier 4 (useless) - dragon, pekka (you won't stay in TH8 long enough to benefit from dragon, pekka is useless almost throughout the game)
Once you decided what to have, for example we'll say you chose all tier 1 and 2 units (you chose goblins). They're a total of 35 days. After you finished TH8 lab upgrade, start doing them all. When you completed the first 4, upgrade your TH. TH takes 10 days to upgrade and you will be able to finish 2 more upgrades. The final TH8 lab upgrade is done right before you upgrade the lab during TH9. Yes, your troop upgrade continues per normal while upgrading lab.
I highly recommend both tiers 1 & 2 for a new rusher. If this is your second account, you should know what you want and plan accordingly.
35 days is also enough for you to complete all the must have buildings in TH8
(VI) TH9 Journey
Now, you're a TH9, do you know what order to build things? Offense > Resources > Defense
Before coming to th9, I urge you to save up at least 5mil gold, 4mil elixir and 40k de, the more the better. Immediately as a new TH9, do lab, sf, cc, AQ and some new structures + walls.
(VIa) Early th9
For war, skip xbows and follow any th8.5 path you like. For farming, place xbows after 1-2 weeks in th9, because you simply don't have enough builder time to dedicate. Your defenses are already weak, adding 100 dps wont change anything, but do add the new archer tower, wizard tower, tesla, air defense and sweeper. The other defenses are cheap and short, they would provide decent coverage for a cheaper cosr and faster time.
Don't tie up your builders in the beginning, while it's tempting to do 5 good upgrades immediately, it'll leave you with no free builder of the first few days of th9. For then beginning, do lab, sf and try to squeeze dsf immediately, better do it to unlock haste early on than wait it out. Other offensive structures come in the importance of: camps > drills > dark barracks. Do as many camps as you can to finish them right off the bat after lab and sf. After that, keep 1 builder on drills (2 if you farm fast) and another on dark barracks to unlock hounds ASAP. Once you're towards the end of this schedule, do your xbows as a farmer. If you take wars seriously, you'll need to ask an expert or judge from your current matchups whether to drop xbows now or later, as war MM is fickle and constantly changes.
While doing all elixir upgrades, try to farm for aq as well, get lvl5 to unlock her ability. As a th9 rusher, your advantage is that you only need to permanently keep one hero down to max both at a reasonable time. Try to use her to farm de if you cannot get enough in the beginning. De sure is tough without lvl6 troops. Dump all excess gold into walls
Farming comp: 8 Giants, 8 wb, cc bring 5 lvl7 Giants, rest barch, 2-3 heal, 1 rage
Target: 200/200 collector raids or 1k de from th8s
Trophy: G3-C1
Remember, you will get hit hard from defense, the key here is to farm more than you can lose. Farm in sessions so you will for sure profit everytime before you log off. Farming in sessions means that you farm without turning off your device, since you cannot be attacked when you're still online. Try loot dumping, since you're farming so much elixir initially and not much gold can be used, dump your excess gold into making your walls skulls. Even while you're rushed, not many people will hit you when you have nothing to offer. Even when people do hit you, you have nothing to lose
Shield management: after you're hit, you receive a 12-16 hour shield, then a half hour guard. You can actually squeeze 3-4 attacks under shield then one more after guard. That means 4-5 free attacks that you can do while not connected. After your guard is up, I recommend another 3 raids done consecutively without logging out. That means for every defense, you're doing 7-8 attacks, you cannot lose more than 350/350/2.5k per defense, so you will be able to progress. Rest assured that this process of getting smashed cannot be skipped even if you maxed th8, because maxed th8 is weak.
As for troops, I recommend giants and loons as first 2 upgrades, either one first then do the other. They're immensely powerful and separates a rushed TH9 from a completely maxed TH8. After that, for farming just do barch and/or minions. For war, do hounds, then rage, golem, hogs.
Goals:
Finish all elixir based upgrades, get AQ as high level as possible (try 10, minimum 5), complete first 2-3 TH9 troop upgrades, max all new storages too
(VIb) Mid th9
I consider you as mid rushed th9 when you finally run out of any elixir upgrades. So that means maxed camps, lab, sf, dsf, drills, de storage and dark barracks. Try to max out barracks too if you haven't done so as a TH8. After this, keep 2 builders on collectors, 2 on heroes and 1 for walls. Try to focus primarily on DE only until all collectors are maxed. This would take a good 5 weeks or so but would shoot both heroes to 15/15 easily. Now look at yourself and a maxed TH8, who has a stronger base?
Collectors would help you as you collect resources for walls. Defenses protect gained loot, while collectors generate loot from thin air, in net terms they do the exact same thing. Considering someone with lvl 8 collectors, you generate only 1.9k elixir per hour, compared to 3.5k from maxed collectors. That's 1.6k lost loot from a single collectors times 6 then times 24, that's a whopping 230k elixir and gold lost per day, just because you didn't do collectors. That's either one good raid or can make up one defense per day. Considering your rushed status, it would not be wise to spend 8-10 weeks working on defenses, spending millions of gold just to get marginal effects. In contrast, collectors produce a decent amount per day, take much less resources and far less time to make up that defensive loss.
Since I do not know what is the status of your collectors prior to this, this process can take 0 time at all to almost 6 weeks. If you had maxed collectors prior to this, just skip along to the final part of the TH9 guide and continue from there. If you had not maxed collectors, just stay at this phase as long as you need to, working on cheap collectors, dumping excess gold/elixir and focusing to get your heroes up. Once collectors are done, we're on our final stage of TH9 (unless you accidentally maxed your lavas at this stage - skip to the rushing to TH10 guide : http://forum.supercell.net/showthrea...ushing-to-TH10!
For lab-
Farming: barch > minions > heal > rage > healer > anything
Its quite flexible for farmers, just upgrade whatever you think would help you most. I strongly advise to look up super queen and consider upgrading healer early if you really like it. Heals are good for giants, because the spell makes them immortal while under TH9 fire
War: Hounds > rage > (lightning) > golem > hogs > witches
I highly recommend learning laloon early on because you're rushed status in war means you'll be drawing TH8s who would be easy walkovers with laloon. Up till mid TH9, laloon is an incredibly easy strategy to demolish bases without much thought and does not require heroes. I recommend lightning here if you like zapquake laloon (youtube it), but it can be skipped if you like to work on other ground strategies
Farming DE:
Look up on guides on this forum, many experienced players would love to teach you how it is done. I'll stick to my favorite way, gibarch:
Comp: 12 giants, 12 wb, cc 6 giants, 28 barbs, 88 arch, 10 minions, 2 heal, 2 rage, poison
Target: 250/250 collectors or minimum 1k easy DE from TH8s, 1.6k DE from maxed TH8 + centered, 2k DE from TH9s
This comp can easily tear up any TH8 you find without heroes and grab the juicy DE. Yet it is flexible enough to hit collector raids you may find, just don't use all giants when doing collector raids. Avoid TH9s unless they're weak, bad design or you have a hero (you shouldn't have a hero, to be strict).
(VIc) Final part of TH9
By this stage, you're a TH9 with maxed offensive stuctures, collectors, decent walls (skulls to legos) and hopefully 15-20 royals. See how far you've gone, and a TH8 maxer would now still be maxing their golem 60k upgrade, complaining its price and how hard it is to save up for it. Your HH should be twice of a similar TH8 maxer just because you had higher requirements. Remember the adage? Offense > resources > defenses, this is the final journey of your TH9, though its longer comparatively to the prior 2 parts.
Farming defenses:
Still keep 1 builder for a hero, but now you get to use your other non-upgrading hero. Bring both heroes, 1 by 1 to lvl 20. Now, you have 4 builders left, try to time it such that they come free every 2 days so that you do not overflow with loot.
I highly recommend: 1 builder on WT, 2 on teslas and 1 on mortars. If you're constantly overflowing with loot, you may keep a builder free for walls, so you don't need to keep a strict builder schedule. AD and AS after WT, AT after mortars. Once you maxed AD, AS, teslas, WT, mortars and have at least lvl 2 xbows. See your walls and heroes, half lavas and 20-25 heroes is a good indicator to rush to TH10 ASAP, especially for farmers. If you like it and farm fast, be sure to max lavas. If you do not farm fast at all, you may completely skip lava walls and work entirely on heroes and defenses.
War defenses:
If you really love to war, you can now either grit your teeth and farm hard for heroes and sit out wars, or you can slack for a while and just war for fun. There's no real set path for warring, but I can tell you that maxed heroes are paramount compared to anything else.
Builders: 1 on WT, 2 on teslas, 1 on AD. Lvl 7 AD are important to prevent laloon strategies and you as realise. Your own attack may tend to fizzle out especially against lvl7 ADs, lvl 7 teslas. Try to max GBs somewhere in between as they do really help in stopping hog attacks. Max xbows anytime you wish now, since you have decent heroes to help you out
(VId) Closing
There's no real set end to the TH9 grind for a rusher. You can opt to rush to TH10 or completely max TH9 and anything in between. But once you read the TH10 rushing guide, I hope you can make an informed decision on which path to take. Neither is better as it all depends on your goals in game, but I can tell you (with bias) that rushing to TH10 is almost always the superior choice
