TH9 Upgrade Order

[SpencerMin]

Hey guys, I'm going to be TH9 in a week+a few days, and would like to know the upgrade order.

I have 4 builders.

[Calgon]

Personally I did it fully, not a .5 route so I started the xbows, lab and spell factory first, then army camps and CC, troop order I did was loons, barch and then did a barack for lavahound

[kingkero]

There is no fixed best order. What do you need most? How are you playing? Obviously spell factory, AQ and lab need to go first to be able to advance. Then camps and de pumps. But then ask yourself: do you need extra de troops? Do you need X research? Develop a build order for yourself or please ask a more specific question

[erethizon]

As a TH9, acquiring DE and upgrading your heroes should be your top priority until they are both level 30. If you have spent much time on the forums (or just looked around the game) you will see a ton of TH10's with low level heroes because they neglected DE at TH9 and now have to make up for it with lame heroes. For this reason, you will want to start by making your queen and upgrading her at every possible chance you get. If you are able to acquire DE so fast that you can upgrade your BK at the same time then that is ideal, but for me, I was not able to do so until my queen was already level 10 (those first upgrades are so fast that I was not able to get DE fast enough to put the king to sleep as well until after the queen was going to 10 and it can be a bit harder to get DE when you are an early TH9 because your farming troops are not upgraded yet).

The next most important upgrades are your lab (you need to start upgrading your farming troops as quickly as possible) and your DE drills. The DE drills will be a bit controversial for some players, but I am serious when I say you want to do everything possible to get as much DE flowing to you as possible. I had both my heroes asleep for months when I was a TH9 and it takes a lot of DE to do that (but is so worth it when you finish and get to play with level 30 heroes while finishing up your walls). A lot of people think that spell factory and army camps are more important, and I don't deny that they matter, but I would rather have more DE coming in from a drill than 5 more troops from an army camp. 20 extra troops are nice (and you do want to get your army camps done as soon as you reasonably can), but I would prioritize drills first. Get your spell factory done when you can. How early you need to do it depends on how much you use spells (and on how badly you want the jump spell). When I was a new TH9 I was still barching with no spells (except lightening to get to 50% if I was going to fail the raid without it) so an extra spell slot was not a high priority for me so I did army camps first.

Spending gold is a bit trickier. Obviously you don't want to throw gold away so you want to spend it on something, but there are so many extremely important elixir upgrades that you don't want to waste a lot of builders on gold upgrades. I would do the CC upgrade right away (it was one of the upgrades I started on day 1 and used up the gold I had saved), but after that I would only use a builder for a gold upgrade if you don't have enough elixir to do an elixir upgrade (and want to keep your builders busy). I understand getting xbows may be really important to you (a lot of new TH9's are excited about those) and if you really want them I am not going to tell you not to get them, but I waited a little while for mine because they really are not as important as the offensive elixir upgrades. If you can keep your builders busy with just elixir and hero upgrades (other than the CC) then I would spend all your gold on walls so you can keep your builders doing what really matters. Once you get those elixir upgrades done you can have your builders doing nothing but heroes and defenses while all your excess elixir goes into walls.

[SaberSworn]

Lab, SF, Camps, CC, Queen should be upgraded ASAP. Then, I think it's personal preference. I think xbows should be built and then any new defences should be upgraded to the previous TH max lvl.

[JamieNC]

I've almost completed TH9. A few hero levels and 11 lavas walls to go...

Here’s a breakdown of the path I’ve been using after upgrading to TH9. But first, a little breakdown of where I was at in TH8 before I upgraded.
At the end of TH8, I had maxed all defenses for TH8. All Barracks, & Camps maxed as well. All pumps, mines, storages, etc. maxed as well. I had maxed all spells & elixir troops, besides the Pekka level 3 upgrade. I left him at level 2 to save the 6 million Elixir for the transition to TH9. I’m a wall person, so I finished TH8 with 225 level 8 walls – Black Skulls. For Dark Elixir troops, I had my Barb King at 7, Hogs 2, Minions 3, and the rest at level 1.
Once I moved to TH9, here’s my upgrade path:
*Note, I entered TH9 with storages about maxed (6 million gold, 6 million elixir, and ~34k DE)
**My strategy is based on maxing DE production as quickly as possible, so those troop upgrades and hero upgrades are easier as TH9 rolls along.
Once TH9 is on the map, immediately add all new storages, archer tower, wizard, wall pieces, etc. The only exception I made was to add one X-Bow and wait until I had 40k DE to add the Archer Queen. I then got all walls up to level 6 to be respectable (pink crystals).
From there on, here’s what I did / am doing:
Builder 1
Laboratory, Spell Factory, then I upgraded the new Wizard Tower, Archer Tower, Elixir Storage, & Gold Storage to match my existing defense & storage levels (max for TH8), Archer Tower level 11, Archer Tower level 11, Archer Tower level 11, Archer Tower level 11, Archer Tower level 11, Archer Tower level 11.
Builder 2
X-Bow, X-Bow, X-Bow level 2, X-Bow level 2 (I stopped the X-Bows there because it’s 7 million to go to level 3 and I don’t have the new storages maxed) Wizard Tower level 7, Wizard Tower level 7, Wizard Tower level 7, Wizard Tower level 7, Dark Barrack level 5, Dark Barrack level 5, Dark Barrack level 6, Dark Barrack level 6.
Builder 3
New Air Defense, AD level 2, AD level 3, AD level 5, AD level 5, AD level 6, AD level 7, AD level 7, AD level 7, AD level 7. (Note, I already had 3 @ level 6)
Cannon level 11, Cannon level 11, Cannon level 11, Cannon level 11, Cannon level 11, X-Bow level 3, X-Bow level 3.
Builder 4
New DE Pump, DE pump level 2, DE pump level 3, DE pump level 4, DE pump level 4, DE pump level 5, DE pump level 5, DE pump level 6, DE pump level 6. (Note, I already had 1 @ level 3) Army Camp level 7, Army Camp level 7, Army Camp level 7, Army Camp level 7
Builder 5
Mortar level 7, Mortar level 7, Mortar level 7, Mortar level 7 (Note, I already had 4 @ level 6) Tesla level 2, Tesla level 3, Tesla level 4, Tesla 5, Tesla level 6, Tesla level 7, Tesla level 7, Tesla level 7, Tesla level 7. (Note, I already had 3 @ level 6)
Misc:
As I’ve said before, I’m a wall guy, so I slowly upgrade walls to get all of the 25 new ones added at TH9 to get them to level 8, Black Skulls. I also slowly upgrade new traps, large bombs, etc. along the way.
Elixir Troop Upgrades:
Barbarian level 6, Archers level 6, Balloons level 6, Pekka level 3, Giant level 6, then max the healer, heal spell, lightning spell, and jump level 2.
Dark Troop Upgrades:
Minion level 4, Minion level 5, Hog Rider level 3, Hog Rider level 4, Hog Rider level 5, Witch level 2, Lava Hound 2, Golem level 2, Golem level 3, Golem level 4, Valkyrie level 2, Valkyrie level 3, Valkyrie level 4.
Heros:
I will keep upgrading the new Archer Queen until she matches my King in levels, then alternate between the two of them until they are maxed for TH9.
Now… for the learning curve at TH9:
The loot system drastically changes up at TH9, you can no longer raid TH7 and TH8 at 1200-1300 trophies and find lots of loot. I’ve found that I find a decent average raid (100k+ gold & 100k+ elixir) in the 1450-1600 range because there’s a decent amount of TH8 & TH9 bases in this range that don’t have X-Bows. Believe it or not, I also find a decent amount of abandoned bases up there as well. I don’t venture higher that 1600′s when I’m sitting on some of the big gold, elixir, or DE amounts it takes to do some of the TH9 upgrades because higher TH9 and TH10 can level a beginner TH9 or even a middle TH9 base.
For looting raids, I usually a really, really simple troop composition and never stray from it. It’s fast to train, cheap, and reliable, especially once your barbs & archers are at level 6. Total training time is about 15 minutes:
Barrack 1: 2 Bombers, and the rest all Barbarians cued to max
Barrack 2: 2 Bombers, and the rest all Barbarians cued to max
Barrack 3: All Archers cued to max
Barrack 4: All Archers cued to max
By the time I return from a looting raid (and hitting next a lot of times) I usually already have 50-60 done and ready for the next round. If I didn’t use any bombers, which I often don’t, I go into each barrack thats already in productions and max the cue again. If I used bombers, then I go into the first two barracks I am using for Barbs, delete the cue, add two bombers to each, then max the barb cue again.
For when raiding for an hour or more (as time sometimes allows) I do everything I recommend above in the Elixir Barracks, plus I use the two Dark Barracks and max each cue with Minions. They cut a full army training time to about 10 minutes.
*Note, I use minions because they are fast, cheap, and perfect for taking out an annoying Barb King. If you are following my troop make-ups above, you will go into each battle with about 30-40 of them. Be sure the archers and barbs knock out the AD’s closest to any storages, and drop the minions in a swarm at the end of a raid to collect everything left in the storages.

[ElToucan]

I agree with the leveling heroes asap route.

So queen and drills.

I guess I did the .5 route unintentionally. ..before i knew that was a thing. I prioritized offense cause that makes the game more fun. Just finished all the elixir things including lab stuff.

I float around in masters farming dark with loonion with th8 defenses and I'm doing fine. I've only built the 4th air defense and 2nd sweeper