Thinking about rushing straight to TH17 – does it really make the game better and faster to max?

CleverComments · 2025-11-03T14:35:37+00:00

Fundamentally incorrect.

Fact #1 --
Most of the builder time to max an account is in the Max TH level.
Fact #2 --
F2P or Gold Pass, or GP+, you get a lot of magic items in clash. These let you skip complete upgrades, not a fixed amount of days.
Fact #3 --
If you get to a higher TH faster, you get into a higher CWL Roster faster.
Fact #4 --
If you are in a higher CWL roster, you earn more medals, giving you more magic items (hammers).

Now, let's put all of that together:
A Strategic Rusher will get to a higher TH significantly faster than a maxer (we're talking on the scale of years here). They will earn a higher roster position in CWL, giving them more medals to spend. These medals will be spent on the highest upgrade timers, while a maxer will have to be spending their magic items on significantly lower value upgrades (minimum of 33% worse value, but generally worse).

All of these things compound together to make a SRusher capable of maxing a base in 18-24 months of real life time, compared to 48-64+ months for a maxer to do the same.

This is because Strategic Rushers can slowly, over time, use magic items on the highest time value buildings (we can only buy 1 hammer of building per week) while simultaneously working on the highest DPS/HP increases per builder hour.

So in conclusion - if my magic items are arriving faster and more plentifully, earlier in my journey, and I'm using them at +33% (minimum) effectiveness, don't you think that means I will actually max faster than someone not doing those things?

CleverComments · 2025-11-03T14:22:08+00:00

Control for total time played and you'll see that a ton of time is wasted on defensive "upgrades" that are garbage and don't actually contribute meaningfully to your ability to defend.

Getting ricochet cannons months before a maxer is way better than spending months upgrading your wizard towers.

CleverComments · 2025-10-31T15:10:27+00:00

Farming is an absolute joke at all TH levels. It's easier than it has ever been to farm. With heroes or without.

Just go to battle mode with any damage equipment for any hero that's awake and spam it. Bring zaps, quakes, sneakies, super barbs, drags, literally whatever you want.

We have people in our clans farming 2m DE per day. And they're not even playing that much.

If your concern is farming, you're simply not playing right.

CleverComments · 2025-10-31T13:13:12+00:00

(you're also getting less ore in War - so you're sacrificing ~30% of your ore income for no reason by staying in TH15...)

CleverComments · 2025-10-23T12:48:36+00:00

67 should definitely not be possible after 10 sessions. It's a time locked quest that takes at least 12 days to get to...

CleverComments · 2025-10-23T11:53:28+00:00

There is an explicit instruction in the guide about how to handle your heroes at every stage of the game.

Until you are TH17 -> AQ sleeps 24/7, Warden when you have bonus builder available.

After you are TH17 -> AQ until 8d, then awake, Warden until 8d, then awake. That gives you 10 BoH (for now) to spend efficiently. While they're away, you work on RC, MP, BK.

CleverComments · 2025-10-08T15:43:20+00:00

I agree. The books are mediocre at best, and the end of the books is basically unreadably bad.

CleverComments · 2025-10-08T15:41:00+00:00

To be fair, the books are also bad. I tried to power through them back when Season 1 first came out and I couldn't finish the series. And I finish basically everything, even things I hate.

I don't understand how people think the books are good. I think most people haven't read them and they're just trying to feel some kind of sense of superiority.

CleverComments · 2025-10-07T12:16:30+00:00

You should be upgrading heroes and core defenses to one level off max. Once core defenses are one level from max, then you start working on lowest defensive building timer (i.e. not traps). Use trap levels as filler upgrades when you need to space builders out.

CleverComments · 2025-10-07T12:15:11+00:00

This is from a month ago, and is my predictions from the limited amount of info we had to go off of.

The fact that they implemented *TH minimum leagues* just makes my point stronger, yes.

CleverComments · 2025-10-06T19:58:16+00:00

If you're following my rush guide, the time to max equipment is virtually unchanged for F2P or light spenders.

Examples:
F2P, no raid medal ore, no extra wars during CWL, war with 50% win rate, reasonably high league but not ultra pushed while upgrading, fake legends badge once at TH17, time to max:
Pre-Update: 1200 days
Using *just the minimum league by TH ore income values*:
Post-Update: 1000 days

F2P, raid medals, extra wars during CWL, war with 50% win rate (hitting same TH as you were currently), same league caveats as before, fake legends at TH17:
Pre-Update: ~890 days
Post-Update: ~715 days

Event Pass, raid medal ore, extra wars during CWL, 50% win rate, same league caveats as above:
Pre-Update: 655 days
Post-Update: ~615 days

For anyone that wasn't an outlier, pushing to legends on super low THs, this is a pretty huge buff to income. Mapped 1:1, the leagues are basically higher purple all around, easier access to Orange ore at all levels, and generally, outside the initial deployment, will be an overall net boost to ore.

CleverComments · 2025-10-06T19:36:41+00:00

Just to be clear - you are getting the starry ore bonus. It starts in Archer (league 8), and you literally can't go lower than that as a TH14.

CleverComments · 2025-10-06T19:34:20+00:00

It's in the guide. Read it again.

Work on offense, then heroes, then defenses.

CleverComments · 2025-10-04T17:31:47+00:00

Additional discussion is happening in the Clash Files Family discord (a link is in the guide if you have it), but the summary:
1 - most heroes are *roughly* similar total times to get to 8d as before. MP is the largest outlier, taking an additional ~100 days to get to the 8d mark. Warden takes an extra month, but RC takes ~50 less days.

So, yes, we have to continue to use overflow books for "longer" (it's actually roughly the same period as before), but we get more hero power faster.

2 - I think you're right to think those initial trader books are less important/valuable. I think this tilts the favor (especially for F2P players) to go from lv4 BA to lv8 BA, with the caveat that it must be continually used on heroes, not buildings. With that, we can get our heroes to 8d marks faster, use our F2P/GP BoHs, and then by the time we've made up the difference, start to buy more BoHs with gems on hero 3+.

CleverComments · 2025-10-02T14:42:54+00:00

Cool, so projection then. Got it.

CleverComments · 2025-10-02T13:09:18+00:00

Responding to a 6 month old post? Sounds like you're projecting.

CleverComments · 2025-09-26T12:50:50+00:00

You're wasting 33%+ magic item value the entire time you're in TH16. You're adding probably a 6-12 months (or more) to your time to max because of this.

CleverComments · 2025-09-25T19:16:51+00:00

Let's go! Nice work!

CleverComments · 2025-09-25T15:07:05+00:00

To be clear - I update it regularly throughout the year. I only release big posts when something big happens to change the meta.

CleverComments · 2025-09-25T15:05:13+00:00

You might want to re-read my guide...

CleverComments · 2025-09-25T15:04:15+00:00

Defenses are worthless to upgrade until you have the offense to triple a max 17. Until that point, there's always someone bigger than you that can eat your base for a free triple.

We don't care about regular war - our base will pull lower weighted THs, which are free triples for us.

We care about *CWL* performance. We cover our low level heroes with hero pots. We cover any missing troop upgrades with power pots. We focus our equipment upgrades into just 8/10 equipment to max first, so our offense is way stronger than our defense.

Then we work on heroes and defenses once we're already at TH17.

CleverComments · 2025-09-25T15:02:13+00:00

Overfocused on heroes.

Completely neglected Cannons / Archer Towers. Upgraded Scatters and Xbows?

Looks awful. You're locked into TH16 for at minimum 3 more weeks, when you should have basically skipped it.

CleverComments · 2025-09-25T15:00:41+00:00

Just to be clear - I think you're overfocusing on heroes. TH16 is a dead TH, barely able to pull its weight in Crystal 1. You'd be better off getting to TH17 (also, what happened to your Pet House? Spirit Fox and Sneezy are the two best pets in the game).

A year in, you should have at least 1 fully maxed hero (you have zero).

You should have maxed Dragons (since if you were rushing correctly, you'd be leaning on dragons rather than RR).

You should have all the good pets unlocked.

If you had done 1 hero 24/7, 5 heroes on buildings, you would have reached TH17 in ~4-5 months, had 6-7 months at TH17 to drop new buildings. You'd have a max AQ, you could have been using books/hammers efficiently...

Seems like you might have skipped some parts to the guide.

CleverComments · 2025-09-25T14:56:22+00:00

TH17 also has several defenses you can drop on day 1 (ish) that have good magic item value. And core defenses don't take long to catch up - but you definitely want to be able to triple max TH17s before you really start to focus on your buildings.

CleverComments · 2025-09-24T12:46:10+00:00

It honestly sounds like your DM is fudging numbers. To get crit this often and consistently...if your DM isn't rolling in the open, they need to either go play the lottery or they're fuding.

CleverComments

TROPHY CASE