Quick Loot Guide

Well, I typed some stuff, then they changed it a day later!  For the new loot system details, go here.

Loot Penalty/Loot Bonus

• 5% of available loot for attacking a TH level 4+ lower (TH8 vs TH4 or lower)
• 25% of available loot for attacking a TH level 3 lower (TH8 vs TH5)
• 50% of available loot for attacking a TH level 2 lower (TH8 vs TH6)
• 90% of available loot for attacking a TH level 1 lower (TH8 vs TH7)
• 100% of available loot for attacking a TH level equal (TH8 vs TH8)
• 110% of available loot for attacking a TH level 1 higher (TH8 vs TH9)
• 150% of available loot for attacking a TH level 2 higher (TH8 vs TH10)

Essentially, attacking any town hall 2 levels lower is not profitable.  When someone with a th9 or th10 talks about loot penalty killing their ability to farm resources, this is what they're talking about.  Inversely, a th7 or th8 can find a great deal of loot from a th9 or th10.

Farming for Dummies

There seems to be a little bit of confusion about what "farming" is. I see a lot of people who claim to be "farming", but the dragons in your camp and half-full elixir collectors tell me otherwise.  Farming is profit.  High-speed, low cost, profitable attacking.  Plain and simple.

Rule #1 - Kick the town hall outside the walls.

Way out.  Some people like to stick teslas and traps around the town hall to toy with attackers.  That's fine - whatever floats your boat.  I'd rather keep all my teslas and traps protecting my money.  Personal preference.

We have some links (to your left) for various farming setups.  There are a million others - google is your friend.  The core principle of a good farming setup is protecting resources - not trophies.  You want the attacker to destroy your town hall, take the trophies, and run.  Leave the money alone.  You want your defense log to look like this:

Losing trophies?  Don't care.  The money is safe, therefore you can get my upgrades done, therefore you win.  Keeping the town hall inside your walls is a challenge to come get it - and any of that loot in the way.

"Free Shield"???  What's that?  Every time your town hall gets destroyed, it's an automatic 12-hour shield.  Go play outside.  Make some Play-Doh animals.  Take a bubble bath.  Let your collectors do their thing, and come back to even more money.

Rule #2 - Army Composition

There are a million different army compositions to use.  To name a few:

Barch - Barbarians and archers.  Maybe a few wallbreakers.  Cheap, fast to train.  Great for collector raids, not so much if you're trying to get into the storages.  Some folks like to sprinkle in giants as well, but I personally don't find them necessary.
BAM - Barbarians, archers, and minions.  Same as Barch, but with a faster training time - building minions in dark barracks offsets some of the regular barracks training time.  Also has the added benefit of an air troop in the mix.  Downside - you're spending dark elixir.  Not much, granted, but some.
Giant/Healer - The ever popular mix of giants, healers, archers, and goblins.  Slow training time, but very effective at getting into the storages.  Excellent army for farming dark elixir.  Downside - takes forever to train, nearly triple the cost of Barch of BAM.

I'm not going to break down the ins and outs of each of these strategies - YouTube has millions of videos with examples of each.  At the end of the day, just use whatever combination you're comfortable with, as long as it's profitable.  Dragons and PEKKAs are not profitable, and take forever to train.  Stop.  You're wasting time and money.

Rule #3 - Picking the Right Target

So, you've found a base with a ton of loot - those storages are full and juicy looking.  If you want to try to bust through into each compartment and get all that tasty loot, that's great.  And if you're farming for dark elixir, chances are you need to this.  But, if you're farming for gold and/or elixir, why are you wasting your time?  There's an even tastier treat (and easier to get) 5 skips ahead.  This is what you're looking for:

There are 4 things you want to look for when farming.  These 4 things make up what is commonly referred to as a "dead base".
1.  No shield - They haven't been online to attack yet.
2.  Full collectors - so juicy!  You're going to take every penny from this guy, and won't have to use a single wallbreaker.  If you see full collectors, you're looking at easy money.
3.  No clan - the probability of there being troops in the clan castle is slim to none.
4.  Gravestones - this base has likely been repeatedly worked over.  This means bombs/traps have already been used up, and no clan castle troops.

You need to exercise the "Next" button to find these.  Don't be scared to skip 30-40 bases before you find the right one.  In the image above, you could grab all the loot with around 40 archers.  Low cost, easy, profitable.

Rule #4 - Trophy Range

Typically, you drop to a lower trophy range when farming.  This is completely up to you - wherever you're finding loot is where you should be.

You're probably going to "lose" 50% or more of your attacks.  It doesn't matter.  With farming, profit is winning.  All you're concerned with is staying in a trophy range where you are finding profitable attacks.  That's it.  Profit pays for upgrades, which increases your chances of success during a trophy push.

CC goes in the middle, ya dingus

So you don't know what to do with that Clan Castle.  Troops go in there, you use them sometimes when you attack, it has a pretty clan shield with our name on it.  You should probably just chuck that thing off to the side somewhere to make room for the rest of your defenses.

Or...hear me out here...you could take advantage of the strongest defense you have available to you.

Couple of fun facts!

1. Your CC has the 2nd highest hit points (HP) of all your buildings.  It's essentially a defensive meat-shield.
2. The troops that come out can be a meat-shield of sorts, allowing your defenses to do their business while the attacker's troops deal with your CC.
3. 20-25 level 5 archers (which you're likely to have in your CC) deals 400-500 damage per second (DPS).  That's about ooohhh 300+ more DPS than any other defense you have at TH8.  Your CC is by far your strongest defense.

Having said that, it's also a fragile little flower.  Most skilled players can lure your CC troops out and make them disappear with a single lightning spell.  If you're chucking your CC in just any old place, you're essentially throwing away your most valuable defense.  How do you avoid this?  Put that thing in the center of your base, dummy.  This is what's known as an "unlureable" CC.  Most of the good setups you see here and here have the same thing in common - unlureable CC.

This is all just food for thought.  You can have your strongest defense defending a bunch of empty space like this:

 Or you can have your strongest defense defending all of your goodies, like this:

CC goes in the middle, ya dingus!

The importance of donations

So, there's been some discussions about donations lately.  I think some people have a negative view of high request numbers - some of us are taught early on that requesting troops all the time is a bad thing.  Obviously, if you aren't donating it is - but, let's try to shift that mindset a bit.

The first, and most obvious reason is the offensive advantage.  Use the clan castle.  Use it as a supplement to your normal army.  Use it as a distraction for your army.  Find a way to incorporate it into your strategy.  And you know what?  If you can't, dump the clan castle troops anyway.  You'll get more.  This is extremely important during trophy push, as CC troops can sometimes be the difference between 50% and a one-star victory, or going away -25 trophies.

The second, and arguably most important, is the effect it has on your clan mates.  Every time you pass out 5 archers, you're getting 5 XP.  Just 5?  Doesn't seem like much, does it?

Let's take a closer look:
Level 71 needs 3,550 XP to reach level 72.
5 XP x 710 donations = 3,550 - that's a whole level gain from donations alone.  Tack on the upgrades you finish in that 2 week span, and a 2-level gain is not much to ask.

Another thing to focus on (and I'm really bad at this) is keeping the donated/received ratios as even as possible.  Nobody's going to complain if you have 5,000 donations in a season - that's actually quite a feat.  But having a sweet 5000/400 donate/receive ratio isn't really helping the clan as a whole.  Request 5k - give opportunities for others to donate.  If you can't, then scale back on your own donations, and provide opportunity for others that way.

So, we're talking XP for our clan mates, and some extra offense?  Nope.  Imagine you're a high level player looking for a clan.  Donations/requests are a dead-giveaway as to the activeness of a clan.  It's one of the first things you need to look at if you're clan-shopping.  If you're recruiting in global, what do people see?  You first, then the clan - description, donations, levels, etc.  If we want to grow, and acquire high level, active players then we need to be high level and active.  Simple :)