If you want to gain the maximum efficiency in your Home Village in Clash of Clans, you will want to make sure that you’re building smartly. Some buildings are more valuable than others to upgrade first as they provide direct benefits for completion that can allow you to use more troops and spells, or defend yourself more easily as examples.
Each of the buildings has its place in the village and should be upgraded before you consider moving onto the next Town Hall level, but there are a few buildings that absolutely take priority to help you make the most out of the game.
Here’s the order of priority that you should be upgrading or building in Clash of Clans, from top to bottom.
Laboratory
The strength of your village is only as good as the power of your army, and in Clash of Clans, you need to keep upgrading your troops to stand a chance against the best as you level through your Town Hall.
As unit upgrades all take real-time, upgrading your laboratory should be the first thing you do so that you can make a start on upgrading your army straight away. All of the units will scale with their time to upgrade as the buildings do, so making a start as soon as you can give you the best opportunity to complete all of your unit and spell upgrades by the time that all of your buildings have been upgraded. While you’re unlikely to get all of them complete, you should at least get all of the units that you use most upgraded before moving on.
Spell Factory/Dark Spell Factory
Spells are some of the most powerful tools of war in Clash of Clans. It’s the reason why you get so few of them to use, and why it should be one of your first priorities for upgrades.
Many of the most common and effective battle strategies in the game for attacking require the use of spells. Throughout the Town Hall upgrades, each has a new potion that can effectively allow your strategy to work. The Lightning Spell, for example, is incredibly useful for those that want to go on aerial assaults, especially at earlier levels when balloons and dragons are used in common attacking strategies, as they will destroy air defenses without sacrificing troops.
Upgrading the factory not only gives you new spells, but also adds space to include more spells in your arsenal. These extra spells can be enough to carry a weaker army from the previous Town Hall level, which is why it is such high priority compared to the barracks.
Army Camps
While the statement that having more of something is not always better, it certainly helps in Clash of Clans. Upgrading Army Camps might only add an extra five troops as you get to higher levels, but that holds huge weight as you pick up more camps.
A set of four camps all upgraded is enough space to include an extra dragon in your set up, or enough to maneuver into your composition an extra Golem or Lava Hound for extra meat shielding, or enough firepower to take down the higher leveled Town Hall. If you want to have more versatility in your compositions, make sure the camps are high on your list.
Barracks/Dark Barracks
As you progress through the Town Hall Levels, you’re going to see new enemy defenses that require more nuanced attacks and smarter strategies than simply throwing hordes of Barbarians at the enemy walls. This is where upgrading your barracks and dark barracks comes in.
Each upgrade provides a new unit for you to use, and usually with that comes a new way to play or strategize for your attacks. Not every troop received from upgrades will be useful to you (looking at you, Baby Dragon), but they are necessary. Ensuring that all of your barracks are upgraded will make sure that training times for troops are lower too, meaning you can train armies and get back into the action sooner.
Clan Castle
The Clan Castle has a number of benefits, chief of which allows you to be in a clan. This will allow you to request troops from clans, participate in clan wars and the clan leagues, and hold cash in your treasury from earning stars in multiplayer battles.
This becomes very useful very quickly, and upgrading your clan castle will allow you to make the most of its features. Upgrades will improve both the number of troops that you can request, but also what you can request. In later levels, you will be able to request spells and siege machines too. As players can now request specific troops too, you can tailor your requests even further.
Air Defenses/Splash Damage Defensive Buildings
The threat from the air is probably the biggest in Clash of Clans. With a number of powerful aerial troops including the Lava Hound and the Electro Dragon, the air defenses are some of the most important defenses in the game to keep upgraded.
However, the troops on the ground shouldn’t be ignored, and the ones that provide splash damage, such as wizard towers and mortars, are the most important for removing them. This is especially effective against units commonly used in attempts to farm your village, such as barbarians, archers and goblins. As a result, they take priority over other defenses.
Storage Containers/Resource Collectors
In most instances, both the storage containers and the resource collectors won’t contain a large amount of resources because they are either being used for upgrades, or you are active enough that the collectors are simply empty most of the time.
The storages have more importance if you are a regular in clan wars and leagues as these can net you a large amount of resources all at once which is held by the Clan Castle. While the use of resource potions will increase your resource output, these are typically less effective than farming for the resources. If you are a more casual player and want to let your village gather resources steadily, prioritize the collectors over the containers. Regardless, neither should be a top priority for you to upgrade.
All other defenses
The splash damage defenses will typically do most of the damage that you need against most armies, but there are times where the normal defenses can be useful. Splash damage defenses are great against groups of enemies, but have low base damage against single targets. This means that if an enemy is attacking with a lot of high health troops, such as dragons, golems or P.E.K.K.As, they can take longer to remove them.
This is where the likes of the cannons, X-Bows, and archer towers can shine as they will typically pump more single target damage into the bigger troops. While this might seem like a good idea to prioritize their upgrade, the high majority of effective strategies in the game make use of smaller, squishier units.
For example, the “LaLoon” strategy uses some lava hounds to distract from a horde of balloons that go for the defenses. The lava hounds have high health, but the balloons do not. However, players will send in the lava hounds first to soak up the single targets long enough for the defense targeting balloons to take them out before they finish the job. Splash damage, though, can still hurt the balloons even when attacking the lava hound.
For this reason, save them for last on the defensive upgrades.
Walls/Traps
Walls and traps are underrated as deterrents from aggressive players as they mean that more investment has to be made in wall breakers or spells in order to breach them. But that doesn’t mean you should upgrade them at any other point than the end of your upgrade order.
The reason for this? The price of fully upgrading your entire set of walls and traps is astronomical. Wall upgrades were lowered in the Spring 2020 update, but they still require a huge investment to fully improve. So much so that you can commit to upgrading your Town Hall while you are making the investment in them.
The large bombs (for farming or low health ground troops) and air seeking mines (for big health aerial targets) should be the first traps that you look to upgrade as they are both very strong. Otherwise, you should order as you feel helps you most.
