BEST DARK ELIXIR FARMING STRATEGIES FOR TOWN HALLS 9 – 11

Once you hit Town Hall 9 dark elixir becomes the most important resources. The lab research and hero upgrades become quite costly at these levels, thus forcing you to hold on to more and more at one time. However, with that you become a target for someone else DE farming. So, what is the best way to farm for dark elixir as you move up through the game?

What needs to be upgraded and in what order?

Dark elixir can only be spent on two things, which helps simplify this resource, heroes and troop/spell research. Town Hall 9 unlocks the Archer Queen which will eventually become a key component to farming dark elixir. While in the lab new levels are available for minions, hogs, Valkyries, golems, and the new Lava Hound, as well as the poison, earthquake, and haste spells.

Prioritize your DE as follows – (1) Start something in the lab you use for war, such as the golem, hog or valk, and (2) Push to upgrade your AQ to level five in order to unlock the first level of her Royal Cloak. Alternate those two to keep the research lab going (since those upgrade times eventually reach 14 days long), and upgrade your AQ to higher levels in between wars. Once your AQ hits at least level 10 she will be strong enough to start the Queen Walk strategy.

Army Compositions

Even though it will seem simple, many people do not focus on their army composition to make sure they are saving dark elixir correctly. Raiding with high numbers of hogs or valks, or even a few lava hounds, will eat into your resources gained and make saving up DE that much harder. The goal when farming for DE is to use a mainly elixir based army.

At Town Hall 11 start with:

4 healers / 4 wall breakers / 16 giants / 13 wizards / 25 goblins / 9 archers / 5 minions
1 heal spell / 2 rage spells / 2 jump spells / 1 poison spell

Now that is using Town Hall 11 camp space, so if you are at 9 or 10, consider removing a few giants, wizards, as well as many of the archers and minions as needed.

Also, you’ll notice the inclusion of two dark elixir items. The poison spell is well worth the cost to help take down the enemy clan castle or slow down their AQ. The minions are to help funnel when people leave edges of the base unprotected or only by ground defenses – plus they are very cheap and have an added bonus (more on that later).

Target Bases

When farming for dark elixir your primary goal is to take out the DE Storage. The secondary goal is to reach 70% destruction in order to get the full bonus. Stars are not as important, since you will likely be raiding so frequently that earning the daily star bonus will not be an issue.

Look for a base that has the following features:

• A DE total that is above the amount you are looking for (target 1,000 to 2,000 each raid).
• A DE Storage that you can reach within two jumps, in case the wall breakers fail or go off target.
• A based in which the air defenses won’t have a chance to take out your healers.

Attack Strategy

Now that you have your army built and target base located, it is all down to the placement of troops and adjusting the attack on the fly.

1.  To start you want to walk your queen to clear one side of the base to open up a path to the DE Storage. When you decided where to start her, drop a minion there to test for air bombs and mines.
2.  Then drop the AQ along with the four healers. As she approaches multiple defenses use a rage spell that is mainly on the healers to keep the Queen alive. Based on her pathing you may elect to use the wallbreakers here to move her more central. If you are at TH9 this is usually the best idea; however on TH10s and 11s you would avoid an internal path if it would her in the range of the Inferno Tower.
3. Once the AQ has cleared a partial path, drop your giants towards the other half of the funnel followed by your wizards spread out behind them to clear non-defensive buildings. Use your wallbreakers and jump spells to lead their path towards the DE Storage.
4.  The BK, and if TH11 Grand Warden, will go with the main army, using your other rage and heal spells when needed as they enter the base.
5.  Once the main army is near the DE storage send in a few goblins to test for an giant bombs or hidden teslas near by.
6.  After the path has been tested send in the rest of the goblins. Sometimes you will find it helpful to save the heal for the goblins over the DE storage.
7. The remaining archers and minions can be used as support for the AQ or to pick off buildings around the edges to increase the percentage destroyed.

Keep in mind those are ideal steps. However, based on how the attack is going you need to be able to adjust to help funnel the main attack inside. Perhaps sacrificing a few giants and wizards farther outside. The more you attack with this strategy the more you will learn from it. Once you know how to find the right bases and funnel the goblins inside at the storage you’ll be taking 10-20k dark elixir each day.