Raid Weekend started last night and I have to say that I’m already done. Yes, it’s pretty short but I like rapid fire completing everything just because I see it as a set of tasks that need to be finished. So how did this Raid Weekend compare the previous one? As expected, things are slowing down but I did make good overall progress and have begun upgrading my Clan Capital Hall to level 3.
Now that I’m unlocking more and more defenses, I’m in parallel an equivalent defended bases beginning to appear. Mostly, they’re pretty generic but I did encounter at least two where the owner thought it was funny surrounding his base with tons of homes so that the defenses could slowly pick off at my archers. It took me far too long to get through that base and I wish there was a way to skip it completely just because of how much of a waste of time it was to get every little defense down. I will say that these raids aren’t as infuriating as Versus Battles but they’re almost designed as bad just because you’ll end up facing tougher bases in complete mismatches as per Supercell’s shitty agenda.
Fortunately, through my endeavors I was able to upgrade/unlock enough buildings to start upgrading my Clan Capital Hall. Not surprisingly, the upgrade cost a whopping 75k in Capital Gold. I can’t help but think what an awful pyramid scheme Supercell has erected in the whole Clan Capital notion because you practically need a huge number of people in your clan to effectively progress through this mess and the only way to get that part done is through conning your friends into playing so that you can achieve your goals. Imagine if they made it globally illegal to have multilevel marketing schemes and that the penalty for such a thing is to toss the designers in prison for life. There goes social media and the world instantly improves.
Anyway, I figure that it might take me at least 2 weeks if not more to get the Clan Capital Hall upgraded. I can’t really spare resources from my normal base because I don’t have any spare resources nor Builders. So this plain sucks. The only slight silver lining is that I have 5 accounts with the Gold Pass and I’m starting to collect the 4500 Capital Gold rewards. But it still angers me that all the previous Capital Gold retroactively just went into a black hole. That’s a huge fuck you to Supercell from my anus.
As far as my other accounts go, I feel a general slowdown at the moment. Probably, the most interesting accounts are my TH7-8. The TH8 is in a strange place because I’m getting reasonable steady upgrades but I know if I progress to TH9 at this second, things will instantly become a huge pain. So for now, I’m just trying to get all the basics upgraded. For the TH7s, the main goal there is to progress the Barbarian King to level 5. One account is close to that point but the other will take some time, possibly another day. Also, I’m trying to gather up enough gems for that 5th Builder. It’s just really painful considering that the 5th Builder cost $10. The gems that go along with it may seem nice but aren’t necessary. Here’s the real lesson in this: if you want to get 5 Builders from the start, buy the first two because those are when they come out the cheapest. You may get more gems if you’ve waited for the 5th Builder but I don’t think it’s worth it.
With my TH9s, the goal currently is to get both heroes to level 15. That should happen fairly soon. After that, I need to push them to level 20 before considering upgrading my bases to TH10. I am planning to save the Book of Building for when I reach TH10 as I figure it’ll come in handy when I upgrade the Spell Factory. I think once that happens, I’ll switch back over to Zap Dragons for a while until I can get Miners from upgrading my Barracks and start focusing on upgrading the Hog Riders again. Then I’ll start doing the Hybrid. It might be painful for a while just because my Archer Queen won’t be high enough to do significant building damage. So I probably will just stick with Zap Dragons early on.
But that’s for the future. Right now, I am pleased to say that my ability to use Jump and Healing spells has vastly improved. One of the great things about using the GoWiWi army composition is that you have such a high variety of troop and spell types at your disposal that you get a better appreciation of the basic mechanics. Similarly, going Hog Rider at TH7 is great because you learn how to strategically plan your Healing spell placement. The eventual goal with this is to master Hog Riders and Healing before I begin using the Hybrid at TH10. And if I can get decent enough at the Hybrid, I hope to gradually transfer that skill set to my higher level bases.
Another thing that I want to try at TH9 is LavaLoons. I’ve put off upgrading my Dark Barracks to level 6 because I’ve been so dependent upon Golems and Witches. But eventually, I need to upgrade these before heading into TH10. Right now, I’ve been only upgrading one Barracks at a time so once those are done, I’ll switch back to the Dark Barracks. I think one of my major weaknesses is that I haven’t really mastered anything else besides Dragons and Witches with Golems. So I do believe that at each Town Hall level, once you unlock certain types of troops, you should be able to beat the higher bases with those troops once they’re fully upgraded. For instance, Dragons ruled at TH8 but get countered towards the end of TH9 because you don’t have enough high damaging Lightning Spells to counteract the 4 Air Defenses. But Witches with Golems, once upgraded, can handle many of those bases. However, the really high end bases will decimate this composition depending on how the base is structured. Yet maybe with LavaLoons, you might stand a better chance once you get your Archer Queen upgraded all the way and have certain spells to really enable the LavaLoon combo.
But that’s all hard to see at this stage since I’m still working through a lot of the basics. I feel right now I’m at the mid point of TH9 and it’s just taking too long. I haven’t had that many problems with my partly rushed bases except in wars. Yet the real solution to wars is just to continue progressing to get more powerful offense. I don’t think you need to upgrade every little defense and walls but having an army that can defeat most opponents is far more important.