Guide to Abandoned Bases - The Fastest/Best Farming Strategy

Description

Abandoned (or inactive) bases are villages that have not been active in some time, because the player has been logged off the game for a prolonged period of time.  When a player is away, their mines, elixir collectors and dark elixir drills continue to collect resources.  Searching out and attacking these kinds of bases is referred to as "Lazy Farming" or "Easy Farming", because these bases are such easy pickings.  The owner of the base has not necessarily quit playing, but is inactive for long enough to be attacked multiple times without clearing tombstones or resetting traps, all the while the collectors are building up more and more loot.  These bases are too tempting to pass up in most cases, and easier than normal bases because some of the defenses are not active on these bases and most of the traps (if not all) are inactive.


Where Can I Find Abandoned Bases?

The main way to find abandoned bases is luck.  You just have to keep searching and eventually you will find one.  Sometimes you seem to find one almost instantly, and other times you can search and it will feel like you will never find one.  In the latter case, try stopping the attack search and return to your village, then go back and search again.  If that doesn't work, try logging off the game and resetting/restarting the game and trying your search again.

While there is no one best league to find abandoned bases in, generally you can find more abandoned bases when you are searching in lower leagues than in higher ones.  It makes sense; even if these bases started out in higher leagues, they will continually get attacked and lose trophies.  Before long, they will be in one of the lower leagues (like gold, silver, and bronze).  For this reason, you are more likely to find abandoned bases more often in these leagues.

Having said that, these may not be the best leagues for finding dark elixir.  If you are specifically looking for dark elixir, you may want to search gold I up to crystal I for the best dark elixir loot from abandoned bases.  You will probably not find as many abandoned bases overall in these leagues, but when you find them they are far more likely to have high amounts of dark elixir.


Identifying an Abandoned Base

The picture at the top of this guide shows several of the things you should look for to spot an abandoned base.  The key to farming abandoned bases is being able to spot them quickly before the 30 second timer ends and you are forced into an attack.  If this happens it doesn't mean you have to attack, it just means you have to waste time and reset the army you had training for your next attack by leaving the attack search and returning to your village.  There are several specific things to look for in an abandoned base, and we will go over them here.


Look for Tombstones and Obstacles:

Tombstones (from elixir troops)

Tombstones (lower - dark troops | upper - elixir troops)

Probably the most obvious way to spot an abandoned village is to look for tombstones around the village.  Tombstones are left behind when attacking troops are killed in an attack, lighter colored for elixir troops and black tombstones for dark elixir troops.  If the player has not been online to clear these, they will still appear on the village map when you find them in the attack search.  They will stick out like a sore thumb, so keep an eye out for them.  Obstacles will also accumulate when a player goes inactive, and these are easy to notice as well.  Look for many obstacles, such as trees, bushes, mushrooms and even a gem boxes all around the base that have not been removed.  To see an example of what the obstacles will look like on an abandoned base, take a look at the picture at the top of this guide and notice all the tombstones and obstacles scattered all over the base.


X-Bow/Inferno Tower are Depleted: 

X-Bow when Full

X-Bow when Empty

It is less obvious, but you can really tell that a base has been inactive for some time when the X-bows and/or inferno towers are inactive.  The easiest way to see if an X-bow is depleted is to look for the elixir colored ammunition cartridge on top of the X-bow.  If it is missing, the X-bow is depleted and cannot attack.  If you have trouble seeing it, try zooming in and it should become obvious.  The upper picture shows the ammo cartridge on the active X-bow, while the bottom picture shows the ammo missing on the inactive unit.  Train your eye to see this and you will soon be able to tell in a few seconds whether a base has active or inactive X-bows.

Inferno Tower - Left: Active Single Target | Center: Active Multiple Target | Right: Inactive (Single Target)

The inferno tower is fairly easy to spot when it is inactive, since it just looks dark and inactive.  When it is active, it will have a flame flowing up at the top, and it will be colored yellow running down the sides.  When it is inactive however, there will be no flames at the top, and there will not be and yellow colored areas, everything will just be black looking and dead.  When you see a darkened out inferno tower, get into the habit of realizing that it is unable to attack and you are likely looking at an inactive base.  Also of note, a single target inferno tower will have a ring at the top, while a multi-target inferno will have a sphere-like object at the top instead of a ring.


Storages: 

Gold Storage (full)

Gold Storage (empty)

Gold Storage (half full)

Above are pictures showing the gold storage, the top image shows a completely full storage, the middle image shows an empty storage, and the bottom picture shows a half full storage.  Luckily with the gold storage, you can usually tell roughly how full it is just by looking at how high the gold is piled up inside.

Elixir Storage (full)

Elixir Storage (empty)

Elixir Storage (half full)

The top picture shows a full elixir storage, the middle picture shows an empty storage, and the bottom picture shows a half full elixir storage.  The elixir storage is much like the gold storage, and it's fullness can be estimated simply by observing the level of elixir inside the storage.

Dark Elixir Storage (partially filled)

Dark Elixir Storage (empty)

The top picture shows a partially filled dark elixir storage, and the bottom picture shows an empty (or nearly empty) storage.  The dark elixir storage is a little more difficult to determine because only 5% of the dark elixir inside can actually be stolen, so the amount in the storage compared to the amount available to steal will be different from the gold and elixir storages.


Resource Collectors (Gold, Elixir, Dark Elixir): 

Gold Mine (Left: Full | Right: Empty)

The gold mines can be rather difficult to differentiate at first.  The thing to look out for is the little wooden box/container beside the mine cart that comes in and out of the mine, if it is full, the container will be overflowing with gold, but if it is empty there won't be any gold in it.  If it is partially full there will be a little gold inside it.  Don't be fooled by the mine cart, it will always be full!  The container beside the cart is what tells you how full the mine is, so train yourself to spot it quickly.

Elixir Collector (Left: Full | Right: Empty)

The elixir collectors are a little easier to differentiate; the glass container will either be full (left side of picture), empty (right side of picture), or somewhere in between, and this will give you an accurate estimate of how full it is.  Just learn to look out for the ring of elixir in the bottom of the container that shows up when the collector is empty, if you don't see that, then there is at least some elixir inside the collector, and you can usually tell how much by looking closely at the level of elixir in the container.

Dark Elixir Collector (full)

Dark Elixir Collector (empty)

Dark Elixir Collector (partially full)

The dark elixir collector is similar to the gold mine in it's difficulty to differentiate full from empty.  The key is to closely look at the small container on the top of the collector.  It will either be full and look completely black (top image), empty and look empty (middle image, will be clear, see-through) with a black square spot in the middle of the bottom of the container, or will be partially full and appear to have dark elixir inside that clearly tops out at a certain level (bottom image).  While this is difficult in itself, the container is extremely small which adds to the difficulty.  Try to quickly zoom in on the container if you can't tell how much is inside.  Make sure you learn how to quickly estimate the level of fullness of the dark drills, as they are the most important of all the collectors.  The gold and elixir collectors will have 50% of their total loot available to steal, while the dark elixir collector will have 75%, so this is a great way to grab some easy dark elixir from abandoned bases.


Attacking Abandoned Bases

The trick to farming abandoned bases is being able to spot all the things we just covered quickly in the first 30 seconds before the battle begins, as well as being able to decide the best approach to getting to all the resource collectors and whether or not it is worth it to try to get to the storages.  This is something you will learn with practice, but having read this guide will give you a huge jump start.

The most common army for solely attacking abandoned bases is probably straight goblins with some archers to attack collectors in areas that they can shoot from outside the range of the defenses.  This kind of army is extremely cheap and fast, and if you go ahead and have the army for the next farming attack being trained while searching for an abandoned base, often the army will be ready by the time you have found an opponent and finished your attack.

This army is rather weak however, and is not the best choice if you are going to try to get the storages more often than not.  If this is your plan, you might want to bring along 15-30 barbs, 2-6 wall breakers, and 5-10 giants to help you get to the storages.  This army will be more expensive due to the giants and wall breakers, and will take longer to train, but can really pay off when you are able to find an abandoned base that also has full storages, as these bases can have some of the highest loot of any bases in the game.

When deciding how to attack abandoned bases, keep this in mind:  Any loot in the storages is much safer than loot in the collectors, of the loot in the gold/elixir storages only 20% can be looted (only 5% of the loot in the dark storage!), and 50% of the loot in the gold/elixir storages can be looted (and 75% of the loot in the drill!).  So the storages need to be at least partially full to be worth going after.  A good way to check this during the battle is to use as few units as possible and take out the collectors first, then see how much loot is left to be stolen.

If there is quite a bit left, then it is in the storages and you may want to go ahead and commit the rest of your army to the fight and attempt to get that loot as well.  If there isn't much loot left after the collectors are gone, be happy with what you have already stolen and end the battle before you waste the rest of your army trying to get to storages that weren't worth looting in the first place.

If you can adapt all that you have read here to your farming play style, you should quickly gain more loot than you have ever been able to farm.  You will keep your builders busy constantly and always have your lab going as well, and who doesn't want that?  Good luck!