Obstacles Part 2 - Using Them to Your Advantage

     As most players already know, gems are the premium currency in Clash of Clans.  They are a huge part of the game, and can be used for anything from filling up your resource storages to boosting collectors and instantly finishing building and training and upgrading times.  One of the most essential things you can only purchase with gems is extra builder's hut which allow you to have multiple projects going at once. 
     One of the only ways to obtain gems in the game without paying for them with real money is to save up the gems you get from removing obstacles.  So here we will discuss all the details about obstacles and some ways to use this information to make the best choices when deciding whether or not to remove obstacles, and to help you understand why you sometimes get up to 6 gems from an obstacle and other times you don't get any gems. 
     After reading you will also know how to determine exactly how many gems you will get from each removal and why it makes no difference which kind of obstacle it is or how long you leave it before you remove it.


Obstacles

     Obstacles are one of the only consistent ways the game provides for squiring gems.  Obstacles are initially all over your village, and can make your village quite an eyesore when you are first starting the game.  Before long however, you will have most of these obstacles cleared from your village, and you may start to wonder what you are going to do to find gems after they are all gone.
     First let me put your mind at ease; you will never go very long without having a few obstacles pop up at random locations on the outskirts of your village.  They will automatically reappear at regular intervals multiple times per day.  One thing to note is that the only kind of obstacles that do not reappear are the stone type, once you remove a stone it is gone forever.  This may change at some point, but for now they are one hit wonders.  This has no ill effect on the production of new obstacles though, they will still appear a few times each day, so go ahead and get rid of those stones so they will no longer get in the way of your village design as it grows.
     The kinds of obstacles that will reappear however are the plant types; like bushes, trees, logs, and mushrooms.  Also special holiday obstacles that give special gold or elixir prizes will reappear while the holiday event is still ongoing.  Plants re-spawn every 8 hours at a rate of 1 obstacle per 8 hours, and this does not include Gem Boxes or holiday obstacles like the X-mas Tree and Halloween Headstone.  Plants are usually the only type of reoccurring obstacles that produce gems, with the exception of gem boxes (which are specifically made to give players a quick 25 gems at regular intervals, around once or twice per week).
     When you remove any stone or plant type obstacle, there is the possiblility that you will receive between 0 and 6 gems each time.  It appears random at first, but there is actually a pattern to whether or not you get any gems from an obstacle and if you do, how many you get.  This pattern repeats over and over as you remove more and more obstructions.  The actual pattern isn't all that important, as it can be very difficult to keep up with exactly where you are at in the pattern at a given time and even if you can keep up with it, you can't change the pattern so it will be the same regardless.
     I will still provide you with the pattern, but just remember that what is really important is the fact that there is a pattern and it is not just randomly determined each time you remove an obstruction.  By knowing this, you know that there is no difference in what time of day you remove an obstacle, or how long you leave it before removing it, or how many you remove in a row; no matter how you choose to remove an obstacle it will still be subject to this pattern.  Keep in mind that this pattern only applies to the plant and stone obstacles and does not apply to the holiday special obstacles.  Here is the repeating pattern of how many gems you receive from a given obstacle removal.

The Repeating Pattern:

6, 0, 4, 5, 1, 3, 2, 0, 0, 5, 1, 0, 3, 4, 0, 0, 5, 0, 1, 0...then it just starts back at 6 and repeats again.

     The fact that these obstacles re-spawn every 8 hours means that you actually have an endless (however slow) supply of gems.  If you spend your gems wisely and save them, you will have a fairly large amount of gems before very long.
     There are a few rules that determine whether or not you can get any more obstacles at a given time.  Most of these rules deal with spacing or the number of un-removed obstacles you have in your village already.  If any of the criteria are not met, obstacles will cease to spawn until the criteria are finally met.

Here are some of the criteria:

1. There must be enough open space to fit the obstacle.
2. There must also be enough space for a 1-tile buffer around the obstacle.
3. There must be less than 40 obstacles on the map already, if there are 40 already NO obstacle will appear until an obstacle is removed.


* Here are some general rules you should know when dealing with obstacles:

General Obstacle Rules:

1. Troops can be deployed beside or directly on obstacles; obstacles have no effect on troops deployment.
2. Buildings and structures such as walls cannot be placed over an obstacle, the obstacle must be removed before anything can be built in that spot.
3. No one type of plant obstacle yields more or less gems than any other plant obstacle, they all follow the same pattern.
4. Each removed plant or stone obstacle counts into the same pattern; there is no separate pattern for stones and plants or between different kinds of stone or plant obstacles.
5. Holiday obstacles typically re-spawn while the holiday event is active and will remain in the village until removed, in 2015 the X-mas Tree and Halloween Headstone cost 25,000 gold or elixir (gold for X-mas Tree, elixir for Halloween Headstone), and yield 75,000 gold or elixir, resulting in a net gain of 50,000.