Spell Factory and Dark Spell Factory - Upgrade Priorities

     Your spell factory is where you create the spells you will take to battle.  Elixir and dark elixir spells can change the tide of any battle, and will become an integral part of your attack strategy.  In most cases, you should wait to upgrade spells until you get the troops that you use the most upgraded.  This post will focus on where your spell factories and laboratory fit into your overall upgrade priorities, as well as which spells should be upgraded first and why.


Spell Factory and Dark Spell Factory



Spell Factory

Dark Spell Factory

Upgrade Priority:

     The spell factory should be upgraded as soon as possible each time you upgrade your TH.  Once you initially get your spell factory, you will be able to upgrade it once each time you upgrade your TH level. 

Why you should upgrade them ASAP:

     The reason you want to upgrade it ASAP is because each time you upgrade your spell factory, you gain a new kind of spell.  Each new spell brings a whole new set of strategies you can use once you have acquired it.  For example, when you hit TH-9 you can upgrade your spell factory to get the jump spell, and the dark factory for the haste spell.  With the jump spell, you can now start using all the variations of GoWiPe attacks with much more success than you would have at TH-8.  With the haste spell, you gain a huge boost to the speed of your balloons in Lavaloonion and Balloonion attacks, making them much more effective.
     They are fairly expensive and time-consuming to upgrade, but it is well worth it to get such a big improvement to your current attacks, while also getting the chance to use new attacks that were impossible to succeed with before. 


Laboratory and Spell Upgrades

Laboratory

Lab Upgrade Priority:

     Your lab should also be upgraded as soon as you can afford it each time you upgrade your TH level.  Once you initially get the laboratory, you will be able to upgrade it once each time you level up your TH.  Each upgrade will give you access to upgrades for new troops and spells, as well as higher level upgrades for your old troops and spells.  It is highly recommended that you always complete all the available upgrades for all your troops and spells before moving on to a new TH level, because you will get way behind if not. 
     Remember that the game is designed to only make it worth while to attack players with the same TH as you or 1 TH level lower.  At 1 TH lower, you can still get 90% of the total loot from that player, but at 2 TH levels below you, you can only get up to 50% of the total loot for that opponent.  This is made as a balancing measure so that higher THs don't always pick on the smaller THs.  So each time you upgrade your TH, you have to attack higher THs than before to get good loot, and higher level THs will be able to get more loot from you.  So it is extremely important to have everything in your village (including troops and spell, as well as defenses and other structures) upgraded as much as possible before upgrading the TH in order to avoid being an easy target for stronger players.

Why you Should Upgrade it ASAP:

     The reason you should upgrade your lab ASAP is because until you do, you will not be able to begin working on new upgrades for you troops and spells.  If you make sure to upgrade each troop/spell to max before upgrading your TH (like you should be doing), you will have to upgrade the lab to start being able to begin doing upgrades again, and since it is so expensive and time consuming to upgrade everything available to you in your laboratory, you will want to get started right away and try to keep it going all the time without letting it sit idle for very long. 
     By performing all the possible upgrades at each TH level, you will really boost the ability of your troops to deal damage and survive longer.  It will also allow your spells to last longer and have more potent effects.  You will need both of these advantages when you are facing the more difficult opponents that will you will be matched with at each new TH level.  This applies to both war and farming, since you will have to face tougher opponents in both forms of gameplay when you upgrade your TH. 
     Upgrading your troops will also help your entire clan out, because you will be able to give them better donation troops.  The combination of increasing your attack strength as well as increasing the strength of your clan mate's CC troops means that your upgrades can make significant differences in how tough your clan thinks you are as well as how useful they think you are.  Trust me when I say, I know of no clans that like to see members upgrade too early and never upgrade their troops.  In all likelihood, most clans will eventually ask you to either start working on your upgrades and threaten to kick you from wars or from the clan itself if you do not start them.

Upgrading Elixir Spells:

     When upgrading spells, there isn't one sure way to do it right.  It is really up to you how to prioritize your spell upgrades, but do keep in mind that in most cases it will be more beneficial to upgrade your troops first since you can only upgrade one thing at a time.  I recommend that you upgrade the spells that you use most often, but I will list some benefits to having each spell upgraded for convenience.

Lightning Spell

     The lightning spell is useful when upgraded because it does increased damage.  This is the biggest help with destroying air defenses, as in some dragon and balloonion/lavaloonion strategies.  It usually takes 3 of these spells to take out an air defense if they are upgraded, 4 if not so it will save you a whole spell once you have it upgraded.  Since the lightning spell no longer does any damage to any storages, the lightning spell has lost much of it's utility unfortunately, so it will likely be low on the list of spells you want to upgrade.

Healing Spell

     The healing spell obviously heals more when upgraded, which is always useful.  This spell can be used in a multitude of attacks, so it is definitely recommended that you upgrade it when you can.  It is also a little cheaper than the rage and jump spell upgrades, so it can be more tempting to want to upgrade this spell first because you will be able to afford it sooner. 

Rage Spell

     The rage spell is also useful in many different attack styles.  It also affects more than one statistic, so it is sometimes thought of as a more useful spell in that regard.  Upgrading this spell will boost the damage and speed increases the spell provides, so troops affected by the spell move faster and hit harder the higher the spell level is.

Jump Spell

     The jump spell is a critical part of GoWiPe style attacks and variations of it.  It allows you to jump right over walls without having to destroy them, and good placement in conjunction with wallbreakers can allow you to almost instantly gain access to the heart of an enemy base.  Upgrading this spell is critical and should be done as soon as possible because it gains a significant boost to it's duration with each level.  This allows your troops more time to get to and use the jump spell, and can allow your troops to use it multiple times as they clear out different enclosures if it has an upgraded duration and lasts long enough.  The first upgrade actually doubles the amount of time the spell will last, giving it a huge boost to it's effectiveness.

Freeze Spell

     Similar to upgrading the jump spell, upgrading the freeze spell will increase the amount of time the spells effects last.  This makes a huge difference in higher TH battles, when heavy defenses like infernos and x-bows can quickly wipe out large portions of an attacking army if not stopped.  This spell is especially effective against inferno towers, since it can break the inferno tower's build-up damage and force it to start over with decreased damage once in un-freezes.  This will allow your troops more time to get to the infernos and destroy them before they are able to take out all of your tanking units and dash any hopes of a 3-star victory.  The freeze spell should also be upgraded as soon as you can afford it, for reasons stated above.
    
Upgrading Dark Elixir Spells:

     The dark elixir spells are a relatively new addition to the game, and they have impacted almost every facet of how we wage war, pull CCs, and farm.  These dark spells cost only 1 spell space as opposed to the 2 spaces taken by regular elixir spells.  They also don't take as long as the elixir spells, usually taking around only 15 minutes to make.  These spells are extremely specialized, and their uses are not quite as wide as a heal or rage spell, but they offer huge advantages in their area of use.  As with the elixir spells, upgrades on the dark spells can be done more or less by which ones you tend to use most often, since those will be the most useful to you.  Many people have questioned whether it is even important enough to bother upgrading some of these spells, and my recommendation is to do so, and I will explain why.


Poison Spell

     The poison spell is the first dark spell you will get, it comes with the dark spell factory when you first build it.  When the poison spell was first introduced, it did a moderate amount of damage per second that remained the same throughout the course of the spell.  It would quickly kill off smaller troops, even wizards and some moderate troops like giants, hogs, and balloons, but was not very effective against tougher troops like dragons, lava hounds, and PEKKAs.  Now it has been altered so that when it does greater damage the longer a troop stands inside it's radius.  It starts out for a few seconds doing very little damage, but after that the DPS quickly builds up to massive amounts before the spell dissipates.  It makes it take longer to kill the smaller troops, but it also allows it to do much more damage to the larger troops.  Dragons will now lose between 1/2 and 3/4 of their life depending on the level of the dragon and the spell.  Upgrading the poison spell is helpful because it increases the maximum DPS it can produce as well as the amount it slows attack speed.  This allows the spell to kill smaller troops faster and do more damage to the larger troops.

Earthquake Spell

 

     The earthquake spell has 2 main uses; it can be used to destroy walls, and it can be used to weaken high hit point buildings to make them easier for your troops to destroy.  The quake spell does damage differently to walls than it does to buildings, and storages are immune to it's effects.  The reason it is so useful against high hit point structures is that is deals damage according to the hit points of the things it hits, taking a certain percentage of it's life away rather than just taking a certain number of hit points.  For buildings, using consecutive spells causes less and less damage, but for walls, it has the opposite effect and does more damage with each consecutive spell dropped on the same walls.  4 earthquake spells on the same wall, no matter the level or the spell or the wall, will destroy the wall.  Upgrading the quake spell increases the percentage of hit points that it takes, which doesn't affect how many it will take to destroy walls, leading some to question why it is worth upgrading.  The biggest reason you should still upgrade the quake spell is that it will cause more damage to buildings like the CC and TH if you use it on them, or air defenses if you use the strategy of 2 lightning spells and a quake to take down an air defense.  Sometimes this spell can save a raid by finishing off the TH if your troops are able to take more than 85% (if the quake is lvl 1), if it is the first time the TH has been hit with a quake during the raid.  All in all, the quake spell won't be the first on your list of dark spell upgrades, but it should definitely be on the list somewhere. 

Haste Spell

     The haste spell is similar to the elixir rage spell, it speeds up the movement speed of troops a great deal.  However, the haste spell does not affect the attack damage of troops, only the movement speed.  Because of this, it is best used in air attacks with very slow troops like balloons and dragons, since they don't really need much of a damage boost anyway.  Haste spells can really improve your dragon, dragoon, balloonion, lavaloonion and mass balloon attacks, because the achilles heel of balloons are their extremely slow movement speed.  With the haste spell, balloons and dragons can quickly move from target to target, and the fact that it only takes up 1 spell space allows you to take several into battle with you, so you can cover a huge chunk of the base with haste spells.  Upgrading the haste spell allows it to speed up your troops even more, making it even more effective.  If you use a lot of air attacks, especially balloons, this spell should definitely be a priority.