*A few tips on the dark barracks:
The dark barracks will stop any troop training when being upgraded. Any troops that were being trained when the barracks upgrade began will resume training once the upgrade is complete. Upgrading a dark barracks will greatly increase the amount of time it takes to train your dark elixir troops for your army because you will only have one barracks to use until the other is finished upgrading. If you are TH-7, you will only have one dark barracks and upgrading it will cause you to lose the ability to train dark elixir troops until your upgrade has finished, so keep that in mind when you decide to upgrade. If the dark barracks is destroyed in battle, troops being trained inside will continue to be trained and sent to the army camps just like normal.
There are 2 ways to speed up the dark barracks. When you are training troops, you can instantly finish their training time by using gems. The amount of gems needed is proportional to the amount of time the training has left to completion. The other way to speed up the dark barracks is by boosting it. You can boost it by tapping the boost button and spending 10 gems. This speeds up all training times by 4x for 2 hours, but remember to make the most of your boost, it will continue to count down even when you are not training any troops.
One last tip is to start training more troops even when you have full camps. This is for 2 reasons: One, troops will train until the first troop that would put your camps over the limit is finished. At this time, training will pause until there is more room in the camps. This is very beneficial because you can actually have your next army training while you are searching for and attacking an opponent. If the training time has been paused as I said above, it will automatically resume as soon as you begin looking for a multi-player opponent or single player map, and it will continue to train the entire time you are searching for an opponent and the time you are actually fighting an opponent. The other reason for doing this is hiding your resources. If you know you will be away from the game for a while and know you won't have a shield or will lose your shield before you play again, hide your elixir and dark elixir by filling your camps then training as many troops as your barracks and dark barracks will hold. This spends elixir and dark elixir, taking it out of the pool of loot that can be stolen from you, and when you get back, you can remove the troops from the training queue and get 100% refunded. This is a great way to decrease the amount of loot that can be stolen from you while you are away! Just don't forget to remove the troops when you log back on, or they will start training as soon as you donate or attack someone and you will not be able to get your resources back.
The troops that will hide the most elixir for you is the witch (she is the most expensive dark troop per housing space). Put as many witches as you can in the queue and finish off filling up with hogs then minions if you have more space. In this way, you can hide over 5,000 dark elixir with max level dark barracks and max level troops for your TH level.
Dark Barracks (Dark Elixir) Troops
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| Minion |
The minion is an air troop that has low hit points, high movement speed, and moderate damage. Minions only take up 2 housing space, so you can take a lot of them to battle. They are relatively cheap as well, only costing a few dark elixir each. Minions cannot be targeted by seeking air mines, so you cannot use them to check for seeking air mines but they can be used to look for normal air mines. They can attack both ground and air troops, and only attack one target at a time. Minions work great with balloons and lava hounds, as part of the very effective Lavalooion, Balloonion, and GoLaLo attack strategies. Minions are rather strong against point defenses like the archer tower, because they can overwhelm these defenses since point defenses by definition only target one troop at a time. They are weak against splash damage though, and groups of minions that are caught in the explosion of an air mine or hit by a wizard tower can be quickly wiped out. For this reason, it is usually best to use minions with a tanking unit to distract the defenses while the minions do their work.
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| Hog Rider |
The hog rider is a favorite of many clashers, if not for his battle prowess at least for his hilarious and actions in the Clash of Clans commercials and advertisements. The hog rider is the only ground unit that can jump over walls. Hogs are fast moving, with moderately high health, and do high damage while also having a fairly high attack speed. These mounted units specifically target the defenses, and being able to jump over the walls means that they will path much like a balloon would (if a balloon was much faster that is).
In this way, many players like to use hogs for their attacks because it is much simpler to determine what their path will be when released from a certain location. Since the walls are not a factor for hogs, it is much simpler to calculate how they will path through the base from one defense to another, and therefore much easier to plan out exactly how to engage the base in your attack. You can attempt to locate any double giant bomb locations (which are 2x4 tile spaces where enemies can set two giant bombs beside one another and will kill a group of hogs instantly), hidden teslas that may throw off your planned path, and any other small bombs or spring traps, and choose the safest route to send your hogs to keep them alive the longest.
Also take heal spells that you will drop ahead of the hog groups on top of several defenses you know they will spend some time at, to make sure they get the most out of each heal. You also HAVE to TAKE OUT THE CC TROOPS or your attack will fail for sure. You will have to use 1-3 hogs to ensure a full CC pull, then have some separate troops ready in case your poison spell doesn't finish off all the troops, so you can finish them off the traditional way. You cannot forget to pull the CC in a hog attack or you will no doubt fail the attack with no stars. This is because the hogs focus on defenses, and they will ignore everything else including CC troops attacking them, until every defense has been destroyed. So, the CC troops will simply follow the hogs all over the map attacking them until they are all dead.
More recently, hogs have been used with golems in what is called a GoHo attack. The GoHo attack adresses the problem of both the CC troops and the enemy heroes, specifically the Archer Queen. The archer queen is almost as bad as the CC for hogs, she can shoot at them from a long way away and does massive damage. Upgrading hogs increases their damage and substantially increases their hit points. I will be posting a detailed guide for this attack as well as straight hogs soon, and we will discuss these topics much more there.
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| Valkyrie |
The valkyrie is a dark elixir troop with high damage, moderately high speed, and high health. She also has a unique attack style. While she is a melee troop, she attacks by swinging her large ax in a circular, whirlwind-like fashion. This allows her to strike foes and buildings all around her at the same time, effectively causing area of effect damage in a circle around her. She is great for taking out smaller CC troops, even wizards cannot stand up to her swings. Players have began taking her along for GoVaPe strategies, making use of her unique attack, high damage and health to give the army more longevity and fire power.
Upgrading the valkyrie increases her life and damage by moderately high amounts. She is also fun to take along on farming raids as she is not too expensive and takes the same amount of time as a wizard to train. The biggest fault of the valkyrie is that she cannot attack any air troops, they will just sit there and shoot her down while she is helpless to defend herself. She can make a great CC troop, but if you think there is a good chance of being attacked by air troops, you may be better off with wizards or some other troop that can target air units as well as ground units.
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| Golem |
Ah, the golem... The golem is the ultimate tanking unit in Clash of Clans. Golems have a huge amount of health, but do almost no damage and are extremely slow. They specifically target defenses, just like giants, hogs, and balloons. The golems take up 30 spaces and because of that most players will only take 2-3 with them into a fight. Golems have their value in the fact that they can take insane amounts of damage from multiple defenses, and when they go down 2 golemites (smaller versions that have 1/5 the hit points of a golem, but do higher damage) rise and continue to target defenses and tank for the army.
Golems are used in several variations of attacks where they are the key unit. I will have some posts out soon on all these attacks so I won't go into all the details here.
Upgrading the golem increases it's life substantially, but doesn't do much for the damage. It is still very much worth upgrading because the amount of life gained from the upgrade is significant. They don't make the best CC troops on defense, since they don't do much damage. Some players still find them useful because their high hit points really slow down the attacking army. Golems are great offensive CC troops however, for lower level clan mates attempting to perform a golem based attack, a high level golem can make a huge difference in the success of the attack.
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| Witch |
The witch is a specialized dark troop whose strength lies not in her life or damage, but in her ability to relentlessly raise skeletal warriors similar in health and damage to barbarians. These skeletons deal fairly good damage, and also distract the defenses while the witch hangs back and continues to raise skeletons as they fall. Her skeletons are highly vulnerable to mortars and wizards towers, as well as bombs and other traps, and can quickly get wiped out. Once the skeletons are wiped out, the witch is extremely vulnerable and will usually fall soon after her skeletons if she cannot raise more in time.
Upgrades to the witch will increase her life and damage, but more importantly, will also increase the number of skeletons she can have summoned at a time. This is a very useful troop to upgrade, because with more life, damage and skeletons the witch get much more useful with each level. Currently, the max level for a witch is only 3, but this will continue to rise as new TH levels and new defenses are added to the game. She is also a useful troop in offensive and defensive CCs, as well as in GoWiWi and other golem based attacks, especially when upgraded.
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| Lava Hound |
The lava hound is the newest dark elixir troop, specifically designed as a tank for the air troops against the air defenses. They have a very high amount of life, low damage, and moderate speed. They specifically target air defenses and will pass by any other building until all air defenses are down. A unique aspect of lava hounds are the lava pups that result from the explosion of a lava hound when it is killed. An upgrade to the lava hound will greatly increase it's health, and slightly increase it's damage. Since the lava hound takes up a whopping 30 spaces, you must carefully decide how many you need to take to a battle. Usually, 4 hounds is the most a player will use, in the attack known as Quatro Lavaloonion. But, it can also be beneficial to only take 1, 2, or 3 of them, depending on your situation and the base you are attacking.
The lava pups are a similar troop to minions, and because of this lava hounds are often used as an added unit in balloonion attacks. They explode out in all directions, causing havoc and confusing defenses. They don't last very long, but are much better at damaging structures than the lava hound, especially when they are accompanied by minions and balloons.
The dark troops are highly specialized, and like your elixir troops you should first upgrade the troops that you use the most. I suggest upgrading both your favorite ground unit and your favorite air unit, so that you will have a good option for attacking both anti-air bases and anti-ground bases. Eventually, all these troops will need to be upgraded, but you should first focus on the ones you will be using in war attacks. Dark elixir troops are not normally used very often in farming attacks, unless you are in a higher league. So for a long time you will only be using the dark troops that are included in your war attacks.
You should definitely upgrade them when you can though, because high level hogs can devastate a base when used correctly, and high level golems can survive attacks from almost all defenses at once for a surprising length of time, witches at level 2 can seemingly create an endless army of skeletons that constantly resupply your army with soldiers to fight for them, and the minions and hounds are great for using with balloons or dragons. Valkyries are a great support troop in GoVaPe or other golem based attacks.
