How to rule at Clash of Clans on iPhone, iPad, and Android - tips, tricks, and cheats

Ever wanted to be a Viking ruler, taking charge our a tiny village and helping it expand, survive and thrive? Well, Clash of Clans is the place to fulfil that very specific fantasy.

You'll be tasked with fighting off hordes of goblins, battling with other players who get in your way, and trying to see as much of the game as possible while spending as little money as you can get away with.

That's where we come in, we're here to guide you through your first days playing Clash of Clans. We'll teach you how to play, how to get the most from the game, and the most effective ways to save your own hard earned money while still enjoying everything the game has to offer.

How to play

Resources



Everything you do in Clash of Clans uses up one of three coloured bars at the top right of your screen; either gold, elixir, gems, or a combination of those.

Gold is used to pay for your buildings, buy new defensive structures like cannons or turrets, and for upgrading your buildings.

Elixir is similar in that it's used up when make or upgrading buildings, but it differs from gold in that rather than being used for defensive structures, it's instead used when creating more troops to send out into battle.

Gems - the game's premium currency - are used to speed up anything you're trying to make, be it building a new gold reserve or training a new set of troops for battle. You can also trade gems for more gold or elixir.

You'll also find a builder meter at the top of the screen, which shows how many builders you have available to make structures for you. You can construct things faster with more builders, but you can only get more of these workers by using gems.

I'd recommend using your free gems on these as they stick around and offer long term benefits, rather than the instant gain of skipping a waiting period. Don't even use the gems Supercell tells you to use in the tutorial - just wait and save them for builder huts.

Buildings



There are several different types of structure you can build in Clash of Clans, which all serve very different purposes. The main types of building you can have are resource collectors, resource storage, army structures, and defensive structures.

Resource collectors do what the name suggests and automatically collect gold and elixir for you. You need to tap them to collect those materials once they're full.

Resource storage buildings are needed to store larger amounts of your resources. While not an issue early in the game, these will become important when trying to build structures that cost more than you can carry.

Army structures are all about creating and improving the troops you send into battle. They're the buildings used to create more warriors, train them in specific roles and improve their effectiveness in combat. These are primarily used when going out into the world to attack other villages.

Defensive structures are important for defending your own village from attack. These are static structures you build and put in place to try and defend as much of your village as possible. It's recommended that you keep your village nice and tightly packed so that it's easier to protect the whole village with as few defensive structures as possible.

There are also a couple of other things to be aware of when it comes to your various structures. The amount of space you have to build in is limited by things like trees and rocks that you'll need to use resources to get rid of. Plus, buildings can be made faster and more effective by upgrading them.

Combat



Combat in Clash of Clans is pretty simple, just tap where on the map you want your troops to be deployed. Sometimes it's best to bring more troops than you think you'll need into battle just so you haven't wasted any dying troops if the battle doesn't go as planned.

The extra time spent preparing will often save you having to rebuild a whole army before retrying the battle.

General Tips

Clash of Clans doesn't have any kind of penalties for moving buildings once they're built. This means that you can experiment with different village layouts to your hearts content and not have to worry that your experimentation is costing you.

If you want to be offensive and go out attacking other player villages, make sure that you have a really well defended village before you do. When you go out to attack other players your village may come under attack and you'll want to take as little damage as possible during that time.

If you’re playing defensively to collect resources be sure to remember to build an army too, as queued troops can be refunded later to get the elixir back. By storing some of your elixir in the form of troops, you make that elixir impossible for other players to raid like they might your standard elixir storage structure.

Queue up as many wall breakers as you can, then cancel them in order to get that elixir back when you need it, keeping a huge amount of that resource safe from enemy attacks while you're offline.

Put your most powerful weapons in the centre of your village. This means your most powerful weapons will stay active for longer.

Also, remember to keep everything tightly packed together and to build walls surrounding every structure to slow troop advancement as much as possible. Walls are your friend, so upgrade them to level three as soon as possible and stick them everywhere. Don't make attacking your village easy!