Nothing much going on in the main base today. I’m still updating my guides, just done with TH11 and now going to finish TH12 guides before moving on builder base guides.

3 upgrades completing in 12 hours but I already have enough gold to start all 3. I can’t believe how much was discounted for TH9/10, it is currently around the price of the old TH8 stuff. People are saying that they can max out TH10 within the first year of playing the game which is a significant change of pace compared to the past. Still, they got nothing on me who can max heroes within the first year and finish TH12 within 1.5 years

This is what my builder base looks like after the first 11 months of playing the game. It is not ideal at all because I missed quite a few days of raiding here and I spent a lot of loot in upgrades that are less important.

Currently, I still need to do 3 gear ups and 10 levels of BM before I can unlock OTTO who will set me on track to max out in 18 months. I’m thinking to use a few books to get OTTO quickly because he will save more time than using those books in the main base. The gear-ups in particular take an egregious amount of time so I will definitely use books there. I also need to upgrade my mortars in the main base so that I can do the gear up in the first place. Hopefully I can get him by the end of September.

I think a new player with proper resource targets and management should be able to get the OTTO within 8-9 months of starting the builder base. That would allow the player to max out a new account in ~15 months.

BM upgrading to lvl21 right now. With the gold pass, I can keep him upgrading perpetually by completing my daily raids. The gold pass is quite significant here in the builder base because collectors are more valuable here. At this rate, he will be maxed by end of Sept then hopefully I would prepare enough books to instantly finish all gear-ups.

Here are my troops:

I am really not sure what troops to suggest for new players right now. On one hand, you must have cannon carts maxed for OTTO but they cannot be used alone. On the other hand, suggesting barbs isn’t a good idea because they become obsolete at BH9. The best army for gaining loot for a newbie BH9 is dropship + minions, but it costs a ton of resources which could be used for BM.

The crux of the problem here is that spending elixir on dropship + minions may yield more loot in the long run as you can float in higher leagues to gain more loot and eventually get OTTO faster. Without a side-by-side comparison, it is extremely hard to make a good decision.

The armies you can use with cannons are barbs or pekkas. Pekkas, while being a solid choice, costs way too much elixir to be worth it. Barbs cost very little elixir but it’ll be hard for you to go higher than 3400 with just barbs+carts. I may put both as suggested troops and let new players decide for themselves