This is one of the most common questions found in reddit. One of the worst advice people give in this situation is “start over” which is dumb. Even the worst rushed base would reach maxed TH12 faster than starting from scratch. Contrary to what people believe, rushing doesn’t result in slower progress, it is actually the inverse. I would only advice to start over if you have no capability to buy gems and if you only have 2-3 builders at a high level. This is because builder count is the main factor which determines your progress and you start out with nearly enough gems for 3 builders. If you splurge your initial gems, it may be hell to climb out of this hole.

The first most important thing you need to understand is that your rushed base doesn’t really need “fixing” or “catching up”. You just need to work on some key upgrades and you’ll be on track within 1-2 months. Most people have the wrong idea as to what really constitutes as “badly rushed”. If you have the offense then your defense doesn’t really matter at all. You can have lvl1 defenses at TH12 and you’ll be fine if you have lvl8 barch.

No matter how badly you rushed, there is always light at the end of the tunnel. Sure, you would be ridiculed by many because they are misinformed. Just keep upgrading and you’ll pull ahead and be faster than those maxers. To rush initially, you would need to farm enough gold to upgrade the town hall to begin with, whatever offense upgrade you do is definitely going to be cheaper than that town hall upgrade. So use whatever method you did to obtain that initial sum of gold to get that amount of elixir to work on your offense.

Now you need to evaluate your offense, which is the most important thing in the game. What is your TH level and your barch (barbarians and archers) level? As long as you have lvl5 barch, you’ll be fine whatever your TH level. If not, do you have 4 barracks at lvl11/12 with at least lvl1 baby dragon/miners? The latter option isn’t ideal but that will help you get lvl7-8 barch. Despite the persistent myth, having low level heroes is not a problem at higher TH levels because a good farmer doesn’t rely on heroes to farm. Offense here solely means barch and army camp levels because everything else doesn’t matter in terms of farming.

Once you figured out your offense capability, you need to learn how to farm properly. Your offense is your tool while your farming ability is the skill required for the tool. For farming, you need to learn how to barch (guide up-coming). You need to farm in the right league (Masters 3 and below for all TH levels). Find “dead bases” which are bases with half to full collectors and just use your barch to destroy them. This gives you the most loot in the least amount of time, allowing you to spend the loot to improve your strength. You can just spray barch all around the base and get the loot. There are few tips and techniques on how to use it, which you can find on google/youtube for now.

Below is a TH-by-TH breakdown on what to do if you rushed to a particular TH level and don’t know how to progress. These are just general guidelines since I cannot predict what you have or don’t have. After a few short upgrades, you should be strong enough to move on to my regular town hall guides and work from there. If you were following my guides from the outset, you shouldn’t need the guidelines below and should just go to the specific TH level guides and follow from there. This guide is meant for those who didn’t rush properly and want to get back on their feet.

TH1-8:

You haven’t rushed enough, just read my guides and rush ahead to TH9. Just make sure you have 4 army camps with 200 space and lvl5 barch before going to TH9.

General TH guides

TH9:

You still haven’t rushed enough, but here you would need to work on a few things to make your TH10 life easier.

1. Use your lab to upgrade barbarians and archers to lvl5. If your lab is too low level, upgrade your lab so that you can get at least lvl5 barch.
2. Upgrade all 4 army camps to lvl6 (50 space each)
3. Upgrade dark elixir storage lvl3

From here, you can read my TH9 guide:

TH9 upgrade priority guide

TH10:

This is a good place to stay for 1-3 months depending on how rushed you are. Going to TH11 early is a good idea, but before that we need to work on a few upgrades. These upgrades are in order of importance, so at least start your barch upgrade before working on army camps. If your barch is seriously underleveled, spend your extra elixir on army camps.

1. Similar to TH9, upgrade your barch first until they are lvl6 then work on lvl7. Upgrade barbs first before arch because they grow more per level.
   • Pro tip: you can upgrade your lab while a troop is upgrading and their timers will run concurrently.
2. Upgrade all army camps to lvl7 (55 space each) then to lvl8
3. Spend your gold here to upgrade your clan castle to max for TH10. This allows you to bring siege machines in your battles which can help get a few more collectors.
4. All spare DE here will go towards archer queen
5. If you can farm enough elixir, spend your extra elixir to upgrade dark elixir drills evenly until they are lvl7.
6. Build your infernos and 3rd xbow if you have not done so.

From here, you can follow my TH10 guide:

TH10 upgrade priority guide

TH11:

“Catching up” in TH11 isn’t too bad because you ought to stay here for about 3 months to work on warden anyway. There are more pressing upgrades before maxing warden but having at least a few levels on him greatly improves your barch.

1. Warden lvl1. Just build your warden and he will boost your barch by 20%, very good value compared to everything else you own
2. Similar to previous TH levels, upgrade your barch to max. Upgrade your lab while upgrading barch to save time. Push your barch to lvl8 and they become monsters especially under the warden.
3. Spend your gold to build your new wizard tower, archer tower, cannon. Then upgrade clan castle to max for TH11, then build your new eagle and xbow.
4. If you have excess DE, spend it on AQ. If possible, keep her upgrading.
5. Work on army camps level by level until they are lvl8 (60 space each). You can hold off lvl9 for now as they are a little too expensive for their price.
6. Upgrade warden till he is lvl5.
7. Upgrade DE drills until they are maxed (lvl7)

From here, you can follow my TH11 guide:

TH11 upgrade priority guide

TH12:

You’ll start from here if you read my Rushing to TH12 guide. If you have not read the guide, you should read it first and follow the steps outlined in the guide and work on all the upgrades in order from TH9 until you reached the end of the guide, then come back here.

By following the guide, you should have:

• Lvl9 (TH11) lab
• Maxed spell factory
• Maxed siege workshop
• Maxed clan castle
• Maxed (lvl8) barch
• At least 240 army space
• Maxed giga tesla

This provides you with a good base to work on and expand. There really aren’t many things to work on from here, below is just a list to bridge the gap between the above and my regular TH12 guide.

1. Upgrade army camps to max. Upgrade to lvl9 before lvl10 because lvl9 costs less
2. If not done so, upgrade all gold, elixir and dark elixir storage to max
3. Spend all your excess DE on archer queen
4. Upgrade DE drills to max
5. Build your 3rd inferno then max out your tornado trap using excess gold
6. Upgrade one barracks to lvl13 to unlock electro dragon
7. Upgrade one dark barracks to lvl8 to unlock ice golem
8. From here, keep one builder on AQ and one builder on warden. Then use 3 builders to upgrade your gold/elixir collectors to max

From here, you can continue with the regular TH12 guide:

TH12 upgrade priority guide

This marks the end of this short guide to “recover” your rushed base. It really isn’t too hard even for the novice player which is the target audience. If you are more advanced, this guide is not really necessary as you understand that offense is king in this game. Don’t let maxers in the game or reddit discourage you, just work on your base and you’ll pull ahead of them.