Clash of Clans spells - everything you need to know about spells in CoC

Clash of Clans spells guide

Once you reach Town Hall level 5, you are allowed to build the Spell Factory. If it’s your first village, you are probably yet to realize that this small, mediocre-looking building is the real game-changer later on.

At the highest level of play, spells are the deciding factor between “Victory” and “Defeat.” Whole strategies are relying on spells, like Frozen Witch, Frozen Dragon, and even Queen Walk or Queen Charge. Without Rage or Haste, the Balloons would run out of hot air before they reach the first defensive building. Without Heal, Hog Riders and Miners would be torn apart by traps. Without Jump or Quad-quake, P.E.K.K.A.s would wander around the base forever. In this guide, we will break down each, and every spell in Clash of Clans released to this day.

Table of Contents:

What are spells in Clash of Clans

Clash of Clans spells overview

Elixir Spells

Lightning

Heal

Rage

Jump

Freeze

Clone

Dark Spells

Poison

Earthquake

Haste

Skeleton

Bats

Zap-quake calculator

Summary

FAQ

What are the Spells in Clash of Clans?

Spells create auras on the battlefield, causing various effects, usually significantly increasing the overall offensive potential of the attacker, be it spawning or multiplying units, making them stronger, restoring their HP, or enhancing their movement speed. 

There are a total of eleven spells divided into two groups depending on the cooking building, and the resource used for brewing - Elixir or Dark Elixir. You could say that Elixir spells are more influential towards units, while Dark Elixir Spells tend to act independently.

Clash of Clans Spells overview

Hereby we present the basic information regarding Spells in the SuperCell bestseller app. You can have a quick peek on the data that you currently need.

An important thing to mention - you can’t damage Storages with spells. It was changed back in 2015 so that you won’t have too easy time farming. Actually, it was pretty overpowered, when you could just Zap the Dark Elixir Storage placed in the middle of the base, protected by all the defenses in the world. 

Dark Spells

Elixir Spells

These are cooked in the regular Spell Factory, which we have unlocked at Town Hall level 5 as of now. Each subsequent level of Spell Factory gives us new spells and more storage space. At max Spell Factory level, we have all six spells available, and we can take up to 10 housing space worth of spells into the battle (without the Clan Castle). 

Spells are a fantastic addition to the offensive power, and there is no reason not to take them unless you are farming and conserving the resources. However, the latter is not entirely the case in the higher level of play, because it will be tough for you to reach the centralized Dark Elixir Storage without them. 

At the highest level of play, correct spells deployment is oftentimes a do-or-die. Missed Freeze, Heal, or Quad-quake can hurt and make the whole raid go down the drain.

Lightning

It is the first spell unlocked at TH5 once the Spell Factory is built. Initially, it’s rather weak, taking it as a whole, but it’s still an additional 300 damage to a unit or a structure. It hits six times in random places within seven tiles wide circle during 2,4 seconds. The only spot receiving full damage is the initial drop tile. It does not take your regular troops' housing space, which makes it an excellent addition to your overall offensive capabilities. 

It deals damage to both units and structures with the exception of Storages. It has a couple of applications:

- Zap-quake - the Lightning fill the gap that subsequent EQs leave. Each subsequent Earthquake spell deals less damage to structures, but the Lightning's damage is constant. It serves the purpose of taking down key targets,

- Clan Castle troops - one or two Zaps will not do much to Heroes, or high HP CCs like Golem or Lava Hound, but a bunch of Barbarians, Archers, Bowlers can be taken out. Also, it does well against Skeletons coming from the traps. However, as opposed to the Poison spell, it doesn’t slow enemy units, so your best bet will be to deploy it in the place, where CC units are already engaged and stuck in place,

- Triggering the Tesla - at TH12, there is a Giga Tesla built into the Town Hall, but it needs to be damaged first, or 51% of the village must be destroyed for it to be considered a defensive building. It is crucial in defense-focused troops attacks, like Mass Hogs or LavaLoon.

The biggest upside of the Lightning in the attack is that it hits structures as well as units. On the contrary, the Poison can hurt only troops, and the Earthquake damages only structures. If you ever manage to lure the CC troops somewhere between key defenses, you can hit two birds with one stone.

Heal

It is the second spell unlocked in the Spell Factory. It is the ultimate counter to AoE splash damage defenses and traps, namely multi-Inferno and Wizard Tower, sometimes also Mortar and Bomb Tower in lower levels. It is especially true pre-TH8-9, where ground attacks are more popular without Lava Hounds available.

The key to master the usage of Heal is to know exactly where your troops will go, and where will they stay for a longer. Dropping a Heal onto racing fast Goblins, who will merely run through it, is a waste of housing space and Elixir. However, if you put it under Giants, who are currently busy pounding onto a couple of defenses - that is where you get your value. 

A common practice is to pair it up with a Rage Spell. Not only will your units live longer, but they will also deal more damage in that duration. It is advantageous when you, for example, deploy the Siege Machine to head straight for the core, and you have Valkyries or Bowlers inside. The squad is supposed to deal as much damage as possible, which is why you aid them with Heal and Rage. The longer they survive, the more damage they will deal with. The only drawback is that due to the Rage improved movement speed, units are more likely to leave the healing ring prematurely.

Some say that this spell is overpowered combined with mass Miners attacks. Miners are taking down buildings lightning-fast, going underground, receiving the healing, going back up full HP. Rinse and repeat. 30 or so Miners with a couple of well placed Heals can tear the base down effortlessly if it’s shaped properly.

Heals are also popular with mass Hogs attacks, where Hog Riders eventually clump up together and step on every ground mine in the world. To protect them from traps, and splash ground defenses, take as many Heals as you find sufficient. It is why in Hogs attacks, it is so essential to build the base in a horseshoe or a crescent shape. This way, one Heal spell covers every inch of their pathway, and 3-4 Heals can cover the remainder of the map.

Rage

This one is the bread and butter of Clash of Clans spells. The purple power dropped onto the battlefield can turn your slow-moving slug-fast leviathans into scary, fast-paced juggernauts, and hard-hitting elite soldiers into even more deadly demons. Rage gives a movement speed and damage buff to all troops in the purple ring. As for Healers, who don’t deal with the damage, their healing capabilities are improved.

The offensive utility of this spell is unprecedented. It is a core spell in many attack strategies, especially in those revolving around the Archer Queen. If you send your lady hero with Healers into the fray, where she’s under heavy fire, not only will she deal more damage, but also receive more healing. A few seconds of immortality for the max level Archer Queen most of the time is more than enough to rip through the enemy base. After it, all that’s left for you is to send the Hogs or Balloons and watch the structures fall one by one.

Something that not many players expect is sending mass Giants, who paired with a Heal, Rage, and perhaps Healers (depending on Air Defenses positioning) tear through the defenses, while being unkillable. This, however, is not half as epic as the P.E.K.K.A. Sure, P.E.K.K.A. takes five times more housing space. But she deals way more damage, which is additionally amplified by Rage, with Heal spell and Healers making the dreaded female knights virtually invincible.

Jump

The green color of the spell inevitably brings Goblins to mind, the more that it's often used in a Goblin Knife strategy. 

It has only three levels of upgrade, the least among the spells right now, but the power spikes are considerable. It’s 20 seconds difference between the level 1 and level 2, and another 19 seconds going up to level 3. It gives you a ⅓ of a total attack time of open base. 

When in the Clash of Clans, you should go for the Jump?

The first premise is apparent - the ground attack. Flying units or Hog Riders will not benefit from this spell.

The second one is that every other Walls-bypassing options are suboptimal or unavailable:

- you want Battle Blimp or Stone Slammer instead of Wall Wrecker (TH10+),

- you need access to few compartments, where Quad-quake will not let your troops go (TH8+),

- Wall Breakers are not your strongest side,

- you are restraining yourself from Hog Riders (e. g. you’re farming for Heroes),

- you don’t have Miners yet, or the attacked village is not suitable for them. 

The best way to use the Jump is t place it on the Walls conjunctions. This way, you are unlocking multiple compartments with one spell. Also, as soon as you are allowed to upgrade it before other spells. The 20 seconds difference between Jump level 1 and level 2 is massive. The best troops to use Jump with are the ones who deal a lot of damage but struggle with Walls, namely Valkyries, Bowlers, P.E.K.K.A.s, Goblins.

Freeze

An attempt to explain to you how the spell works would be an insult to your intellect. Many games know the mechanic already. The instant set-everything-in-ice spell is crucial tactically, but you will not take it in every raid. You will, however, need it if you require to reset the defenses’ focus or to protect your troops for a while long enough to take the target down. Pre-TH9 it’s not that good since most of the defenses are manageable. The greatest danger there is the X-bow, which will barely scratch the P.E.K.K.A. or a Golem with a couple of Healers on it.

The situation changes dramatically from the Town Hall level 10 on. First, you will face the Inferno Tower, then at TH11, the Eagle Artillery, and the Giga Tesla built into the TH12. One well placed Freeze can save your tanks a considerable portion of health, or save your kill squad from being wiped. What’s more, freezing the Air Sweeper can let your Balloons, Lava Hounds, and Electro Dragons reach the core.

You can freeze the units, that are already standing on the Poison area, to deny them the escape. 

The Ice Golem upon dying works similarly to the Freeze spell. Actually, it freezes a larger area. However, you need to be very cautious about where the Ice Golem will go. If it goes in the wrong direction, or if it dies too early (or too late), it may cause a bit of a problem.

Clone

Very peculiar spell with unique ways to utilize it on the battlefield. It can suddenly clone every unit that steps into its area of effect up to a fixed housing space, a maximum of 30. Max clone spell allows you to clone Golem, P.E.K.K.A., Lava Hound, or Electro Dragon. It’s exceptionally powerful, with E-Drag (“Electrone”) being an often-used strategy beginning from Town Hall level 10.

The usefulness of Clone spell excels when you need to multiply your troops in vital areas of the attacked base - the core or the Archer Queen. The spell is exceptional because it can drastically increase your power at a minimum cost. What’s more, when used on slow units, like Golems, Electro Dragons, or Balloons, it acts as if these units teleported there. For slow troops, the value is insane. 

Another application is cloning units to overwhelm the Eagle Artillery quickly. This structure triggers once a particular number of troops are deployed. For levels 1 and 2, its 180, going to 200 for level 3. For example, if you manage to deliver a Battle Blimp onto the Eagle Artillery with an Electro Dragon and Balloons inside of it, and clone these troops, the Eagle may be taken down before it fires a single volley. And it’s an incredible value already. The tricky part here is that cloned troops do not count towards the Eagle Artillery trigger threshold, but you have to keep in mind, that the spell itself does count as 15. 

The most significant value is the overall housing space it brings to the battlefield. Another 30 housing space worth of troops is a lot. Imagine having two Ice Golems in the core tanking the whole world, with two additional Ice Golems popping from the Clone. Not only you have an extra 7,800 HP to tank for you (2 x 3,400 at max level), but two more Freezes! One freeze on offense lasts 7 seconds. Four Ice Golems can freeze the core for a total of 28 seconds. Now imagine a group of Bowlers or Valkyries having almost half a minute of free time in the enemy core. 

Dark Elixir Spells

Poison

It is a core spell against most of the Clan Castle troops and Heroes in Clash of Clans. It slows down every enemy unit within its radius and deals damage. It’s perfect against low HP, high damage Clan Castle troops, and a little worse against high HP troops in terms of damage. It scales, but it has its cap. Multiple Poison spells dropped in the same place will quicken the scaling process, but will not stack.

It is used against defending Heroes just for slowing them down. You can try and replace it with Freeze if you think that you can set some defenses in ice too. The best spot to drop the Poison is right where your enemies are about to engage you for them to stand in the poison as long as possible. From the 2016 update, defending Clan Castle troops will not mindlessly stand in the Poison, but they will instead run away. For that particular reason, it is critical to keep them busy.

Earthquake

This spell deals percentage damage to structures with its value decreasing for subsequent EQs hitting the same building, and increasing against the same Wall piece. A rule of thumb is that four Quakes always break the Wall, which is known by the name of Quad-quake. The ability to use it correctly can open up many bases for both farming and trophies. Quad-quake is one of the most reliable ways of bypassing the Walls, being inferior to air troops and Wall Wrecker only. Wall Breakers can fail miserably, ruining the whole raid. Jump Spell doesn’t last forever. If you don’t have enough faith in yourself (or your troops) to use the Wall Breakers or Jump Spell reliably, go for Quad-quake.

Its most significant upside makes it not worth it to prioritize it in terms of upgrading. Most of the time, you will use it in Clash of Clans is for the Quad-quake, where the level doesn’t matter. If not, you will want it to trigger the TH12 Giga Tesla, to save the space you’d need for a Lightning. Even then, one Earthquake is darn enough to make the Town Hall 12 inner defense pop up. Also, when quad-quaking neat the TH12 with Giga Tesla or Giga Inferno in it, you may want to consider if you wish to trigger it, or not.

Haste

It is a perfect alternative for those who are using units that already deal with serious damage, like P.E.K.K.A., Electro Dragon, or Balloons, but they need some speed to move around the base. Haste gives more movement speed than Rage but provides no damage boost. Most of the time, it is pointless to speed up Golems or Giants, just to push them further into the base for the sole purpose of tanking.

Also, Haste takes less housing space. For one Rage, you can take two Hastes. It is vital if you are planning to spread up your forces, and you don’t need the damage buff. It is useful as well when your Spell Factory is currently under the upgrade. Some even call it a poor man’s Rage. To be fair, a group of Balloons, Electro Dragon, or a P.E.K.K.A. have high damage somewhat inherently. They just need a gap-closer.

Skeleton

The thing that Skellies excel at is a distraction. The catch is that you should know what you’re up against. Skeletons will die quickly against an air Clan Castle, providing next to none utility overall. With ground CC troops, you can stall them long enough for your main forces to take them down. They also work well against Heroes. Generally, Heroes lack AoE damage. Thus they suffer versus swarms of enemies. 

The synergy between Poison and Skeletons is incredible. Once the CC troops leave the Castle, heading towards your troops, drop Poison on them and follow it with Skeletons to hold them in the Poison even longer. On defense, every unit will attack the raider’s forces, no matter its original target priority. 

Bats

One of the most impactful spells in CoC: Bat Spell. It is so strong that it even has its strategies named after it! P.E.K.K.A. BoBat, BatSlap, DragBat, and many more, 

It is an air counterpart of the previously described Skeleton Spell. However, unlike Skellies, Bats are focusing defenses. 

The best part about the Bat Spell is the concentrated, targeted damage in a short time. Usually, you take 5-7 Bat Spells with you. At the max level, one Bat Spell spawns up to 21 Bats. Five of these will give you 105 Bats, each one dealing 30 damage per second.

Max level Inferno Tower has 3,300 HP. A swarm coming out from five Bat Spells is able to one-shot it, as Bats attack once per two seconds. Let’s look at the Eagle Artillery next with 5,200 HP at max level. It will take two seconds to bring it down. Considering the fact that it attacks once per ten seconds, we can assume that it will fire only once. At best. 

Bats pay the “swarm troops” tax. They are incredibly squishy, having a health pool of merely 20 hit points. You could think that a gust of wind is enough to kill them. It is why they are weak against splash damage defenses, mostly the Wizard Tower. Your best bet with Bat Spell is to use it against bases with Wizard Towers concentrated on one side. If you can use some other troops or Heroes to knock down at least three of them, you’re pretty much free to go. Also, Eagle Artillery is still your top priority.

Bat spell is fabulous against single-target Inferno Towers, and with Ice Golems or well-placed and well-timed Freeze spells, it can also do against the multi-target one. You can compare the Bat swarm to faster Balloons. The main difference is that Bats are less forgiving. 

Zap-quake calculator

As we mentioned before, four Earthquake spells break every Wall, regardless of the level, but they will not take down any building. You can fill the damage gap with Lightning spells, but there are different values for each spell and building level. 

You can try to do this trick against the Inferno Tower, but it will be far more expensive since Infernos have a lot more hitpoints than Air Defenses. It is possible to take them down with Zap-Quake. However, most of the time, it will take you whole spells housing space capacity. It is for you to decide whether it is worth it or not. For us, it’s not. You can have a one housing space Freeze disabling the Inferno, and your troops tearing it down before the ice is gone. 

Summary

What would have Clash of Clans been without mighty Spells? How many units would have died without the Heal? How many lives would have been taken by the Inferno Towers, if mighty Bats didn’t crush it? How would Goblins, stripped of the green spell, jump over the wall to grab the resources? How many Clan Wars would have gone a different way? Millions of players, billions of raids, how many of them would have failed without a colorful aura underneath the troops' feet? We’ll never know. 

Now we can’t imagine a Clash of Clans world without spells. They will remain there for some time, and most likely, there will be more of them. We’re looking forward to them. And we hope that you share the same view. 

FAQ

What are Spells in Clash of Clans?

You can brew spells and drop them during the attack to empower your troops, weaken the enemy troops, spawn units, or damage the enemy buildings.

What Spells can you brew in CoC?

There are Elixir Spells - Lightning, Heal, Rage, Jump, Freeze, and Clone - and Dark Elixir Spells - Poison, Earthquake, Haste, Skeleton, and Bats.

Where do you cook Spells?

Elixir Spells are brewed in the Spell Factory, and Dark Elixir Spells are brewed in the Dark Spell Factory. Spells are also stored in the respective factories.

How do you use Spells in Clash of Clans?

It works similar to deploying your troops with a difference that you can drop spells anywhere on the map.

How do you upgrade Spells in CoC?

The procedure is the same as for troops. You put Spells into the upgrade queue. Elixir Spells are upgraded with Elixir, while Dark Spells are upgraded with Dark Elixir.

What is the total Clash of Clans upgrades cost for spells?

For Elixir Spells, it’s a total of 151,750,000, and for the Dark Elixir Spells, it’s 2,060,000.