Clash of Clans Town Hall 8 guide - prepare for TH9!

Clash of Clans TH8 Guide

So, Clasher, you have finally maxed out your Town Hall 7, and you are going to Town Hall 9? Brace yourself, for this, is going to be a heck of a change. 

Many people say that the TH8 is a speed bump before the true clashing in Clash of Clans, TH9, that is. For us, it’s not entirely true. The better you prepare yourself at Town Hall 8, the smoother your transition will be. TH9 is grind-heavy. You will spend countless hours farming up to keep your Lab and Builders going 24/7. It is why it’s crucial to max everything out at TH8. 

And we’re about to show you how.

Table of contents:

What's new at TH8? - buildings and troops overview

TH8 upgrade order

What is the best base for Town Hall 8?

TH8 farming layout

TH8 trophy base

TH8 war base

TH8 attack strategy

TH8 farming strategy

TH8 Trophy strategy

TH8 War Strategy

Summary

FAQ

What's new at TH8? - buildings and troops overview

New buildings:

- +1 Dark Spell Factory,

- +1 Dark Barracks,

- +1 Gold Storage,

- +1 Elixir Storage,

- +1 Dark Elixir Drill,

- +1 Archer Tower,

- +1 Mortar,

- +1 Hidden Tesla,

- +1 Wizard Tower,

- +1 Bomb Tower,

- + 50 Wall pieces,

- +2 Spring Traps,

- +1 Giant Bomb,

- +2 Skeleton Traps,

- +2 Air Bomb,

- +1 Seeking Air Mine.

Buildings that don’t need an upgrade:

- Army Camps,

- Spell Factory,

- Dark Elixir Drill,

- Elixir Storages,

- Gold Storages,

- Air Bombs,

- Seeking Air Mine.

These buildings can be left untouched, as they will be available for the upgrade at TH9.

TH8 upgrade order

Before upgrading your Town Hall 7, remember to have some Elixir prepared. You will need it, and you will need it a lot. The Laboratory, Dark Spell Factory, Barracks upgrade, and Dark Elixir Drill - it all costs Elixir. And it’s all the most vital upgrades, which you should not wait with.

The highest priority of upgrades is always the Lab. We can’t stress enough how significant power spike it is. 

Then go the Barracks and Dark Barracks. It gives you access to powerful units - P.E.K.K.A., Valkyries, and Golems. 

As for the defenses, you should always prioritize the new ones. Once they’re in place, go ahead and perfect the layout or copy on of these, which we posted in this guide. Not having all buildings placed, will disallow you to copy any layout successfully. 

In an ideal world, you will be able to spend Gold and Elixirs at a similar rate, keeping all of your Builders busy, and finishing every upgrade in a synchronized manner. However, as we know, the ideal world does not exist, and most likely, some upgrades will be ahead and some behind. Keep them in mind when farming, as most of the time, you will have to choose between heavy Gold, Elixir, or Dark Elixir farming targets.

Make sure to have everything upgraded before going into Town Hall 9. Neglecting it will put you at a disadvantage in farming and wars to come. Be prepared - DE grind for Heroes upgrade at TH9 is legendary. You will have 20 levels of Barbarian King and a whopping 30 levels of Archer Queen to go up! Do some work earlier, so that you don’t have to return to it later on.

What is the best base for Town Hall 8?

The most vital aspect of a newly upgraded Town Hall 8, is the new defenses levels and the addition of the Bomb Tower. These are the key things to focus on when building a base. The Bomb Tower (as we wrote in a CoC Buildings guide) is an AoE ground-only defense. It works similar to the Wizard Tower. Let’s compare these two:

Defensively there is no reason not to build it. It’s 3,000,000 Gold, but it’s additional defensive firepower, which you can’t ignore.

Offensively, you can pretty much ignore it. If you have any knowledge and skill in Clash of Clans, you will not notice the Bomb Tower. Either you will attack with an air-only composition to avoid it entirely, or with Hogs, who are always aided by Heal spell. The only thing that you have to be mindful of is attacking with slow, melee units like Giants or Golems, who will not make it in time to getaway. The Bomb can deal with some unnecessary damage to them. 

TH8 farming layout

Just as we pointed out, you are not alone at TH8. There will be millions of players eager to level up freshly unlocked Golems, Valkyries, as well as further improve Hogs and the Barbarian King. They will greed for the Dark Elixir, assuming, that it is the CoC black gold, worth more than a handful of Gems. And you have to be prepared. Hereby we present to you an exemplary TH8 farming base. 

CoC TH8 farming base download >>>

TH8 trophy base

Just like we said in the TH7 guide, you don’t really want to push for trophies at this point. Around 1,200 - 1,600 trophies should be just fine. Going higher will leave you exposed and make you a loot pinata. Falling lower will cut the attack and star bonus significantly. At TH8, you can be powerful enough to climb to around 2,000 trophies without much effort, but as we said - you don’t want to.

However, if you want to reach the highest possible trophy values for your base, you can go with a setup like this:

TH8 war base

Town Hall 8 gives three strong ground units - P.E.K.K.A., Valkyrie, and Golem - so air-only war bases might not be that successful. Dragons are still effective, but not as much as at TH7. Since the enemy can attack with Valkyries, you should keep your core spread out, with CC away from the Town Hall and close to AoE defenses. Also, buildings that are spread out will work fine against slow-moving units like Golems and P.E.K.K.A.s. Still, a considerable part of your success on defense relies on the lack of success in your enemy’s offense.

CoC TH8 war base download >>>

TH8 attack strategy

As you have upgraded the Barracks to level 10 and Dark Barracks to level 4, you have unlocked new units. Also, brand new Dark Spell Factory gives you two new spells - Poison and Earthquake. The former is priceless against CC troops. The latter will be your saving grace if you’re not comfortable with Wall Breakers.

TH8 farming strategy

It is an area, where you can slowly transition your farming focus onto the Dark Elixir. You will not be able to farm and stack a lot of it, but the more you get now, the less you will need at DE-hungry Town Hall 9. The priority for you here is to level your Barbarian King up to level 10, and research spells and DE troops.

As for setups, even though you’ve unlocked Valks and Golems, they are not for farming purposes. At this point, these two troops are a hell of expensive ones, slow to train, and cost-inefficient. Of course, Valkyries with Rage Spell will tear through any base at this level, but you will wait for millennia before they fill your Army Camps.

Your best bet will be GiBArch and GiWiz, which we’ve described in the TH7 guide. You can add a P.E.K.K.A. or two into the fray. They are tankier than Giants, and they have some offensive potential on top of that. 

TH8 Trophy strategy

It is the place where you quit looking at your Dark Elixir Stash, and you recruit the most powerful army that you can assemble. We present a couple of popular strategies used to crush enemies at Town Hall level 8.

DragLoon

As we stated earlier, Dragons are still worth going here. However, pairing them up with some Balloons (preferably max level from CC) can prove to be quite unstoppable. 

For the execution, you want to lure the enemy Clan Castle defensive troops and take care of them. Dragons can get pulled away by them, so be careful. Start by creating a funnel for Drakes. Once it’s done, send in the rest of them. They should be well into the base when you deploy Balloons. The premise of adding Balloons here is that the Dragons should do the tanking for them (kind of like a Lava Hound one TH level higher). Be careful not to send them too late, as they will not take out the key defenses in time for Dragons to survive and clear the base.

The one cool feature of TH8 is the Earthquake spell, which opens up a couple of exciting possibilities. You can pair it up with Lightning for a so-called Zap-Quake. It is a potent combo that will most likely take out the Air Defense.

And so we move on to the bases, that are recommended to DragLoon. Whenever you see Air Defense close to a Wizard Tower, Archer Tower, or (in a perfect world) Air Sweeper - go for it.

In this setup, the only ground troop that you should go in with is the Barbarian King and maybe some Archers for a lure. The premise is to avoid ground-only traps. Also, if the defender has his Skeleton Traps set to ground mode, your Dragons and Balloons will ignore them.

Obviously, it’s a full air attack, so going against the Air Sweeper might not be a good idea. Luckily for you, at TH8, there is only one Sweeper available, and you can approach any base from behind the Sweeper, not worrying about this structure ruining the attack.

GoVaHo

It is a quite powerful, ground-only type of the attack. Golems are the best tanking troop in the game, as with their Golemites, they have relatively the most HP to offer. Take two Golems, 6-8 Valkyries, 4-6 Wizards for funneling, fill it with Hog Riders.

As you are going ground mode, you need to take care of the Walls. You have two options here - Quad-Quake or Wall Breakers. The former guarantees a breach and easy funneling for spells housing space, the latter is cheaper, leaves more room for different spells, but proves to be less reliable.

Your goal is to focus all the defenses on Golems and funnel Valkyries straight into the core. Cover them up with Heal spell, so that they can withstand more damage, and Rage spell, for them to clear faster. 

As Valkyries are the core of your raid squad, you want to use it against bases with buildings stacked close together. Once Valkyries tear down the center of the enemy base, you send in the Hogs surgically, covering their path with Heal spells. 

GoVaHo is a strong offensive setup for trophies and wars, but you will not use it in casual farming. It’s expensive, DE-heavy, slow-training, and inefficient. Make sure to use it only in wars and trophy pushing.

GoWiPe

The premise of this attack is to send in the Golems to tank, and then follow it with P.E.K.K.A.s and Wizards. In the core, P.E.K.K.A.s still act as a tank for Wizards, but they also provide some offensive firepower. 

Your strategy will be to open with 2-3 Golems. Deploy them spread out enough to avoid being hit by the same defense, but close enough to cover the space for your other troops. Drop Wizards behinds them so that they clear the outside trash buildings. Then you go in with P.E.K.K.A.s. The key is to send the Golems and P.E.K.K.A.s into the core of the base. If you utilized your Wizards properly, P.E.K.K.A.s would target the inside buildings. These troops are powerful and fearsome, yet sometimes they prefer wandering outside the base instead of going in. It is very easy to mess up.

Once the outside trash structures are done, bring in the Wall Breakers. Their number depends on the Walls level, but in trophy pushing, you cannot scout the base beforehand, so it’s safe to take at least 5-6 of them. Most players usually take more of these, in case they mess the attack up (Bomb, Random Mortar, or Tesla). Breaking the Wall is crucial, as, without it, there is a probability that your P.E.K.K.A.s will go around the base. 

As they head towards the core, drop the Rage Spell and Heal Spell. In trophy attacks, it will be 2 Rage and 1 Heal most of the cases, since you can’t prepare it specifically for the target. In the war attack, you may want to mix it up sometimes.

If executed correctly, you can, as the name suggests, Go and WiPe the enemy village. The strategy is extremely effective, as it will rarely fail to give you at least two stars. Yet, it’s also expensive resources-wise and time-wise.

TH8 War Strategy

Technically speaking, there is not much difference between trophy and war attack. The main distinction is that you can prepare the army before the war attack, while during trophy pushing, you rather look for the base to attack with predefined setup. Long story short - in trophy attack, you can more or less choose the target. In a war attack, you will select the army instead.

Depending on the recommended target village setup, you may want to go with an air attack or ground attack. In some rare cases, you can also choose to go with a hybrid attack. However, we do not recommend it at TH8 because of the lack of proper air cleanup troops. Sure, you can wipe the defenses with Balloons and a couple of Rage Spells, but Balloons are slow, and the time limit is merciless. Going with Wizards or Archers for the cleanup might not be enough if there are structures behind the Walls. You might see your Wizard relentlessly pounding the bricks with 15 seconds left on the timer to get to the Barracks.

When going full air mode with DragLoon, it is best to add a few Minions to the army, who can ignore the Walls, and most of the air traps are already triggered. 

You can always go for a Quad-quake and get to the enemy core fast enough, but keep in mind that 4 EQ spells will take four housing space, which results in the lack of 2 Rage or Heal Spells. Everything has its price in Clash of Clans.

Summary

Town Hall is the interim between TH7 and TH9. There are not many significant changes other than the addition of Golems, Valkyries, Dark Spells, and the Bomb Tower. What you want to do here is to prepare for the Town Hall 9 hero grind. It is Town Hall 9, where the real fun begins, with entirely new strategies, defenses, war situations, and setups for both farming and trophies. We have prepared the Town Hall 9 guide as well. Make sure you check it out.

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FAQ

What are the changes at CoC TH8?

Most notable changes are the additions of Golems, Valkyries, Dark Spell Factory with Poison and Earthquake, and the Bomb Tower.

What should I upgrade at Town Hall level 8?

First, Laboratory, Spell, and Dark Spell factory, then focus on researches. Then go on to the Elixir Pumps and Gold Mines, with their respective storages. Use Gold to place the new defenses first, and then get higher levels, beginning with splash defenses.

How to prepare for the TH9?

Make sure to have a stash of Dark Elixir. You will need it to build the Archer Queen and immediately set her to upgrade. 

What is the strongest troop at TH8?

Probably, the P.E.K.K.A. It is actually one of the strongest troops in the whole game, useful even at the highest level of play.