Flammy's Strategy Guides/Attacking: How To Raid - Goal: Get Resources

Introduction
Welcome to another installment of Flammy's Strategy Guides series, a guide to raiding. This guide will be useful and applicable to players of all levels, from brand new players who are about to lose their three day Newbie Shield to higher levels looking to gain 750,000 gold for their next town hall upgrade… or more.

Raiding IS Farming
I consider the type of raiding I will be describing here to be a form of farming. Not all will agree with me on this point. Some people seem to believe that farming requires super low trophy counts and/or using mass goblin armies, exclusively.

I consider anything that is intended to gain resources (rather than trophies) to be a form a farming - especially when you are looking for an easy match rather than someone your own level or higher.

What does this matter? Well this is also going to be my "Farming" guide as well. I really don't enjoy doing those other types of farming (the mass goblin, or the super low trophy count). So don't look for any other farming guide out of me, unless the game changes in such a way to change or create a new sort of farming.

Benefits of Raiding
Raiding has one main goal, and all I will discuss in this chapter is in that effort: To get resources. We’re going to be discussing going after both Gold and Elixir in this guide, as they are nearly identical when trying to steal them. Generally gold is more valuable to players, as it is easier to spend (instantly on walls, or on defenses) than elixir (limited to offensive buildings and units).

Raiding lets you augment your income with quite literally limitless resources. The amount of gold and elixir that is available for you to steal only limited by your skill and your time investment.

The Ideal Raid
The ideal raid should deploy as few troops as possible and gains whatever resources that are easy to steal only, skipping better protected storages or mines.

The ideal raid has two main factors. First, and what I’m sure all of you already know, is the amount you steal. That is what we’re here to get, after all. Secondly, and just as important but often overlooked is your investment to get those resources. This means both the actual cost of the units you are deploying when raiding, but also the time it takes to rebuild all of them.

Don’t believe that unit costs and build time matter?

Take these two raids as examples:

Both are nice raids, right? Now…

Which attack was more effective as a raid?
Example 1’s army costs around 55,000 elixir (depending on exact unit levels), while Example 2’s army costs a maximum of 600 elixir. This means the net total profit (gold + elixir) was ~145,000 for Example 1 and ~29,400 for Example 2. Clearly 1 gained more resources… However:

Example 1’s army takes a total of 5990 seconds to train or 1.3 hours total*. Example 2 army takes a total of 110 seconds to train. This means that while the player who used Example 1 is sitting around waiting for their army to finish, a player using Example 2 will be out raiding again. This does not just mean a player doing Example 2 is less bored, it means Example 2 will actually have a much higher income per hour.


 * Note: This is the total time to build, the actual time to build this army is this number divided by the number of barracks, likely either 3 or 4.

I’ll prove that for you:
Assuming 3 minutes to find a match (for both players), Example 1 will attack once every 28 minutes. During this 28 minute period, Example 2 will attack 9 times, gaining a total of 264,600, compared to the 145,000 stolen by example 1. '''Example 1 gains 310,000 resources per hour, and Example 2 gains 567,000 resources per hour. '''

While I used made up numbers for this example, this has been proven before by both myself and other players. Lots of little raids will be more profitable than a few large, all out attacks. There is another factor at play as well: Little raids will be less vulnerable to failure: your total investment is low and you can just abandon the attack with little lost if needed. Finally, doing lots of little attacks is simply more interesting than sitting around for 25 or more minutes waiting for your army to finish training.

Picking the right Base to Raid
So, now that we know what the ideal raid is, how should we pick the bases we will be attacking? There are several factors that are important

Quickly reviewing a target
Here, in order, are a list of things you should quickly glance at when determining if a base is a good chose to raid.

Resources - Total
The first thing you should glance at is the total number of resources. If this number is terribly low (<10,000 of each is a good cut off probably, but depends on your level and your situation) just immediately move onto the next one. But don’t just look for very high resource totals… because we’re raiding, the difficulty of stealing the resources is also very important.

Resources - Determining Source: Storage vs Collectors/Mines
If a base's total resources are sufficiently high, the next thing we need to determine is where the resources are in the base. They will be either the storages or the collectors/mines, but different bases will have different ratios in each. The skill of being able to tell how much is in each is quite important and will be VERY beneficial to those who master it.

First thing to look for is back at the total resources: Are the total amount of each resource nice round numbers? (such as 50,000 or 36,500 or 42,750 – These are all ‘round’ numbers.) Are the total resources available to be stolen a nice round number? If yes, this is great news! This is someone who has not logged in for a long time and their collectors and mines are full AND they have nothing in their storages. This occurs after they've been attacked and 3 starred at least once (often more) in the past. Why is this important? It means you can simply raid their collectors/mines and steal 100% of their resources. Literally nothing will be in their storages. You can simply raid their collectors and walk away happy.

Determining if target has been online lately (and collected their resources)
Is the total amount not a nice round number? Dang, well then... is one of the numbers particularly low? (such as 57,028 gold, and only 3,102 elixir) This means that they have recently been online and spent almost all of that resource, so there will not be much in the collectors/mines because they were online to collect them, so look at how hard the storages are to get to (for the other resource, the high one)

Last Resort Method: Eyeballing
Not a nice round number and both numbers are sufficiently high in count? Well, now we need to eyeball how much is in those collectors/mines. Look at the collectors. There is a graphical representation that shows how full it is. See the images below. Elixir is much easier to eyeball than Gold.

Missing Resources Graphical Glitch
The missing resources graphical glitch is, as my name for it implies, a glitch where a 100% full elixir collector or gold mine can appear as empty. Often when the glitch occurs, well more than half of the collectors will appear as empty. Sometimes all will appear as empty. When attacked, however, it will reward the correct amount of the resource, along with the accompanying animation which shows lots of elixir bubbles/gold coins pouring out.

You can detect this glitch quite easily once you've trained yourself to look for it. If there is one collector or mine that is full, and then several that are empty right next to it (and they're all the same or nearly the same level) it is quite easy to tell that the graphical glitch is occurring. A very easy way to detect this glitch is if it is accompanied by the 'Nice Round Numbers' indicator discussed above. You can also look at the storage and if they appear in the 'empty or nearly empty' graphical representation, and yet there is a TON of resources available to be stolen, the resources are likely to be in the collectors and mines yet invisible due to this glitch. Alternative (and harder) ways to detect it include looking for signs of abandonment such as lots of uncollected tombstones.

Should we attack or not?
Finally, you've figured out how much resources there are and where they are in the base. You need to make the decision if you attack or not. In the end, it is up to you to determine if the Risk vs Reward makes a base worth attacking, or if you should keep looking for another base.
 * Look for tombstones indicating  clan castle troops might have already been killed in a prior attack.

Use all of the above steps to determine the risk/benefit of attacking a particular base. You can ‘scan’ base in 10 to 30 seconds quite easily. Are you getting close to the end of the 30 seconds? Just let the 30 seconds run out! If you don’t deploy troops, you can click “end battle” without taking a loss. Use the extra time to determine if you actually want to attack the base or not. Remember, once you place down troops, you can't 'Undo'!

The Picker
4 Wall Breakers, 2 giant (optional) and the rest: 25% Goblin, 25% Barbarian, 50% archer

How to use: Use archers to pick off exposed buildings. Learn ranges on turrets to make this more effective. Use barbarians to soak up turret fire and goblins to steal resources that can't be picked. If you opt to use giants, use them to distract defenses. Otherwise, just use barbarians.

The Poker
4 Wall Breakers, 50% giant, 25% Archer, 12% Goblin, 12% Barbarian

How to use: Slower and more expensive than The Picker, but more able to attack strong bases to get at resources. Giants can overwhelm (or at least distract) defenses depending on if you're attacking someone of equal level or lower level. Use the archers to pick like the in The Picker, and Goblins and Barbarians to rush into get storages. Wall Breakers are more important in this army composition than in The Picker as they will seriously help giants get to the defenses faster. Don't deploy all or even any of the giants if it is not needed! Remember the 'Ideal Raid'!

The Striker
(For those with the healer unlocked only) (upgraded Poker army)

4 Wall Breakers, 1 Healer, 40% giant, 25% Archer, 12% Goblin, 12% Barbarian

How to use: The Striker has lots of attacking power against all bases except super well defended Air Defense Turrets. Just like with The Poker, don't deploy giants or healer unless it is needed to get at protected storages that you've determined to have enough resources to make it worth it. Slow to train and replace, the Striker lets you choose if you want to deploy 40 archers to raid the exterior of a base, or deploy a massive giant force to three star your victim ... IF they have the resources to justify such an attack.



The Rusher
10 Wall Breakers + 100% goblins Look for high resources. Deploy Goblins. No brains required, not very detail oriented. Why is this a bad raiding army? Well it will get the job done. Unless you run into a bad case of Wizard Tower, you'll probably get all or nearly all of their resources. The problem with this army composition is it basically relies on deploying mass amounts of guys, which slows down your training time to replace them all, which in turn lowers your income. The three previous armies all have lots of options to handle various different situations - They aren't forced into deploying all-or-nothing.

Train your army while you attack for more frequent raiding
Queue up soldiers before searching for a match! They will start completing as soon as you deploy your first unit in battle, so you will return to a already half built army. Decreases time between raids.

Test for Clan Castle troops
The first unit you put down when raiding a base should be to check if they have clan castle troops. You don't want to be surprised when your plan goes wrong due to a bunch of enemies pouring out to distract your oh-so-carefully-placed-archers, drawing them into the line of fire of the defenses.

Trophy range considerations
Keep an eye on your trophy count! Different levels of bases should raid at different trophy ranges. These ranges also change over time, so what worked two weeks ago might not still work today.

Maximum Resources Available to be Stolen and Maximum Stealable from different sources
You can't steal all of an enemy's resources. The maximum amount that is offered to you when you view a base is actually comprised of some resources from the storage (if any), some resources from the collectors, and some resources from the Town hall (if any).The break down is like this:

Resource Penalty for attacking lower level Town Halls
There is a penalty for attacking bases that are lower level than you in Town Hall level. This is to prevent higher levels from farming others who are significantly lower level than themself.

Conclusion
Thank you very much for reading! I hope you learned something useful. If you would like morevideos of raiding, I have tons on my youtube channel as both a low level (TH4, TH5, TH6) and a high level (TH8) at a wide range of trophy counts. My favorite type of attack is raiding, rather than going for trophies, which I do on necessity such as when trying to get to 1250 for Sweet Victory Achievement, so I've got quite a bit of content for them. You can also check out some of my other guides at Flammy's Strategy Guides.