Obstacles

Summary

 * Obstacles are plants and rocks that are randomly placed in your village. You start with about 40 obstacles around your village. You can remove them if you have an available builder and a small amount of Gold or Elixir. Gold is used to remove rocks and Elixir to remove vegetation.


 * Each obstacle that is removed will yield 0, 1, 2 or 3 Gems.


 * Vegetation respawns at a rate of one item per eight hours. Rocks do not respawn, once removed.
 * Since vegetation respawns, and removing one may yield Gems, removing vegetation regularly can be an unlimited (albeit slow) source of Gems. This could be a good idea to farm gems.


 * You can have a maximum of 40 obstacles at one time.


 * There is an achievement called "Nice and Tidy" which gives players experience and Gems for removing 10/50/500 obstacles.


 * Troops can be spawned on obstacles, but not on top of them.

Vegetation
When the game respawns an obstacle, the respawn weight represents the chance of that particular item being the one that appears.

Rocks
Rocks, once removed, do not reappear.

Tombstones
Tombstones spawn when attacking troops are killed.

Special Obstacles
During the Winter 2012 Update, they added a X-mas Tree that gives 30,000 Gold when cleared, which was then increased to 50,000. On 3rd January 2013, Supercell indicated on the forums that people will get to keep their trees even after the winter theme is gone.

During the Winter 2013 Update, they introduced another X-mas Tree that gives 75,000 Gold when cleared.

Video of X-mas tree (2012) being chopped down and the reward: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YC0GPHflwQ

Undecorated Obstacles
