"This colossal menace soaks up huge amounts of damage and bashes anything in his path. He guards his territory fiercely when defending, and can launch into a devastating rage when attacking once his Iron Fist ability is unlocked!"
The Barbarian King is the first hero unlocked at Town Hall level 7. He is a larger, stronger, more aggressive, more impressive, and more powerful Barbarian.
The Barbarian King is an immortal unit (since he is a hero), so he only has to be summoned once. However, if he is injured or gets defeated in an attack, he must regenerate his health by sleeping for a period of time before he can be used again. The maximum period needed for him to regenerate depends on his level; the higher it is, the longer it takes for him to regenerate.
When the Barbarian King is completely healed, a jingle will play.
The Barbarian King will defend the village whenever he's not regenerating health from a previous attack. The Barbarian King only defends his territory around his platform and will retreat if lured too far out. If the village is attacked while he is regenerating health, his altar will be empty. If he locks onto a troop, he will follow that troop until he dies or that troop is killed. Once the troop is killed, and he is outside of his patrol zone, he will return to patrolling around his altar, even if the altar is destroyed. You do not need to knock out the Barbarian King to three star a base.
If he is damaged or defeated when he is on defense, he does not need to regenerate health afterwards.
The amount of time he sleeps to regenerate is directly proportional to the health he has lost by the end of the battle. If he is not damaged (or is fully healed before the battle ends), then he is ready to fight immediately, however, if he falls in battle or is defeated, then he must sleep for some time to regenerate. The more the Barbarian King is upgraded, the more time it will take to fully regenerate his health.
Hero regeneration after a Multiplayer Battle starts as soon as the player begins to search for a Multiplayer opponent. So, if the player spent some time searching for an opponent to attack before completing an attack, part of the regeneration will be completed by the time the player returns to his/her village. However, if the player cancels the attack by pressing "End Battle" before completing an attack, the regeneration will be reset. This effect is more noticeable in the highest leagues below legend where a significant amount of time can be spent searching for such opponents.
The Barbarian King has very high health but moderate damage so he is best used as a tank. Deploy him first to distract the defenses then deploy lower health units (like the Archer Queen) to do the damage. However, at lower levels, like Town Hall 7-9 you might want him inside the base since your heroes are good damagers. Another way to use him is for funneling. He is very clear where to funnel and his ability (Iron Fist) makes the funnel very easy.
Starting at level 5, the Barbarian King obtains an ability called Iron Fist which can be used on the battlefield. It partially heals him by a set amount per level of the Iron Fist, summons a horde of additional Barbarians, and grants the Barbarian King and his summoned Barbarians increased damage and speed. This does not stack with the Rage Spell and does not affect any other troops, including other Barbarians belonging to the regular army. This ability gets more powerful every fifth level.
If the ability is unlocked, once the Barbarian King is deployed, his icon in the troop deployment window becomes the activation method for Iron Fist. Simply click on his icon again and Iron Fist will be activated.
If the ability has not been used before the Barbarian King is about to be defeated, it will, by default automatically activate. However, this feature can be toggled off in the settings (by turning off "Automatically use Hero Abilities on KO").
The Barbarian King summons Barbarians equal to the level of your Barbarians researched in your Laboratory (e.g. if you can train level 5 Barbarians, the Barbarian King will summon level 5 Barbarians). These Barbarians are not affected by the Power Potion.
Strategy
Offensive
The four Home Village heroes serve different roles in raids. The Barbarian King is the tank specialist, while the Archer Queen is the damage specialist, the Grand Warden is the support specialist and the Royal Champion is the defense specialist.
The Barbarian King can often be used to create funnels; if there are no gaps in nearby Walls, he will stay outside the Walls and clear out buildings placed outside. As he is able to tank a lot of damage, he can used to clear areas covered by high-DPS defenses, like a Tesla or X-Bow farm (where multiple of the same defense type is grouped to provide concentrated damage). However, air troops may be better suited for the funnel if anti-air DPS is lacking in such areas, and one should still be wary of single-target Inferno Towers, which can quickly defeat him and end the funnel.
A common way to use the Barbarian King is as a tank, to distract the defenses to allow troops with low hitpoints to survive. For example, you may use him with the Archer Queen; he tanks the damage and the Archer Queen inflicts the damage. This is a common use and starting phase for the heroes in air attacks, where they serve little purpose with the main army. The Grand Warden can also be shielded by the Barbarian King at the same time because of his Life Aura.
When attacking, he can be deployed just like any other unit. When he is damaged, he must sleep to regenerate health before he can be used again. The regeneration time is directly proportional to how much health he must recover. He can be instantly brought up to full health with Gems.
He is best used with support from ranged troops, such as the Archer or Wizard.
He is also good for helping to destroy the remaining buildings of a village, after most or all defenses have been destroyed.
The Barbarian King can be easily swarmed by a group of Archers or Barbarians, as he only attacks one target at a time and has a somewhat slow attack speed against swarms.
As the Iron Fist ability recovers some health, you should let your Barbarian King take some damage before activating this ability to maximize the recovered health provided by activating the ability. The exception is at the end of a successful battle where the Barbarian King survives with taking very little or no damage, because if the ability isn't activated after battle he will automatically activate it, recovering health. The Iron Fist ability can be used to speed up the process of clearing the base.
The Barbarian King can be healed by Healing Spell or a Healer. However, since he is a hero, this occurs at 55% of the rate of that of normal troops.
Avoid using the ability when the King approaches a Bomb Tower or an area where you suspect a Giant Bomb will be, unless you desperately need to recover health. If you do so, the summoned Barbarians will most likely be wiped out by the resulting explosion. However, this becomes much less of an issue with higher level Barbarian King because when the Bomb explodes, it's likely not all of the Barbarians have spawned in yet so only a few of them die.
Enable "Automatically use Hero Abilities on KO" in the settings, as there is no real downside to doing so; his hero ability enhances his survivability and boosts his damage output.
Since the Barbarian King summons Barbarians from his ability, it is good to upgrade your Barbarians in the Laboratory so that the summoned Barbarians become stronger to destroy buildings quicker.
Defensive
Though he is very strong on offense, he only attacks one target at a time on defense which makes him easy to kill with multiple units, so protect him with splash-damaging defenses.
It is a good idea to place the Altar in the middle of a group of storages or other areas that you wish to protect, such as he will patrol around them.
The Barbarian King is the only hero that can't target aerial units. Despite this, he can still stall air units that do not have a preferred target such as Dragons, because such air units will target him even though he poses no threat to them.
Unlike troops in the Clan Castle, the Barbarian King cannot be lured to the edge of the map and then destroyed out of range of the defenses (unless his altar is near the edge). If his target moves out of his patrol area, he will retreat and engage another enemy inside his patrol area. If no enemies remain in his patrol area, he will resume patrolling.
Although the Barbarian King cannot be lured outside of his patrol range, he will lure attacking troops towards him, sometimes ignoring the structure they were originally targeting. This may be a problem in some cases; if you put the Barbarian King near your Town Hall, the attacking troops can be lured toward the Barbarian King, and consequently get closer to the Town Hall.
Single-target Inferno Towers (if you have them) are excellent countermeasures against Barbarian Kings, as they are able to tear through his health quickly once they reach maximum damage. This usually forces the opponent to use a Freeze Spell to save their King, however, whether or not the opponent chooses to do so, the summoned Barbarians from the King's ability will usually overwhelm the Inferno Tower. Consequently, the Inferno Tower itself should be protected by splash damage defenses or traps such as the Bomb Tower or a Giant Bomb.
Against a Barbarian King
If a defensive King is causing trouble to your troops, use some small troops, such as Barbarians or Wizards behind a tanking troop. This will ensure the King is defeated with minimal loss in troops.
If the base has no Archer Queen, or if she is far enough away from the Barbarian King, then attack with air troops, away from buildings that target air troops. You may have to deploy ground troops periodically in order to keep the Barbarian King in an area where your air troops may safely attack the King, so this strategy may not always be effective.
Air troops such as Balloons and Minions have little to worry from a Barbarian King; he can usually be ignored in such cases. While the Barbarian King cannot retaliate against air troops, he can still distract them away from other valuable targets, such as the Town Hall.
Although swarms of troops are effective against the Barbarian King, the P.E.K.K.A is also effective for taking down low level Barbarian Kings.
The Barbarian King will never go farther than 7 tiles from his altar so troops placed over 7 tiles away can attack him without retaliation. In particular, the Grand Warden can snipe him in this way if he is properly placed.
If the Barbarian King moves the troops may come into range of the Barbarian King's tile and be attacked.
You can negate his damage by using the Eternal Tome ability of the Grand Warden, but he is generally not considered to be a major threat at higher levels and you may find it more useful to save the ability for tackling a more heavily-defended section of the base or for negating a powerful threat (such as the Giga Tesla or Giga Inferno's explosion).
Reduced the Barbarian King's regeneration time at all levels.
Level 1 reduced from 4h to 1h.
Level 2 reduced from 4h 14m to 1h 6m.
Level 3 reduced from 4h 30m to 1h 12m.
Level 4 reduced from 4h 46m to 1h 18.
Level 5 reduced from 5h 3m to 1h 24m.
Level 6 reduced from 5h 21m to 1h 30m.
Level 7 reduced from 5h 40m to 1h 36m.
Level 8 reduced from 6h 1m to 1h 42m.
Level 9 reduced from 6h 23m to 1h 48m.
Level 10 reduced from 6h 45m to 1h 54m.
Level 11 reduced from 7h 10m to 2h.
Level 12 reduced from 7h 36m to 2h 6h.
Level 13 reduced from 8h 3m to 2h 12m.
Level 14 reduced from 8h 32m to 2h 18m.
Level 15 reduced from 9h 3m to 2h 24m.
Level 16 reduced from 9h 35m to 2h 30m.
Level 17 reduced from 10h 10m to 2h 36m.
Level 18 reduced from 10h 46m to 2h 42m.
Level 19 reduced from 11h 25m to 2h 48m.
Level 20 reduced from 12h 6m to 2h 54m.
Level 21 reduced from 12h 50m to 3h.
Level 22 reduced from 13h 36m to 3h 6m.
Level 23 reduced from 14h 25m to 3h 12m.
Level 24 reduced from 15h 17m to 3h 18m.
Level 25 reduced from 16h 12m to 3h 24m.
Level 26 reduced from 17h 10m to 3h 30m.
Level 27 reduced from 18h 12m to 3h 36m.
Level 28 reduced from 19h 17m to 3h 42m.
Level 29 reduced from 20h 27m to 3h 48m.
Level 30 reduced from 21h 40m to 3h 54m.
The Barbarian King's level and stats are now displayed correctly when visiting villages.
The Barbarian King now patrol a larger area and show guard radius when tapped.
May 23, 2013
Added levels 31-40 Barbarian King.
January 29, 2014
Added the Iron Fist ability.
July 3, 2014
The defensive Barbarian King now has a targeting radius around his platform.
Massively reduced his damage, but greatly heals himself when activating his ability.
September 16, 2014
Reduced hero regeneration times greatly on all levels.
October 22, 2014
Hero icons now show hero ability status in replays.
December 11, 2014
Hero ability icons now show remaining hitpoints and start flashing when low.
July 1, 2015
Improved the Barbarian King's A.I, where he would less likely to target Walls, and would not continue bashing through Walls to get to a destroyed target.
October 12, 2016
Changed the Barbarian King's info image.
December 19, 2016
Added levels 41-45 Barbarian King.
Reduced upgrade costs of levels 31-40.
Changed the Barbarian King's icon and info.
December 18, 2017
Added levels 46-50 Barbarian King.
Decreased upgrade cost of levels 8-45 Barbarian King.
March 5, 2018
Barbarian King's Iron Fist ability no longer affect Barbarians that aren't summoned from his ability.
June 11, 2018
Added levels 51-60 Barbarian King.
June 26, 2018
Reduced upgrade times of levels 2-38 Barbarian King.
Reduced regen times of levels 2-60.
April 2, 2019
Converted the Barbarian King from 2D to 3D.
June 18, 2019
Added levels 61-65 Barbarian King.
December 9, 2019
Added levels 66-70 Barbarian King.
March 30, 2020
Reduced upgrade cost for level 40 Barbarian King.
New Hero Skin selection screen that is much easier to select which skin you want to apply to your Hero.
Barbarian King now displays in his selected skin under the Player Profile tab.
When acquiring a new skin, the UI to select the skin will automatically open.
Some selected skins will be able to be purchased outside of the Gold Pass.
Fixed a bug where the Barbarian King received double health regeneration when his ability is used both automatically and manually at the same time.
Show purple Hero level icons properly in attack confirm screen if Hero Potion is active.
Fixed inconsistencies with situations where multiple boosts which affect movement speed, attack speed and damage (Barbarian King's ability) are active at the same time.
June 22, 2020
Added levels 71-75 Barbarian King.
October 12, 2020
Heroes now automatically heal when the player's base is raided.
Removed guard toggle.
October 26, 2020
Fixed skin names not changing when changing Hero with the arrows (in the "Change Skin" menus).
December 7, 2020
At the end of a battle, if the Barbarian King's ability remains unused, the Hero will heal the amount of HP they would normally recover from using their ability. This will help reduce the Hero’s downtime, allowing them to be ready much sooner.
A new Cosmetics tab has been added to the in-game shop where you can browse and purchase any permanently available cosmetics such as Hero Skins when they become available for Gems.
A “View Skin” option has been added when visiting.
Skin animations are more elaborate when viewed in the wardrobe and simpler animations in other UI elements.
April 12, 2021
Added levels 76-80 Barbarian King.
Polished and changed the Barbarian King's 3D model.
Reduced upgrade costs and times of levels 1-50 Barbarian King. In particular, the cost to summon the Barbarian King was reduced to 5,000 Dark Elixir (from 10,000).
Boosts on Barbarian King and other Heroes or Buildings are no longer cancelled when an upgrade is started and will continue to run in the background.
June 15, 2021
Fixed the Barbarian King occasionally doing 360-degree turns during attacks.
Trivia
Every attack he makes on a building or unit creates a tiny explosion.
When the Barbarian King 'falls' in battle, an explosion occurs and a bright beam of light is sent up into the sky temporarily. He is then seen standing dazed with stars flying around his head for the remainder of the battle.
Each successive upgrade of the Barbarian King adds approximately 2.5% health and 2% damage, but every five levels also add a constant two minutes to his total regeneration time. As a consequence, the Barbarian King's regeneration rate changes as he levels.
Regeneration rate for each level; click to enlarge
The Barbarian King's regeneration rate fluctuates each level, with drops in regeneration rate every fifth level and small increases for every other level. From an initial regeneration rate of 170 HP per minute at level 1, it reaches a maximum of 183 HP per minute at level 4 and shows a downward trend up to level 15, where there is a minimum of 150.13 HP per minute. Beyond level 15, the drops at every fifth level are outweighed by the increases from the other levels, eventually reaching 276.5 HP per minute at level 79 before dropping once more to 267.86 HP per minute at level 80.
The Barbarian King is shown to be less bigger than Giants in Clash-A-Rama, which contradicts a heroes trailer saying that he is bigger than a Giant.
While attacking or in Village Edit Mode, if the Barbarian King Altar is empty and the King becomes fully regenerated, the Altar sparkles, but the King will not appear.
The first person to max out Barbarian King and Archer Queen was the player named jessiebrar. (during the initial release of heroes, the max level for both heroes was 30.)
Prior to the January 29th, 2014 update that introduced hero abilities, and prior to the October 12th, 2020 update that removed guard button for all heroes and made heroes heal automatically after the raid, the original description for the Barbarian King and the Archer Queen were "Heroes can attack enemy villages or guard your village. Heroes can be injured, but are immortal. Heal them by letting them sleep or using the Heal button. Heroes won't defend the village while sleeping."
The Barbarian King's hair used to be vegas gold that contrasts with regular Barbarians' hair color. In his new appearance, however, his hair color is now yellow like regular Barbarians.
The Barbarian King was also a part of the Town Hall Level 7 Starter Pack which came with the Barbarian King, a level 3 Hidden Tesla and 1,200 gems which cost $9.99.
Skins
When you tap on him he will yell a low pitched battle cry, stand still for a moment and play an animation. The battle cry and animation varies between skins:
In the default skin, the Barbarian King has two battle cries (one is identical to the sound he makes when deployed, and the other is a normal battle cry); which battle cry he makes when tapped in this case is random. He also makes a welcome-gesture with his iron fist.
The Gladiator King and P.E.K.K.A King perform a same animation when tapped, and share a slightly different, muffled battle cry.
The Skeleton King makes the same sounds as the default King, but has a different animation where he takes off his head and bows to the player.
The Jolly King waves his non-sword hand at the player (followed by raising his sword once) and makes a Santa Claus-esque laugh.
The Primal King makes the same sounds as the default King, but has a different animation where he smashes his bone sword on the ground while using his non-sword hand to scratch the ground.
The Clockwork King also raises his sword like most skins, but also raises and extends his non-sword hand. He also has a unique battle cry that sounds mechanical.
The Party King plays his guitar before striking a pose, and a chord can be heard.
The Champion King waves his sword in the air and grunts while a fanfare plays.
The Pirate King grinds his hook (which replaces his non-sword hand) on his cutlass while making a grunt.
The Warrior King spins his sword around before brandishing it toward the player.
The Rogue King will take off his crown and bow toward the player. Like the original skin, he has two "cries".
The Fierce King do a welcome-gesture like default one.
The Gladiator King, P.E.K.K.A King and Primal King skins have four fingered hands, while the other skins, including the default one after the Town Hall 14 update introduced a new model for the default Barbarian King skin, have five fingered hands.
The four fingered model for the Barbarian King prior to the Town Hall 14 update contradicts newer artwork of him in 2019 and 2020, which feature him with five fingered hands. However, the 2020 loading screen image shows the Barbarian King holding his sword with four fingered hands.
This is the same case for the Jolly King skin and Skeleton King skin where they are shown with five fingered hands in battle and picture but are shown with four fingers in the 2020 Halloween loading screen and 2020 Winter loading screen.
The Fierce King, A.K.A Savage King, was created by oni on Supercell Make.
The Barbarian King is the first hero to have a skin, which is the Gladiator King, when Season Challenges were first added as part of the April 2nd 2019.
The P.E.K.K.A King and the Jolly King are the only skins for the Barbarian King that wields a glowing sword.
With most of his skins, the Barbarian King will alternate between hitting the building with the sword and his fist. However, both types of strikes do equal damage.
An exception is the Party King skin, where all of his attacks involve his guitar (which he attacks with in two different ways, either by slamming the guitar's body at the target or doing a stabbing motion with the guitar's body as a blade).
The Pirate King skin uses his sword in both his attack animations, slicing the target in two different ways.
The Barbarian King has the most current skins of any hero, currently 14.
The Barbarian King's appearance was redesigned twice. Before Hero Skins were added, the original Barbarian King pre-rendered texture had visual changes at levels 10, 20 and 41.
Initially, the Barbarian King appeared similar to a giant Barbarian, with a steel crown, steel gauntlet, and steel shoulder guard. He used a blunt sword with a stone hilt.
At level 10, his gauntlet changed from steel to gold.
At level 20, his shoulder guard's edge turned to gold, and the central spike turned gold as well.
At level 41, his crown turned gold.
Levels 1-9 (Old Sprite)
Levels 10-19 (Old Sprite)
Levels 20-40 (Old Sprite)
Levels 41-60 (Old Sprite)
Comparisons
The Barbarian King is the only hero in the Home Village which his attack type is melee and can only attack ground units.
At max level, the Barbarian King has the most HP out of any troop in the game.
The Barbarian King and the Archer Queen were the first heroes added to the game.
The Barbarian King is one of the 13 units to appear in a Scenery, the others being the Barbarian, Goblin, Balloon, Hog Rider, P.E.K.K.A, Baby Dragon, Skeleton, Archer Queen, Grand Warden, Dragon Rider, Cannon Cart, and the Party Wizard. In its case, it appears in the Epic Winter Scenery and 9th Clashiversary Scenery (as Beat King) And the Pumpkin Graveyard Scenery.
Below is a table that lists all Barbarian King skins and the month in which they were available, in chronological order. Skins are divided into three classes: Gold denotes a skin that is/was featured as a Gold Pass skin in Season Challenges, while Standard and Legendary denote skins not available from the Gold Pass that were available only through a special offer. The associated footnotes denote further details on said special offer containing the skin.
Entries that are highlightedmarked with an asterisk denote that the skin is available in the current Season Challenges season. Entries marked with a Gem denote that the skin is purchasable with Gems; all skins currently purchasable in this manner cost 1,500 .
Skin
Class
Season Available
Gladiator King
Gold
April 2019
P.E.K.K.A King
Gold
June 2019
Skeleton King
Gold
October 2019
Jolly King
Gold
December 2019
Primal King
Gold
February 2020
Clockwork King
Gold
May 2020
Party King
Gold
August 2020
Champion King¹
Legendary
October 2020
Pirate King
Gold
November 2020
Warrior King²
Legendary
February 2021
Rogue King
Gold
March 2021
Fierce King³
Standard
June 2021
Jungle King
Gold
July 2021
Beat King4
Legendary
August 2021
¹ The Champion King was available in a special offer for the World Finals in 2020; it cost $9.99 USD (or equivalent).
² The Warrior King was available in a Lunar New Year offer in 2021; it cost $9.99 USD (or equivalent).
³ The Fierce King was available in a special offer after the June 2021 update; it cost $3.99 USD (or equivalent). 4 The Beat King was available in a special offer for the August 2021 Clashiversary; it cost $9.99 USD (or equivalent).
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