TH12 Upgrade Priority Guide (2024)

Since TH12 has been introduced almost 2 years ago, it has evolved greatly and it has never been easier to be a TH12 now. This guide will try to include everyone because people come into TH12 in varying states; from some who spent a year as a maxed TH11 to people like me who rushed to TH12 with TH4-6 defenses. I rather much be the latter because it makes the game easier and more fun overall with little to no drawbacks.

Before coming to TH12, you will want to read my pre-TH12 checklist

What caught me off-guard when I moved to TH12 on TinySin, was the large abundance of dead bases I found. I remembered how bad loot was on my main account when TH12 was new, only having dead TH11 which were uncommon. Now, you can easily find a lot of dead bases without pressing next too many times. Loot is still slightly slower in TH12 than TH11, but you shouldn’t be too afraid because it was quite easy for me to keep all 3 heroes upgrading till they were maxed.

TH12 is just meant for you to transition to TH13 and as such you are only finishing all key offense upgrades while trying to grind warden and AQ as high as possible before going to TH13. You will gain far more strength by building and upgrading your scattershots, giga inferno and royal champion compared to overstaying TH12 which gains almost nothing. To gain appropriate TH12 strength, you will need to spend about 5 months working on warden whereas you can start crushing maxed TH12s with some maxed TH13 troops, good RC and some skill.

The gold pass is a really important asset to have when transitioning to TH12 as it cuts down a lot of the requirements. I highly recommend you to go to TH12 with full season bank loot, this means starting the town hall upgrade 11.2 days before the season ends so that you can have 35/35mil in day 1 of TH12; alternatively just go to TH12 with your 20% discount active so that you don’t need to upgrade storages. Either way is fine, but I feel the 25mil extra loot seems more impactful initially. Whether or not you can get the season pass, try to get a rune of elixir to help out.

The TH12 pack isn’t very worth it because it just gives resources and does not save much time at all, I’d say skip and spend the money on the season pass.

Try to arrive TH12 with all 5 builders available, and preferably lab with something >8 days (to overlap troop and lab upgrade)

First priority upgrades:

1. AQ upgrading constantly while you transition into TH13. She is the number one thing you should focus on and she is one of the few upgrades that will speed up your farming. Grind her now and if she is at a good level, you can just use books to max her out in TH13.
2. Lab (8mil elixir). This is one upgrade I recommend early on despite the fact that no new lab troop actually boosts your farming. You will want this upgrade to at least give your troops a 10% increase in strength and TH13 will give you another 8%.
   • Alternatively, if this account is the only TH12 in your clan and/or you are making a donation account, build your siege workshop instead of lab.
3. DE storage (6mil elixir), because you cannot upgrade any hero above lvl51 unless you have upgraded this. If your heroes are below lvl50, ignore this for now. Even with the season pass, I think this upgrade is very well worth it so that you can store more DE between upgrades.
   • This is where you’ll need the extra loot from the season bank. If you have the 20% discount, you can afford both upgrades (6.4+4.8mil) with some farming. I don’t recommend using your rune of elixir here.
4. If you have the season bank loot or the 20% discount, max out your Clan Castle. If not, upgrade some walls and use 4mil gold to upgrade giga tesla lvl2. Clan castle is a good upgrade to use a book of buildings because it costs 14 days, a worthwhile time skip.
5. Place all the new traps first, then see if you have a rune of elixir. If so, use it and either build the new siege workshop or start your warden upgrade to lvl21. I personally went with the latter because my clan has enough TH12s to donate siege machines.
   • If not, build your new hidden tesla then farm for 3 hours and upgrade your giga tesla to level 2 (alternatively upgrade hidden tesla to lvl2 if giga was done in #4)
6. The following upgrades are some choices to pursue if you do not have the season bank/discount:
   • Upgrade some short and cheap upgrades while farming the necessary elixir for further upgrades. This is when being rushed really helps because you will have a lot of cheap upgrades to work on
   • Once you have enough elixir, start your siege workshop or warden
   • Elixir storage. You will need to upgrade this if you want to upgrade warden beyond level21.
7. Giga tesla completes in 2 days so it will be done next, you have three choices here.
   • First is upgrade BK which means you must have farmed enough to start him
   • Second is army camp or any elixir upgrade above which was not done yet
   • Third is that you have not farmed enough elixir/DE, start giga tesla lvl3.

That’s it for your first 1-2 days, it is some intense farming initially and even more if you plan to upgrade more heroes. It gets easier a little afterwards.

Since there are so many branching paths, the upgrades below don’t need to be in any specific order. The upgrades are listed in importance, but you can deviate depending on what you need/want. Just make sure these are complete or mostly done before going to second priority.

Second priority upgrades:

1. Elixir storage. This is really essential because you will need it for warden lvl22 and above, plus most TH12 lab troops cost more than 10mil.
2. Some time around here your lab will complete. Unfortunately there are no farming troops to upgrade this time. Early TH12 is really tough with elixir on warden + army camps while DE is spent on AQ. I recommend just doing a few short and quick giants/goblin upgrades while you ease up on elixir demands. If you can afford the lab upgrades in the guidelines below, do that instead.
3. Army camps. Try to get these done, they help with farming especially since you have 560 troops to work with and can possibly stack 3-4 collector raids with two full armies.
4. Build your Siege workshop if it is not done yet, and upgrade it to lvl3. The wall wrecker is really helpful for barch when you find whale bases. The battle blimp isn’t as good, but the stone slammer is absolutely amazing. Either your clan mates can give them to you or you can build them yourself.
5. AQ! Don’t forget to keep her upgrading whenever possible.
6. Grand Warden as high as possible. He is the hero that makes barch OP, crazy 90% increase in barbarians give them almost 400 health each!
7. Giga tesla to level 5. Whenever you can, try to get this upgraded to lvl5 so that you can go to TH13. This is a really potent defense in CWL and usually can stop many farmers who think that they can deal with you. You need 30 days to max it out which is your time frame for TH12 upgrades.
8. New 3rd inferno. The 3rd single mode inferno will put pain on enemy heroes. You can easily burn down even maxed AQ/BK with ease just using a lvl1 inferno.
9. Gold storage. You will need this upgrade for the clan castle and the town hall upgrade to TH13.
10. Clan castle. If you were not able to upgrade your clan castle previously, this is where you have the chance to build it.
11. Tornado trap. This traps your enemies for an extra second, I’d say its worth it.
12. Walls. If you notice, you are elixir hungry for quite some time, so dump all the gold you have into walls.

The upgrade above will collectively take around 4-6 weeks depending on how many heroes you have upgrading. Makes no sense really that it takes so long for a new level to be significantly stronger than the lower level. Unfortunately, you will need to almost max TH12 heroes before you can crush TH11 easily which is not worth it and a foolish endeavor. You can rush to TH13 much earlier and crush lowbies more easily.

Once the above list is exhausted, or even before that, you should head to TH13 and start working on more meaningful upgrades like your royal champion. You can continue working AQ, warden as per usual and do everything normally. Unfortunately at this stage, only grinding heroes will get you stronger. On the bright side, you gain access to maxed TH13 troops which are slightly better than TH12 versions which should allow you to hit down more easily than trying to max out TH12.

Troop upgrades:

This is relatively simpler. If your barch is not at lvl8, do them first. After that I recommend getting wb, healers, electro and balloons to max depending on whether you can afford those upgrades. Early on, you will be working on warden and AQ so elixir/DE might be tight. I don’t really recommend dark troops early on because that means your heroes are at risk of being neglected. If you can at least keep AQ down and upgrade a dark troop, that is ideal.

After barch is level 8, upgrade any 5 of these in any order. Plan to upgrade your TH after the third troop is maxed then you can upgrade the 5th troop right before the TH completes and it will be upgrading while you’re working on your TH13 lab.

1. Wallbreaker
2. Healer
3. Electro dragon
4. Balloons
5. Bowlers

TH12 farming guide in a nutshell:

1. Barch; or
2. Miners

Here’s a link:

To be updated

TH12 is just a stepping stone towards TH13 and I recommend you staying here for 1-2 months while you work on your offense + heroes. After that, rush to TH13 and start grinding the RC.

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