TH13 Upgrade Priority Guide (2024)

When to upgrade to TH13 is one of the most common questions I receive. After doing the math and personal experience, I think that you should at least have a lvl20 warden (as outlined in the TH11 guide) or a lvl60+ AQ, with maxed barch and maxed TH12 lab building + army camps. This is because your entire growth from TH11 to TH13 comes from a strong warden who will boost your troops to top strength.

Fortunately or unfortunately, most upgrades in TH13 are not significant so we can easily narrow down which upgrades give the most bang for your buck. Almost all strength increase for TH13 will come from the royal champ and scattershot, so it is crucial to focus on these new buildings/hero. Upgrading old stuff on the other hand, is very lackluster and should be done much later.

On the offensive front, Royal Champion is going to carry all the weight because there aren’t any upgrades for now, so upgrading her should be paramount. On the defense side, upgrading your old stuff (except for giga inferno) would provide minimal value in the beginning so that leaves us with some easy optimization.

One lvl1 scattershot for example, will give you 150 dps straight up for a small cost of 15mil. To gain 150 dps otherwise, you will need to upgrade all 7 cannons, all 5 teslas and 2 xbows to get the same dps and you don’t get splash damage.

An important thing to take note in the beginning of TH13 is that you get zero extra storage space. Lvl13 (TH12) storages have been buffed to store 14mil/14mil loot but that is not enough to do almost any TH13 upgrade, so you will need to focus on gold/elixir storage if you want to do any new TH13 building (unless you have the gold pass discount *wink wink*).

Even the scattershot would require at least one gold storage upgraded before you can build it. If you have the gold pass on the other hand, you can finish all TH13 upgrades with just one gold/elixir storage upgrade and you don’t even need to upgrade your DE storage.

I strongly recommend coming in with full season bank loot (even the free 5mil is fine) so that you are settled in your first few days of farming particularly the DE required for RC. If that is not possible, then extra farming or extra runes will help tremendously.

Note: if you do not have the gold pass and the discounts, you will need to deviate slightly from these proposed upgrades and just focus on gold/elixir storages earlier.

First priority upgrades:

1. Royal champion lvl1 > royal champion lvl 2 > RC lvl3 > … > RC 20
   • This will cost 60k DE straight up and you will need to farm plenty of DE in next few hours to keep upgrading her. This is actually not too hard especially if you still have prepared season bank loot.
   • After lvl3, her cost/day drops dramatically and you can work on other heroes.
2. The next upgrade is your lab which unlocks TH13 troops. You’ll need that for a further 10% boost to your troop strength.
3. With season bank loot or the 10% discount, scattershot lvl1 can be built and should be done so.
4. Place your new seeking air mine and mini bomb. I wouldn’t worry about upgrading them yet because you have better things to do with your builder time.
5. The Blacksmith receives an upgrade at TH13, giving access to the Grand Warden’s Healing Tome equipment. This equipment is a great way to increase the strength of your Grand Warden and can be used in a variety of attack strategies.
6. The next important upgrades are the Barracks upgrades. At TH13, both the Dark Barracks and Barracks can be upgraded. The regular Barracks provide access to the Dragon Rider, while the Dark Barracks unlock the Apprentice Warden. You can unlock both of these upgrades with a single builder—no need to use two here.
7. Siege workshop so that you can train and upgrade the siege barracks. If your clan is short of siege machines, using a book here is a good idea. There’s nothing else to spend your elixir on right now so this is an easy pick.
8. With some additional farming or using a hammer/rune, you can start your clan castle upgrade here. This is the best value hammer upgrade in the entire TH13 so consider using it here.
9. If you have the master builder/OTTO, farm up and upgrade your DE storage which helps immensely with
10. After this, all your upgrades beside the Royal Champ will require another week, so spend your first week in TH13 just upgrading the RC and dumping your gold/elixir into walls. After 8 days of TH13, you should have a lvl6 RC who is upgrading to lvl7. Her cost should be very manageable by now. Your lab and DE storage should complete.
    • If you are massively rushed, upgrade electros so that you can be useful in CWL. Otherwise, troops like miners and healers are good early picks.
11. You will need one gold storage upgrade now to upgrade lvl2 scattershot.
12. Build your second scattershot now to improve your defenses.
13. Your siege workshop and first scattershot should be done shortly afterwards so you can finally upgrade your giga inferno to max.
14. With your next builder, upgrade warden to level 40. If he is already lvl40, upgrade one elixir storage instead.
15. After your clan castle is done, your RC’s cost should be really low now and you can work on AQ to lvl70. If AQ is already lvl55-60, just use books to keep her upgrading and farm using QW barch instead of regular barch. This really helps tremendously in terms of power and you can farm loot in Masters including bonus.
16. If you have extra book/hammer of buildings, use them to skip the timer for lvl2 scattershot because they are really good upgrades.
17. Your remaining spare builder can work on whatever upgrade. If you want to push heroes quickly, then BK is a good choice. Otherwise upgrading gold/elixir storage will always be a safe bet . If you really want to max out your defense power, you can choose to upgrade your Eagle or Xbows here.

Summary:

1. RC 1 > max
2. Blacksmith > Barracks > Siege workshop > grand warden to max
3. Lab > Gold storage #1 > open-ended
4. Scattershot #1 > Giga inferno lvl2 to max
5. Clan castle > AQ lvl65-70
6. DE storage > Scattershot #2 > Elixir storage #1 > open-ended (you can safely put these upgrades at builder #2 or #3 if you don’t have the OTTO)

After your first priority upgrades, you’re basically done with your significant TH13 upgrades. From here, you can slowly max out your storages, defenses and walls. Upgrade BK to max after AQ is done. I would choose to max out your storages before touching your old defenses. Once that’s done, work on Eagle > xbow > inferno before touching WT, AD, cannons, tesla.

Second priority upgrades:

1. Keep RC upgrading to lvl20 as she will really help with barch
2. If AQ is not at lvl50-55 yet, keep her upgrading along side RC. If she is already at that level, graduate to QW barch and just use books to max her.
3. If Warden is not at lvl40 yet, upgrade him to lvl40. Once AQ is maxed, use all your books to upgrade warden to max.
4. Gold and elixir storages to max. Just max these out because they really help with resource management, allowing you to upgrade multiple walls or just help with farming sessions.
5. Barracks to max. Upgrade one of these to max first (if you did not in TH12), unlocking yetis before upgrading the rest.
6. Only upgrade BK if you don’t have books for AQ and can afford him. He’s far less useful than AQ and RC so it doesn’t really matter.
7. I strongly recommend maxing collectors in TH11, but if you have not done so, max out your collectors now.
8. Now you only have defenses remaining. Even with just TH10 defenses and maxed scattershot+giga inferno, your defenses should be far stronger than even a TH12. Max your eagle next because it actually reaches a few breakpoints and can one shot more targets.
9. Xbows are the next best pick in terms of defense so max them all out and you can even put them on ground to try stop QW.
10. Upgrade infernos only if you plan to use multi-mode because single mode doesn’t benefit much from upgrading.
11. Wizard tower, air defenses and bomb towers. Upgrade these to stop many attacks that your enemies can do.
12. After that, you can upgrade anything in any order you wish.

Troop priority:

After learning the meta of TH13, there seems to be a few good upgrades to focus on initially.

1. Healers. If your queen is lvl50-60, you can just use her for QW barch which is superior in terms of farming. Upgrade healers to power your QW.
2. Electro dragon + loon is still powerful, especially if you are rushed because they do not require strong heroes to be good. Even against well designed bases, you can get 3 stars against strong TH12. Upgrade electro and loons for war.
3. Miners. They are pretty good for war and decent for farming. With so few walls and elixir upgrades in TH13, you can afford to use QW miners if you want to, however they can be really weak without warden.

After those 4 troops, it really doesn’t matter what you upgrade next. You can choose to max out yetis for yeti smash or you can max out hogs. You can really do anything from here.

Related