What to upgrade first in Clash of Clans

Every guide to this question answers a different one. They tell you what to upgrade at TH16, then the update lands and the list is wrong. The useful version of the question is not _which building_. It is what order the categories go in, because that order has not changed in years, and it is the thing that decides whether an account ends up rushed.

Here it is, and then the reasoning: heroes, lab, equipment, defences, walls. Top to bottom, at every town hall, forever.

Builders are the constraint, not loot

Almost everyone thinks about upgrades in terms of resources: I need gold for this, dark elixir for that. That is the wrong unit. Loot regenerates; you can farm a storage full in an evening. What you cannot get more of is builder-days, and every upgrade decision is really a decision about which builder is occupied for the next week.

Once you see it that way, the priority list writes itself. Put builders on the things that take longest and gate the most, and let the cheap, fast things fill the gaps around them.

1. Heroes: always something down

Heroes are the slowest thing in the game and the single biggest input into whether an attack works. They are also what people put off, because upgrading one takes it out of your army while it is down. That trade is exactly backwards: a hero you protect through six months of wars is a hero that is six months behind for every war after that.

The discipline is simple and unpleasant. One hero upgrading at all times, from the day you unlock the second one. Take the war hit. There is no version of catching up later that costs less than the version costing you a few attacks now.

• Queen first for most accounts, because she carries the funnel and the queen charge, and a weak Queen caps your ceiling harder than anything else does.
• Warden next. His aura and his ability are what carry an army through the core; a low Warden quietly turns three-stars into twos.
• King once the other two are moving, because he is the most forgiving to be slightly behind on.
• Champion and Minion Prince as they unlock. Do not skip them because they feel new: they count towards what your town hall expects, exactly like the older heroes.

If your heroes are far enough behind that this reads as impossible, that is what a rushed account actually is, and the fix is this same list, it just takes longer.

2. Lab: the upgrade you forget you own

The lab does not use a builder. That is the whole point, and it is why an idle lab is the cheapest mistake available: it costs nothing to keep running and there is no competing use for the slot. An empty lab is pure waste, every hour of it.

Upgrade the troops and spells you _actually attack with_ before anything else. A level-one troop you have never deployed is not a gap. A two-levels-behind troop in the army you take into every war is.

3. Hero equipment: narrow, not even

Equipment is upgraded at the Blacksmith with Shiny, Glowy and Starry Ore, and ore is the tightest resource in the modern game. It arrives from seasonal challenges, Clan Games, CWL and the season pass, and there is nowhere near enough of it to level everything you own.

So do not try. The mistake is spreading ore evenly and ending up with a drawer full of half-levelled gear that changes nothing. Pick two pieces per hero, the two you actually equip, and finish them.

• Spend Shiny Ore freely. It is the one you get most of, and hoarding it achieves nothing.
• Spend Glowy Ore deliberately. It gates the levels that matter, so point it at the gear you bring to war.
• Hoard Starry Ore. It only goes into epic equipment, and putting it into the wrong piece is the most expensive mistake available to you.
• Do not chase the tier list. The best equipment is the equipment your attack actually uses. A maxed piece you never equip is a maxed nothing.

4. Defences: in the order they lose you wars

Defence comes after offence, and that is not a controversial opinion: offence earns loot, war stars and trophies, while defence only ever prevents a loss. But _after_ is not _never_, and holding a defence in war is a real contribution to a clan.

1. 1The new defence your town hall unlocked, whatever it is this level. A building that did not exist yesterday is the biggest single defensive jump available.
2. 2Your heavy hitters: the Inferno-class and Scattershot-class buildings, and the Monolith. These are what stop a serious attack rather than slowing a bad one.
3. 3Air defence, if air attacks are what three-star you. Check before assuming.
4. 4Splash and point defence, filling in behind the heavy buildings.
5. 5Traps. Cheap, fast, and worth more per gold than almost anything else here once the big buildings are moving.

The thing most people get wrong is the defence log. Everyone upgrades what they _feel_ is weak; almost nobody opens the log to see what is actually breaking their base. Two minutes of that beats an hour of guessing.

5. Walls: genuinely last

Walls are the most visible thing on a base and the least important. They are also the right place to dump leftover loot, precisely because they take no builder. Wall rings are pure spare capacity. Upgrade them with whatever is overflowing and never plan around them.

"Your walls are low" is the most common and least useful criticism in Clash of Clans. It is what people say when they have looked at your base for four seconds.

What to never upgrade early

• The town hall itself, if anything above is behind. Every level you take while behind widens a gap you have to close anyway. This is the entire mechanism by which accounts become rushed.
• Storages beyond what you need. Upgrade them when an upgrade you actually want will not fit, not before.
• Collectors and mines as a plan. They pay back slowly and gate nothing. Use them to fill an idle builder; never schedule them.
• Barracks past your army. Unlocking a troop you will not use is a builder spent on nothing at all.

Working out what your account needs next

The list above is the general order. What it cannot tell you is which of the five _you_ are furthest behind on, and that is the only part that changes what you do tonight. That is the question ClanWarden answers: paste a player tag and it grades heroes, lab, equipment and the rest against the caps that are correct for your town hall, then hands back your specific next three upgrades instead of a generic checklist.

If you lead a clan, the same breakdown is available for every member at once in the clan manager. That is mostly useful for one thing: spotting the member who has sat on the same hero level for two months, and saying something before it becomes a war problem.