Clash of Clans Resource & Ore Farming Guide: Loot, Medals & Hero Equipment

Read First: Four Currencies, Three Villages

Gold, Elixir and Dark Elixir are farmable. Gems and Ores are not farmed the same way — and the game has no single "loot" that covers all of them. Gold comes from raids and collectors, Ores come from wars and bonuses, Gems come from achievements and obstacles. An account that farms only one economy stalls on the others, and the stall always shows up in the same place: heroes and equipment, the two systems that cannot be rushed with loot alone.

The second thing to get straight before any number appears: Clash of Clans is three villages, not one. The Home Village is the main game — Gold, Elixir, Dark Elixir, Gems, Ores, walls, heroes. The Builder Base is a separate village with its own Gold and Elixir, its own Builder Hall (max 10), and one job that matters to the Home Village: the sixth Builder. The Clan Capital is a clan-shared village where Raid Weekends earn Capital Gold and Raid Medals. The currencies never mix. Builder Gold cannot buy a Home Village wall, Capital Gold cannot train a troop, and Raid Medals cannot be spent on heroes. Any guide that talks about "farming resources" without saying which village it means is mixing three economies into one bucket.

Third, the framing: Clash of Clans is a mobile strategy game, not an MMO. There is no trading, no auction house, no open world, no character level. Loot comes from attacking other players' villages, from your own collectors, and from clan activities — and every number in this guide is a rate or a price from a current source, not a market price, because there is no market. It is also not Clash Royale, Squad Busters or Brawl Stars — separate Supercell games with separate progression — and the Builder Base and Clan Capital are separate progressions inside Clash of Clans, not separate games. The guide is written on November 9, 2026, during Hammer Jam (November 1–15), when upgrade costs and times are halved and collectors produce double — the best farming fortnight of the year, and the worst fortnight to learn normal rates, because everything is doubled.

The short version: Gold, Elixir and Dark Elixir come from raids, collectors and bonuses. Medals (Raid and League) come from clan play and buy time. Ores come from wars and bonuses and buy equipment levels. Gems come from achievements, obstacles and the Gem Mine, and buy Builders first. The rest of this guide prices each one.

Where Loot Comes From: Attacks, Collectors and Bonuses

Most loot comes from multiplayer attacks — raiding other players' villages — and the first skill of farming is choosing which bases to attack. There are two kinds of loot in a base: collector loot, sitting in Gold Mines, Elixir Collectors and Dark Elixir Drills outside the walls, and storage loot, locked inside Storages behind defenses. Collector loot is cheap to take and plentiful on dead bases (abandoned villages whose collectors have filled up over days); storage loot is richer per raid but costs a real army and a real fight. Most players should live on collector loot and only switch to storage raiding when they need to spend resources fast and stay online.

The daily structure around attacks: collectors produce 24/7 and should be maxed early, because they pay while you sleep — and during Hammer Jam they produce and store double, which is the single best reason to keep them upgraded. The Star Bonus pays daily loot (plus Shiny and Glowy Ore) after five stars in multiplayer, scaling with your league — higher league, bigger bonus. The Loot Cart returns a portion of the loot raiders took from you. War loot and Clan Games loot bank in the Treasury, where raiders cannot touch it until you collect it — collect it only when you are about to spend it, because Treasury loot is the only loot in the game that is safe from attack. The single-player Goblin maps pay one-time loot and are worth clearing early, but they are finite: once cleared, they never pay again.

League matters more than most players think. Trophy ranges have sweet spots by Town Hall: for TH14 to TH16, the farming community puts the range at roughly 2,700–3,200 trophies, where dead bases are common and the Star Bonus is worth collecting. Too high and every base is a maxed fortress; too low and the loot per raid collapses. The rule is to sit where you can three-star collector bases with a cheap army in under two minutes — if your raids are taking three minutes and a full army, you are too high.

Dark Elixir: The Bottleneck Currency

Dark Elixir deserves its own section because it is the bottleneck currency: it pays for heroes, dark troops, dark spells and pets, and it is the scarcest of the three farmable resources. Dark Elixir Drills unlock at Town Hall 7, and from then on every Dark Elixir decision competes with every other one — a hero level, a dark troop level, a pet level. There is never enough for all three, so the order matters more than the amount.

The farming answer is the same as for Gold and Elixir — Sneaky Goblins and the Star Bonus — with one difference: Dark Elixir sits in storages and drills deep inside a base, so collector sniping alone will not fill it. Sneaky Goblins are the Dark Elixir tool precisely because they target resource buildings first and go invisible: they take the Dark Elixir Storage that BARCH cannot reach. War loot and Clan Games pay Dark Elixir too, and both bank in the Treasury where it is safe until you collect it. The spending answer is heroes first, always: a hero level is permanent power that wins every attack you make for the rest of the account, a dark troop level is a situational tool for one army, and a pet level is a multiplier on a hero you already have. When the Dark Elixir runs short — and it always runs short — the hero gets it, the pet gets what is left, and the troop waits.

Farming Armies: BARCH to Sneaky Goblins

A farming army has one job: take loot for less than the loot is worth. War armies are built to three-star a maxed base; farming armies are built to take 70% of a dead base's collectors for a tenth of the cost. The two armies are different tools, and training a war army to farm is how players go broke in Elixir.

TH7 to TH9: BARCH. Barbarians and Archers, cheap and fast, sniping exposed collectors outside walls. The whole point is the cost: a BARCH army trains in minutes and costs almost nothing, so even a modest collector haul is profit. Add Giants or Wall Breakers if the collectors sit behind a wall layer, and keep the army light — every expensive troop in a farming army is loot you have already spent.

TH11 and up: Sneaky Goblins. The loot-farming meta, and it has been for years. Sneaky Goblins are a Super Troop — a powered-up Goblin, boosted with Dark Elixir for seven days — that turns invisible and targets resource buildings first. Paired with Invisibility and Jump spells, they loot storages deep inside a base that BARCH could never reach, and they do it with an army that costs a fraction of a war army. The boost lasts seven days in real time whether you play or not, so boost on the day you plan to farm hard. Training Potions (one hour of boosted training) pair with Sneaky Goblin sessions: pop one, spam Goblins for an hour, fill your storages and knock out the daily Star Bonus in the same session.

TH14 to TH16: Sneaky Goblins and Super Archers. Super Archers excel at collector sniping from range, paired with a Warden or Queen Walk to keep them alive. The choice between Goblins and Archers is a base-reading choice: Goblins for storage-heavy bases with loot inside, Archers for collector-heavy dead bases with loot outside. Both beat a war army for loot per hour, and both cost less per raid than the loot they bring home.

The session discipline matters as much as the army. Farm in sessions, not all day: a Training Potion lasts an hour, a full army trains in under an hour, and a focused hour of Goblin raids fills storages faster than a scattered day of war armies. Between sessions, keep the Laboratory and the Builders busy, collect the Star Bonus, and let the collectors work. And never raid without a plan for the loot: an attack that fills your storages past the cap wastes the overflow, and the overflow is the most expensive loot in the game because you paid an army for it.

What a Farming Hour Actually Pays

The honest way to compare farming methods is loot per hour, not loot per raid — and the comparison is what makes collector sniping win. A war army takes the better part of an hour to train, costs a fortune in Elixir and Dark Elixir, and brings home one base's worth of loot. A Sneaky Goblin army trains in minutes, costs a fraction as much, and raids three or four dead bases in the same hour. The gap is not close: the Goblin hour pays several times the war-army hour, and it pays in the currency you actually need, because you choose the bases.

The one number that anchors the comparison comes from the Raid Medal shop: 2.5 million Gold for 300 Raid Medals is, by the community's own reckoning, about ten minutes of Sneaky Goblin farming. That is the exchange rate between medals and loot, and it is why raw resources are the worst Raid Medal spend in the game — ten minutes of Goblins buys what 300 medals buy. The same logic applies to every farming decision: if a method pays less per hour than Goblin sniping, it is a worse method, whatever its loot per raid. The exceptions are the ones that pay in currencies Goblins cannot produce — the Star Bonus (which pays Ore), Clan Games (which pay magic items) and Raid Weekends (which pay Medals). Those are worth doing even though their loot per hour is lower, because their payout is not loot.

Raid Medals and League Medals: The Parallel Economies

Clan play pays in currencies that loot cannot buy: Raid Medals and League Medals. They are the game's time currency — they buy the potions, hammers and ores that loot cannot — and they are the reason a good clan is worth more than any farming army.

Raid Medals

Raid Medals come from Clan Capital Raid Weekends, Friday to Monday, for any clan whose Capital Hall is level 2 or higher. Your clan attacks other clans' Capitals district by district; the weekend's performance pays Medals to every participant. The payout scales with how far your clan gets and how much you personally contribute, so a clan that finishes districts pays more than a clan that stalls on the first one.

The Raid Medal shop's value ranking, from best to worst, is the difference between a smart account and a stalled one:

The research potion math is the headline: three Research Potions a week is nearly three full days of Laboratory time every week, on a queue that is the longest in the game. No other Raid Medal spend comes close, and the gap is not subtle. The raw-resources option is the trap: 2.5 million Gold for 300 medals sounds like a lot until you realise a single hour of Sneaky Goblin farming pays several times that, for free. Raid Medals buy time, not loot — and time is the one thing loot cannot buy.

League Medals

League Medals come from Clan War League, the monthly ranked war season. Your clan's league and your personal stars set the payout, and the League Shop is where the game's most valuable items live: Hammers (Hammer of Building, Hammer of Heroes, Hammer of Spells, Hammer of Fighting) that instantly finish one upgrade of a type, Builder Potions at 30 medals each (9 hours saved per Builder, 54 hours across six), and Training Potions at 10 medals — which are sellable for 10 Gems each, a neat 1:1 conversion that turns spare League Medals into Gems.

The Hammer of Heroes is the one to watch: it is overpriced against the cost of farming Dark Elixir for a hero level, so buy it only when the hero timer is the bottleneck and you have Medals to spare. The Hammer of Building is the usual first pick — a 17-day upgrade finished instantly is 17 days of Builder time bought back. Builder Potions are the workhorse: 30 medals for 54 hours of Builder time is the best Medal-to-time rate in the game, and the potions stack with Hammer Jam's halved timers for the fastest progression windows of the year.

Ores: Shiny, Glowy and Starry

Hero Equipment is the newest economy in Clash of Clans, and Ores are its currency. Every hero carries two pieces of equipment, swapped for free between attacks, and each piece levels up with Ores — no builder, no timer, no Laboratory. There are three Ores, and they are not interchangeable: Shiny Ore is the common one, Glowy Ore the mid-tier one, and Starry Ore the rare one that gates everything that matters.

Starry Ore is the bottleneck, and the Star Bonus trap is the first thing to unlearn: the daily Star Bonus pays zero Starry Ore. It pays Shiny and Glowy only. Starry comes from Clan War wins against Town Hall 10 or higher opponents — 10 to 15 per win, 30% of that on a loss — plus Clan War League season rewards (50 to 100 a month), Hero Journey, special events and event medal shops, which typically offer 30 to 50 Starry per season and are the best single use of event medals. An active player earns roughly 80 to 120 Starry a month; a competitive clan player earns 150 to 200. The conservative floor from wars alone is 30 to 50 a month. The catch is that a 0-star attack pays zero ore even at 99% destruction — you need at least one star, so a failed attack is a wasted attack in every sense.

The totals are what make the grind visible. A Common piece of equipment from level 1 to its cap of 18 costs 27,260 Shiny Ore and 1,920 Glowy Ore — and zero Starry, because Commons never need it. An Epic piece from level 1 to its cap of 27 costs 56,060 Shiny, 3,720 Glowy and 480 Starry Ore. Starry starts at Epic level 9 and arrives every third level from there, which is why one Epic to level 18 costs roughly 110 Starry — three to four months of war play for a single piece. There are 43 pieces of equipment as of October 2026, so maxing them all is a multi-year project for a free player and a multi-hundred-dollar project for a paying one. The honest framing is that you will never max them all; you will max the ones that matter for your armies, and the rest stay where they are.

Common Glowy total: 1,920 or 1,926? One source's text says 1,926 Glowy Ore for a Common piece to 18, but its own table — and the community wiki — say 1,920. This guide uses 1,920. The 6-Ore gap is a rounding error in a 29,000-Ore grind, but the discrepancy is a reminder to check totals in-game rather than trusting any single page, including this one.

Hero Equipment: What to Upgrade and What to Skip

Equipment is unlocked at the Blacksmith, which opens at Town Hall 8 and maxes at level 10 at Town Hall 17. Common pieces unlock through Blacksmith upgrades; Epic pieces come from events, the season shop, event chests and Hero Journey — they are not bought with loot, and they are not guaranteed. The cap is set by rarity, not by Town Hall: Common pieces max at level 18, Epics at 27. Most Epics plateau around level 18, where the performance gain per Starry Ore flattens out — the last nine levels cost most of the Starry for the least improvement.

The upgrade priority is the same shape as the hero priority: upgrade the equipment for the heroes you deploy, in the order your armies need it. A Queen's equipment matters more than a King's if you Queen Walk; a Warden's Eternal Tome matters more than a Champion's if your army leans on the Tome. Spend Starry on at most two Epic pieces at a time — spreading it across six pieces leaves all six half-finished, and a half-finished Epic is a Common piece with a fancier name. Never spend Starry on C-tier or F-tier Epics: the tier lists exist because some pieces are genuinely weak, and Starry is too scarce to waste on a piece you will never equip. And when you already own every Epic in a hero's pool, the game pays you 50 Starry instead of a duplicate — a small mercy that softens the worst of the duplicate draw.

The Blacksmith itself is the one building to max early: it is the only route to Common equipment, and Common pieces are the ones you can actually finish. A maxed Common piece is better than a level 12 Epic, and it costs no Starry at all.

Ore Gem Prices Changed in October 2026

On October 2, 2026, Supercell cut the gem cost of buying Ore in the Trader: Shiny Ore fell from 1 Gem to 0.5, Glowy from 5 to 3, and Starry from 35 to 20 — roughly halving the gem cost of maxing an Epic piece. Before the cut, a Common piece cost roughly 7,500 to 8,000 Gems to max and an Epic roughly 23,000 to 25,000 Gems (about $170–200 per Epic); the new prices put those figures at roughly half. The rollout is staged — the Trader since July, the medal shop in October, everywhere else with the next major update — so some sources still list the old prices, and the in-game price is the one that counts. Check the price in your game before planning a gem spend around any figure, including the ones in this paragraph.

The price cut does not change the strategy: Gems are still best spent on Builders first, then the Goblin Builder and Researcher, then magic items — not on timers, and not on Ore until the Builders are done. Buying Ore with Gems is the last resort for a player who has everything else and wants one more Epic finished; it is not a farming route. Ores are farmed in wars and bonuses, and the gem price is a shortcut, not a source.

Gems: The Premium Currency Done Right

Gems are the premium currency, and the farming answer for Gems is patience: they arrive slowly and steadily from achievements, obstacles and the Gem Mine, and the spending answer is to save them for the things that cannot be farmed any other way. You start with 250 Gems after the tutorial. Achievements pay the largest lump sums — thousands of Gems across the full list, with the big ones tied to war stars, trophies and clan play. Obstacles (trees, rocks, bushes) spawn in your village and pay 0 to 6 Gems each when cleared, plus a Gem Box that spawns periodically and pays 25. The Gem Mine in the Builder Base pays a small daily amount once built. Selling surplus magic items in the Trader pays Gems too — a Training Potion from the League Shop sells for 10 Gems, which is why League Medal Training Potions double as a Gem source.

The spending order for Gems is the one decision that separates a fast account from a slow one:

Never spend Gems on finishing a timer. A timer you finish with Gems costs more per hour than a Builder Potion, a Book or a Hammer, and the Gem is gone while the timer would have finished for free overnight. The same applies to buying Ore: the October 2026 price cut made it cheaper, but it is still the last resort, not a farming route. Gems buy permanent power — Builders, researchers, and the occasional magic item — and everything else is a waste of a currency that arrives at a trickle.

Events, Hammer Jam and the Season Pass

Events are where the free economy pays best, and the calendar matters. Hammer Jam — November 1–15, 2026 as this guide is written — halves upgrade costs and times and doubles collector production and storage. It is the best farming fortnight of the year, and the correct way to use it is to start the longest upgrades on day one, keep all six Builders busy for the full fortnight, and farm hard while collectors pay double. The Last Town Hall 18 Challenge runs November 9–15, alongside Hammer Jam, and pays event rewards on top. When Hammer Jam ends, the discount ends — upgrades started during Jam keep the discount, so queue the big ones before the 15th.

Clan Games run monthly and pay resources, magic items and Ores for completing challenges — a reliable monthly income that rewards participation, not skill. Clan War League runs monthly and pays League Medals, the Hammer currency. Seasonal events (the November 2026 season is Clash of Titans, with the Grand Titan hero skin and the Titan Foundry forging hero skins from Siege Machine scraps) pay event medals, which buy Starry Ore — 30 to 50 per season is the best single use of event medals, and the single best Starry source outside wars. The Gold Pass is the monthly season pass: it pays resources, magic items and a hero skin, and it boosts building, research and training times while active. The free track pays too, so claim it every season even if you never spend a cent.

The event discipline is simple: do Clan Games every month, do Raid Weekends every week, do CWL every month, and spend event medals on Starry Ore before anything else. A player who does all four will out-earn a player who farms twice as hard and skips them, because the event economy pays in currencies — Medals, Ores, magic items — that farming cannot produce.

The November 2026 season is worth a closer look because it shows how seasonal events now pay. The season is Clash of Titans, with the Grand Titan hero skin on the Gold Pass and the Titan Foundry — a new feature that forges hero skins from Siege Machine scraps, the leftover parts from your Siege Machines. Event medals from the season buy Starry Ore in the event shop, 30 to 50 per season, which is the best single use of event medals and the best Starry source outside wars. The season's lesson generalises: every season has a medal shop, every medal shop has Starry Ore, and the players who spend their medals on Starry every season are the players whose Epics reach level 18 while everyone else's sit at 12.

Builder Base and Clan Capital: The Side Hustles

The Builder Base and the Clan Capital are side games with their own economies, and each has exactly one job that matters to the Home Village.

Builder Base. A second village with its own Gold and Elixir, a Builder Hall that maxes at 10, and Versus Battles that pay loot for three wins a day. Its currencies never mix with the Home Village. Its one job is the sixth Builder: complete the OTTO Hut (B.O.B Hut) upgrades in the Builder Base and you unlock a sixth Builder for the Home Village — the single most valuable permanent upgrade in the game, and the reason every guide tells you to play the Builder Base even if you do not enjoy it. The Gem Mine here pays a small daily Gem income, and the Builder Base's own upgrades are a long, slow project that you chip away at between Home Village sessions. Do not spend Home Village Gems on the Builder Base; do not spend Builder Base resources on anything but the OTTO path and the Gem Mine.

Clan Capital. A clan-shared village where your clan builds districts together and attacks other clans' Capitals in Raid Weekends (Friday to Monday) to earn Capital Gold and Raid Medals. The Capital has its own progression — Capital Hall levels, district upgrades — and its own currency, Capital Gold, which is earned in Raids and spent on Capital upgrades. The one job is Raid Medals: they are the currency that buys Research Potions, Training Potions and Ores for the Home Village, and a clan that raids every weekend earns them steadily. The Capital rewards participation over skill: every attack you make in a Raid Weekend contributes, whether you three-star a district or not, and the Medals pay out to every participant — so the minimum useful contribution is showing up and attacking, every weekend, even with a rushed army. Friendly wars pay no loot and no Ores — they are practice only, and they do not count toward anything in this guide.

Your First Month at a New Town Hall

The first month at a new Town Hall sets the pace for the whole level, and the checklist is the same every time — it is the upgrade order from our Town Hall progression guide, applied as a farming plan:

Three rules govern the month. First, never let the Laboratory sit idle — it is the only queue that cannot be doubled, and a day idle is a day your army is behind. Second, time the Town Hall upgrade itself for Hammer Jam if you can: the 50% discount on costs and times is worth more on a Town Hall upgrade than on anything else, and the collectors pay double while you farm the 25,000,000 Gold for TH18. Third, do not upgrade the Town Hall with a full Treasury and empty storages — collect the Treasury only when you are about to spend it, because Treasury loot is the only loot raiders cannot touch, and a full Treasury collected into full storages is loot wasted.

Buying Resources & Accounts

There is nothing legitimate to buy here. Clash of Clans has no trading system, no auction house and no resource market — Gold, Elixir, Dark Elixir, Gems and Ores cannot be transferred between players. The only things sold on third-party marketplaces are accounts, and Supercell's Terms of Service ban account sales, account sharing and paid boosting. A bought account hands over a stranger's Supercell ID login, recovery path included, and the seller can reclaim it afterwards; the full picture is on the Clash of Clans page. The economies in this guide are all earned in-game, and they are earned slowly by design — that is the game.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

Checked November 9, 2026. Game systems change with patches, so confirm numbers in game.

• Supercell (official): TOWN HALL 18 Crash Lands! — Guardians, Revenge Tower, Super Wizard Tower, Meteor Golem, Totem Spell
• GamerPapers: Clash of Clans November 2026 Season (Clash of Titans) — Gold Pass, Hammer Jam dates, TH19 lands mid-month, quoting the official blog
• GameMarket: Town Hall 19 Is Coming — Hammer Jam Nov 1 to 15, 2026, Last Town Hall 18 Challenge Nov 9 to 15
• GamGem: Clash of Clans Max Levels by Town Hall — TH18 is the maximum, ore gem prices cut, Diggy to 15, Supercharge levels
• 1337wiki: Ores in Clash of Clans — Shiny, Glowy, Starry sources and totals
• aayyy (Substack): Clash of Clans TH18 Guide — Ore totals (Common 27,260 Shiny / 1,920 Glowy; Epic 56,060 / 3,720 / 480 Starry)
• Clash of Clans Wiki (Fandom): Ores — equipment caps (Common 18, Epic 27), Starry from Epic level 9, 43 pieces
• 1337wiki: Hero Equipment — Blacksmith unlocks at TH8, max level 10 at TH17, Common and Epic caps
• 1337wiki: Raid Medals — Raid Weekend earnings, Research Potion 200 medals, Training Potion 100 medals
• 1337wiki: League Medals — Clan War League rewards, Hammers, Builder Potion 30 medals, Training Potion 10 medals
• 1337wiki: Star Bonus — daily loot after 5 stars, pays Shiny and Glowy Ore, no Starry Ore
• Supercell (official): The February Update — Dragon Duke, Greedy Raven pet, TH18 content
• GamGem: Clash of Clans Patch Notes — Aug 30, 2026 update, Ruin Witch buff, Logger rebalance, Oct 2026 balance changes
• ClashVault: TH18 Max Levels & Upgrade Guide — hero, Guardian and wall caps, reviewed Sept 27, 2026
• GamerPapers: Clash of Clans TH18 Guide — Guardians, Revenge Tower, Crafted Defenses, Aug 2026 additions
• Supercell (official): Upcoming changes to Ranked Mode — TH18 meta, Town Hall no longer a defensive building