Clash of Clans Town Hall Progression Guide: Heroes, Pets & the Climb to TH18

Read First: No Character Levels — and TH19 Is Coming

This guide is written on November 9, 2026, in the middle of Hammer Jam, with Town Hall 19 announced but not yet live. Town Hall 18 is the maximum you can play today. Supercell's November 1, 2026 season post says Town Hall 19 "lands mid-month" — no exact day, no buildings, no levels, no costs. Every cap in this guide is a TH18 cap, and no TH19 number is invented anywhere in it.

First, the framing that shapes everything else: Clash of Clans is a mobile strategy game, not an MMO. There are no character levels, no open world, no auction house. Your village is a single-player Home Village, and the multiplayer is clan-based — wars, Clan War Leagues and Raid Weekends. Progression is the Town Hall: its level decides what you are allowed to build, train and upgrade, and every other system — heroes, pets, equipment, walls — hangs off it. If you come from an MMO expecting an XP bar, stop looking for one. The Town Hall is the XP bar.

Second, the timing. Hammer Jam runs November 1–15, 2026: upgrade costs and times halved, collectors producing and storing double. The "Last Town Hall 18 Challenge" runs November 9–15 — today, as this guide is written. If you are reading this during Hammer Jam, the correct move is to spend it finishing TH18 upgrades, especially heroes and Laboratory research, and to keep Books and Hammers in reserve for the first TH19 upgrades — because the moment TH19 lands, every TH18 max you own becomes a stepping stone again.

Third, the shape of the climb. Town Halls arrive roughly once a year, usually in late autumn: TH17 on November 25, 2024, TH18 on November 17, 2025, TH19 in mid-November 2026. Each one adds a full set of new building, troop, hero and defense levels, plus one or two headline systems — TH17 brought the Hero Hall and the Minion Prince, TH18 brought Guardians and the Revenge Tower. The pattern is the plan: when a new Town Hall lands, the first week is for the Town Hall upgrade itself, the second is for the new headline system, and only then do you resume the long backfill. The players who fall behind are not the ones who farm slowly; they are the ones still maxing the old Town Hall after the new one has shipped.

The short version: the Town Hall is your level (1 to 18, 19 imminent). Heroes are the units that level, capped by the Hero Hall. Pets attach to heroes from TH14. Guardians defend the TH18 Town Hall. Walls are the infinite sink. Troops and spells level in the Laboratory. And one separation: this is not Clash Royale — the real-time card battler is a separate game with separate progression, and nothing from it applies here. The rest of this guide prices each one.

The Town Hall Ladder: What Each Level Unlocks

The Town Hall gates everything, so the ladder is the guide. The table below lists the headline unlock at each level — the one thing that changes how you play — not every building level, because the full list would run to hundreds of rows. If a level's headline does not change your army or your defense, it is a backfill level, and you should treat it as one.

Two notes on the table, because two entries surprise people. First, the Archer Queen at TH8: she used to unlock at TH9, and moved to TH8 in the Town Hall 17 update — if an old guide tells you TH9, it is stale. Second, the Thrower: the Barracks table puts it at Barracks level 18, which needs Town Hall 16, although some guides list it under TH17's unlocks. This guide follows the Barracks table — the building requirement is the fact that matters when you plan.

The other thing the ladder teaches is pacing. The early Town Halls (1 to 8) pass in days; the middle (9 to 13) in weeks; the late ones (14 to 18) in months each. A TH18 upgrade costs 25,000,000 Gold and takes 12 days (one older guide lists 14 days; two sources including the community wiki say 12) — and that is just the Town Hall itself, before a single new building level. The total journey from a fresh village to a maxed TH18 is measured in years of daily play, or in heavy Gold Pass and magic-item use. That is normal. The game is designed to be played for years, and the players who enjoy it most are the ones who stop racing the ladder and start enjoying each Town Hall as a complete game in itself.

The Town Hall upgrade itself has a storage trap. TH18 costs 25,000,000 Gold, which is more than a TH17-capped player's storage holds — GamGem's sample village capped at 24,800,000. Gold Storage 18 must finish before the TH18 upgrade can even start, and loot above the cap is lost. Check your storage cap before you start saving, or you will farm for a week and watch the overflow vanish.

Heroes: Six of Them, Capped by the Hero Hall

Heroes are the only units in Clash of Clans that level the way a character levels in other games — and they are the single most important upgrade in the game, because a maxed hero wins attacks that a maxed army cannot. There are six: the Barbarian King, Archer Queen, Minion Prince, Grand Warden, Royal Champion and Dragon Duke. You unlock the first at Town Hall 4 and the last at Town Hall 15, all through one building, the Hero Hall, which arrived with the Town Hall 17 update and replaced the four separate hero altars.

The rule that governs everything: hero levels are capped by the Hero Hall, not by the Town Hall directly. The Hero Hall has 12 levels, and each level raises the cap of every hero you own — and at certain levels unlocks a new hero or an extra hero slot. The Hall also gates your Town Hall progress: it has to reach the hero-unlock levels your Town Hall allows before the next Town Hall upgrade opens. Ignore the Hall and you stall the whole account.

The max levels are the TH18 caps, reached at Hero Hall 12 — and they moved as recently as June 2026, when the Anime Fury update added King and Queen levels 106–110 and Warden levels 81–85. If a guide tells you the King caps at 100, it is a year stale. The per-Town-Hall caps climb steadily: at TH12 the King and Queen cap at 65, the Prince at 40 and the Warden at 40; at TH15 they sit at 90, 90, 70, 65, 40, with the Duke at 10; at TH17 the King and Queen hit 100. The lesson is that hero levels are a ladder inside the ladder, and the Hero Hall is the rung you climb.

Heroes upgrade with Dark Elixir — except the Grand Warden, who uses Elixir — and each upgrade needs a free Builder and takes the hero out of action while it runs. (Heroes no longer need time to heal after a battle, so the only downtime is the upgrade itself.) That downtime is the game's central tension: your heroes are your strongest attackers, and every upgrade week is a week you attack without them. The standard advice is to upgrade one hero at a time, keep the other three fighting, and use Books of Heroes — from Clan Games, the Gold Pass and the League Shop — to skip the longest timers. A hero upgrading during Clan War League is a hero your clan does not have; time the big upgrades for the week after CWL ends.

The four-slot rule shapes every army. The Hero Hall provides at most four active hero slots, reached at Town Hall 13, so you deploy four of your six heroes per attack. The usual four are King, Queen, Warden and Champion — the Prince and the Duke rotate in for air armies or Duke dives. Each hero carries two pieces of Hero Equipment and, from TH14, one pet, and both are chosen per attack — the loadout is free to swap, so the "which four" question is really "which four for this base". The Dragon Duke is the specialist: a flying melee tank who hits ground and air, and the newest hero — unlocked at Town Hall 15, capped at 25 at Town Hall 18, so he has the shortest climb of the six. His best partners are the Angry Jelly pet (which forces defense targeting) and the Phoenix (a second life).

One early-game quirk worth knowing: the Barbarian King can be used from Town Hall 4, but he stays at level 1 until Town Hall 7 — he cannot be upgraded or given equipment before then, and he cannot defend until the first Hero Banner at Town Hall 7. A guide that tells you to upgrade your King at Town Hall 5 is a guide that has not been updated since May 2026.

The Ruin Witch is not a hero. She is a troop — unlocked at Town Hall 16, summoning Ruin Knights — and one TH18 reference page lists her "at level 4" alongside the heroes, which has confused more than one player into saving Dark Elixir for a hero that does not exist. Her max level is 4, she upgrades in the Laboratory like any troop, and the August 30, 2026 update buffed her to summon up to 10 Ruin Knights that no longer lose health over time.

Pets: Twelve Companions, One Per Hero

Pets join your heroes at Town Hall 14, when you build the Pet House. Each hero takes one pet into an attack; the pet deploys with the hero and keeps fighting if the hero goes down — but pets never defend, and a pet cannot be used while it is upgrading. Pets upgrade with Dark Elixir, like heroes, and they compete with heroes for the same Dark Elixir pool, which is why the pet priority list matters as much as the hero list.

There are twelve pets, and the newest — the Greedy Raven, a flying feathered Goblin obsessed with shiny loot — arrived at Town Hall 18 in February 2026, alongside the Dragon Duke. The full roster: L.A.S.S.I, Electro Owl, Mighty Yak, Unicorn, Frosty, Diggy, Poison Lizard, Phoenix, Spirit Fox, Angry Jelly, Sneezy and Greedy Raven. Diggy's levels 11–15 were added in the August 30, 2026 update.

You do not need to max all twelve pets — and you should not try. Upgrade the pets for the heroes you actually deploy, roughly in the order the Pet House unlocks them: Unicorn and Electro Owl early, Frosty and Diggy next, Phoenix, Spirit Fox and Angry Jelly as they open, Sneezy for air armies, Greedy Raven at Town Hall 18. A pet at a high level on a hero you never deploy is Dark Elixir your King will never see, and the King is the hero who needs it most.

Guardians: TH18's Defenders (Not Heroes)

Guardians are Town Hall 18's unique defense, and the single biggest mechanical change in the update — because they replaced the Town Hall's weapon entirely. From TH12 to TH17, the Town Hall carried a weapon (Giga Tesla, Giga Inferno) and counted as a defensive building. At TH18, the weapon is gone. Instead, a Guardian stands on top of the Town Hall and jumps down to fight when attackers come into range. Defense-targeting troops ignore the Town Hall itself now, which is why so many TH17 strategies stopped working on TH18 overnight.

Two Guardians shipped with the update — Smasher, a melee fighter, and Longshot, a ranged one — and a third, Logger, joined on April 27, 2026. Each maxes at level 5, each hits ground and air with splash damage, and only one defends at a time: you pick which one. Smasher's ability, Sore Loser, rages him when the Town Hall is destroyed and leaves Rage behind when he falls. Longshot's ability, Final Blow, makes him explode when defeated, damaging nearby enemies. Logger pierces through targets with a pushback — his range was cut from 7–8 tiles to 5–6 in the July 2026 balance pass, with pushback raised to 1.5 tiles. Guardians upgrade with a free Builder, like a building, and cannot be used while upgrading — and they are not heroes, so Headhunters do not prioritise them.

Choosing a Guardian is a base-design decision, not a power ranking. Smasher suits compact cores where the Town Hall sits in the middle and the fight comes to it. Longshot suits spread bases where the explosion punishes attackers who commit to the Town Hall. Logger suits bases that need attackers pushed off a lane. Try each for a war season and watch the replays — the Guardian that saves your base is the one whose ability fires where your defense is weakest, and that is different for every layout.

Walls: 325 Pieces, 10 Million Each

Walls are the infinite sink, and every veteran has a love-hate relationship with them. You can place up to 325 wall pieces from Town Hall 14, and the top level is 19 at Town Hall 18: 14,000 hitpoints per piece — the most of any single structure in the Home Village — costing 10,000,000 Gold or Elixir, or 10 Wall Rings, per piece from level 18. Level 18 costs 7,000,000 per piece. Maxing all 325 pieces from level 1 costs more than 11 billion Gold or Elixir combined.

The history matters because it explains the trap. When TH18 launched on November 17, 2025, only the first 125 wall pieces could reach level 19; the remaining 200 opened in June 2026. Players who rushed their first 125 to 19 and then stopped were right — and players who are still sitting on level 17 walls at TH18 are paying for it in every war, because a level 19 wall takes a maxed army noticeably longer to break than a level 17 wall, and that time is what your defenses need.

The rules for walls are simple and they never change. First, walls never use Builders, so they are the last thing you spend on — use leftover Gold and Elixir on walls only after your Builders and Laboratory are busy. Second, from level 5 up you can pay the same amount in Gold or Elixir, so dump whichever resource is overflowing. Third, Wall Rings (from Clan Games, the Gold Pass and the Trader) are worth 1,000,000 each toward a wall upgrade — save them for the level 18-to-19 jump, where each ring replaces a million of loot. Fourth, do not upgrade walls during Hammer Jam at the expense of Builder upgrades — Hammer Jam halves Builder costs and times, and walls do not use Builders, so the discount does nothing for them. Walls are the project you finish last, a piece at a time, with the loot that would otherwise overflow your storages.

Troops, Spells and the Laboratory Queue

Troops and spells level in the Laboratory, one upgrade at a time, and the Laboratory is the longest queue in the game — longer than any Builder, because there is only one Laboratory and it never gets a second one. Every troop, spell and Siege Machine upgrade competes for the same single slot, which is why the Laboratory order is the most consequential decision a mid-level player makes. A maxed army with a level 1 hero is bad; a maxed hero with a level 1 army is worse, because the hero cannot carry a raid alone.

The troop roster at TH18 runs from the Barbarian at Barracks level 1 to the Meteor Golem at Barracks level 19 (which needs Town Hall 17 — TH18 added no Barracks level). The Meteor Golem started as an event troop and was made permanent in the November 17, 2025 TH18 update. Dark troops train in the Dark Barracks, spells in the Spell Factory and Dark Spell Factory, Siege Machines in the Siege Workshop. The newest spell is the Totem Spell (TH18), which summons a totem that buffs nearby troops; the newest Siege Machine era is the Troop Launcher (TH16).

One naming conflict worth flagging: some guides list the Thrower as a Town Hall 17 troop, but the Barracks table puts it at Barracks 18, which is Town Hall 16 — this guide follows the Barracks table, and the ladder above lists the Thrower under TH16. If a guide tells you the Thrower needs TH17, it is reading a different table, not a different game.

Siege Machines deserve a line because they are the only troop type you do not train for yourself at first: they are built in the Siege Workshop, which unlocks at Town Hall 12, and your clan donates them for attacks before you can build your own. The Workshop's roster — Wall Wrecker, Battle Blimp, Stone Slammer, Siege Barracks, Log Launcher, Flame Flinger, Battle Drill and the Troop Launcher — is a toolbox, not a ladder: the Wall Wrecker smashes a path through walls, the Battle Blimp flies Clan Castle troops over the base and drops them on the Town Hall, the Log Launcher rolls through a lane, and the Troop Launcher fires troops over walls from range. Pick the machine for the base, not the machine you like — a Blimp on a base with exposed air defenses is a donation wasted, and a Wall Wrecker on a base with no wall lane is a slow walk to nowhere. Clan Castle troops ride inside the machine, so the machine and the donated troops are one decision, not two.

The Laboratory priority, by Town Hall, is the same shape every time: your main farming army first, your war army second, everything else never. At low Town Halls that means BARCH (Barbarians and Archers) and Giants; at TH11 and up it means the Sneaky Goblin farming core and your war army of choice — Dragons, Root Riders, Electro Dragons, or the current meta — and the spells that enable it (Rage, Freeze, Invisibility, Jump). Research Potions from Raid Medals save 23 hours of lab time each, and three a week is nearly three full days of research — the best Raid Medal spend in the game, covered in our resource and Ore farming guide. Use them on the longest upgrades, not the shortest: a potion on the longest upgrade saves the same 23 hours as a potion on the shortest, but the longest one is the one blocking your army.

Super Troops deserve a paragraph because they change farming completely. A Super Troop is a powered-up version of a regular troop — Sneaky Goblins, Super Archers, Super Wall Breakers — unlocked by spending Dark Elixir to boost the base troop for seven days. Sneaky Goblins (TH11+) are the loot-farming meta: invisible, targeting resource buildings first, paired with Invisibility and Jump spells to loot storages deep inside a base. The boost costs Dark Elixir and lasts a week, so the rule is to boost on the day you plan to farm hard, not on the day you happen to remember. The boost timer runs in real time whether you play or not.

Upgrade Order: What to Build First at Each Town Hall

The order that wastes least is the same at every Town Hall, with the details changing as new systems arrive:

The two mistakes that define a bad upgrade order are both storage mistakes. The first is upgrading the Town Hall before the storages can hold the loot for the next round — the TH18 storage trap in the callout above. The second is upgrading defenses before the army: a maxed defense with a weak army loses every raid and wins nothing, while a maxed army with a weak defense still farms. Offense first, defense second, walls last — that order has survived every Town Hall since the game's launch, and TH18 did not change it.

At TH18 specifically, the order is: Town Hall, Clan Castle and Laboratory, Hero Hall to 12, the new defenses (Revenge Tower, Super Wizard Tower merge), Guardians to 5, storages, then the long backfill of every defense level TH18 added — with heroes and the Laboratory running the whole time. Two smaller systems slot into that backfill. Crafted Defenses, built at the Crafting Station, add deployable defenses — Phase 2 added the Light Beam, Hero Bell and Bomb Hive — and the station opened to Town Hall 11 on August 1, 2026, so a TH18 player has had access for months and should already have the station working. Supercharge adds extra levels to the Builder's Hut and the Monolith, two charges at TH18, added August 30, 2026: they are cheap power for buildings you already own, and they belong in the backfill right after the headline defenses. And one defense nuance worth knowing: a hero under upgrade still defends in Ranked Battles, Clan Wars and Clan War Leagues, even though it sits out regular multiplayer attacks — so a hero upgrade week is not a war week lost.

Rushing vs Maxing: The Honest Answer in 2026

The oldest argument in Clash of Clans is whether to max everything before upgrading the Town Hall ("maxing") or to upgrade early and catch up later ("rushing"). The honest answer in 2026 is that maxing lost — and the game itself ended the debate. Higher Town Halls earn more loot per raid, unlock better troops, pay better Star Bonuses and Clan Games rewards, and the Hero Hall system now forces you to keep pace: the Hall has to reach the hero-unlock levels your Town Hall allows before the next Town Hall upgrade opens, so a rushed account cannot hide a neglected Hall. The game wants you to climb.

That does not mean rushing blindly. The version of rushing that works is strategic rushing: upgrade the Town Hall when your heroes and your main army are maxed for your current level, even if your defenses are behind — then backfill the defenses at the new Town Hall, where the loot is better. The version that fails is blind rushing: upgrading the Town Hall with level 1 heroes and a level 1 army, and then discovering that you cannot three-star anything at your new level, your war weight is a liability to your clan, and your loot per raid is worse because the matchmaking puts you against maxed bases. The test is simple: if you can three-star bases at your own Town Hall level with your main army, you are ready to climb. If you cannot, the Town Hall is not the problem — the army is.

War weight is the one place rushing still costs you. In Clan Wars, your base is matched partly on its defensive strength, so a rushed TH18 with TH15 defenses will face TH18 attackers it cannot stop — and your clan pays for it. If you war seriously, keep your defenses within two Town Hall levels of your own, and keep your heroes maxed. If you do not war, none of that matters, and the fastest climb is the best climb.

Builders, Hammers and the Clock

Builders are the clock. You start with one, buy up to five more with Gems, and earn a sixth from the Builder Base via the B.O.B Hut (the OTTO Hut's final upgrade). Every building upgrade needs a free Builder, and the timers at the top are long — the Town Hall upgrade itself takes 12 days — which is why the game's time-saving items exist and why they are worth more than almost anything else.

The time-savers, in order of value: Hammers (from the League Shop, bought with Clan War League Medals) instantly finish one upgrade of a type — Hammer of Building, Hammer of Heroes, Hammer of Spells, Hammer of Fighting. They are the most valuable items in the game for a reason: a Hammer of Building on the 12-day Town Hall upgrade saves 12 days. Books (Book of Building, Book of Heroes, Book of Fighting, Book of Spells, Book of Everything) do the same for one upgrade and come from Clan Games, the Gold Pass and events. Builder Potions (30 League Medals each) make all six Builders work 10× faster for an hour — 9 hours saved per Builder, 54 hours total. Research Potions save 23 hours of Laboratory time each. Training Potions boost your army for an hour and are the farming-session accelerator.

The spending rule is to save Hammers and Books for the longest timers, not the shortest: a Hammer on the 12-day Town Hall upgrade saves 12 days, a Hammer on a short defense upgrade saves a fraction of that, and the Hammer costs the same either way. Save them during Hammer Jam, too — the 50% discount already halves the timer, so a Hammer spent during Jam wastes half its value. The exception is the Town Hall upgrade itself: if a Hammer or Book lets you start the next Town Hall a week early, spend it, because the new Town Hall's loot pays the Hammer back in days.

Finally, the Gold Pass. The monthly season pass pays resources, magic items and a hero skin, and it boosts building, research and training times while it is active — the single best value purchase in the game for an active player, and the November 2026 pass (Clash of Titans, with the Grand Titan skin) is no exception. If you spend money on one thing in Clash of Clans, spend it here. If you spend money on nothing, the free pass track still pays — claim it every season.

Buying Accounts & Boosting

There is no legitimate shortcut to sell you here. Supercell's Terms of Service ban account sales, account sharing and paid boosting, and the game has no trading system — there is nothing to buy that is not an account. The accounts that trade on third-party marketplaces hand over a stranger's Supercell ID login, recovery path included, and the seller can reclaim the account afterwards; the full picture is on the Clash of Clans page. A bought maxed account also skips the one thing this guide is actually about: a village built around armies you understand, with heroes and equipment you chose. The climb above is measured in months of daily play, and it is the only one that stays yours.

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
• GamGem: Clash of Clans Upgrades Planner — TH18 upgrade 25,000,000 Gold, 12 days, storage cap 24,800,000 at TH17
• 1337wiki: Town Hall in Clash of Clans — TH18 released Nov 17, 2025, Guardians, Logger added Apr 27, 2026, Crafting Station to TH11
• 1337wiki: Hero Hall — 12 levels, Hero Hall gates Town Hall progress, max hero levels by Hall level, buildable at TH4 since May 26, 2026
• 1337wiki: Clash of Clans Heroes — six heroes, unlock Town Halls, TH18 max levels, 12 pets, Pet House at TH14
• 1v9: All Clash of Clans Hero Levels by Town Hall — TH18 caps (King 110, Queen 110, Prince 95, Warden 85, Champion 55, Duke 25)
• ClashVault: TH18 Max Levels & Upgrade Guide — hero, Guardian and wall caps, reviewed Sept 27, 2026
• 1337wiki: Walls in Clash of Clans — 325 pieces, level 19 at 10,000,000 Gold/Elixir, 14,000 HP, all 325 to 19 since June 2026
• 1337wiki: Barracks — 19 levels, Meteor Golem at 19 (TH17), Thrower at 18 (TH16)
• 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
• 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