How fast does TC19 eat your stockpile of rugged clothes?

General Discussion
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Today, I’m saving iron to start my Stronghold 19 upgrade in the next day or two. I’m laser focused on TC20, and TC19 is a stop along the way, and I’m wondering what to expect when I start using it…long background leading up to my question follows:

I’m using my TCs pretty close to the hoarding play style described here: [Play style] Recruit (RT4/ RT11) & Food (RT13/ RT20) Hoards- Updated 4-14

  • Training Camp “Alpha” is my permanent TC11 recruit bank (32 days = 768 recruits & 384k food)
  • Training Camp “Baker” is a TC13 food bank (48 days = 5.5M food accessible & 1680 recruits)
  • Training Camp “Charlie” was bouncing between 1/3, 2, and 11 based on sword and backpack availability … and now is bouncing between 1/3, 2, and offline for upgrades (currently @15; aiming for 19 soon after SH19); I use up swords and backpacks in batches, instead of letting them build up.

My TC plan after stronghold 20 (in sequence):

  • Training Camp “Delta” will be built and leveled to 2 or 4, then start bouncing between 1/3, 2, and 4 using up batches of swords and backpacks as I have them.
  • Upgrade “Charlie” from 19 to 20, research 20, then move my food bank queue from TC13 “Baker” to TC20 “Charlie”.
  • When “Baker” finishes building my last 3* feeder from TC13, it will go offline for upgrades, straight to 19, where it will bounce between 1-3/2/11/19 depending on stock of swords and backpacks, and whether my heroes need a deluge of 1* feeders from 19
  • Upgrade “Delta” to 11 once “Baker” is back online.

At this point, I expect to still have 4* & 5* heroes I’m leveling, so I’ll leave my TCs in this configuration and upgrade other buildings for a while. When I see the end of the line, I’ll bring more TC20s online:

  • Upgrade “Baker” from 19 to 20, now running two camps at TC20.
  • “Delta” can now go offline and upgrade from 11 to 20, making for three at TC20.
  • Now I’m stockpiling swords and backpacks for later.
  • Eventually I’ll get some new heroes I want to level up, and I’ll switch one or two camps to 1-3/2/19 to work through sword/backpack inventory, eventually bringing on a second TC11.

My big question: How quickly will I burn through 1723 (and counting) sets of rugged clothes that I’ve been building up since I started playing the game once I CAN run TC19?

I’m somewhere between f2p and p2w; I have paid enough to have a decent roster/bench, and I still have heroes to level up. My growth limit is currently ascension items. I’m stupidly short gloves, 7 more and I could ascend 7 heroes, and I’ve got 6 @60 plus Wu @3/54. Obviously, I’ll be busy leveling them up for a while once I ascend them. Or if the RNG gods hate me, I’ll be getting more and more heroes up to level 60 waiting on gloves! My next limit is that a few of those 7 are worth the items, and too many of them are red compared to my hidden blade count.

I have a lot of food and recruits banked…and they are both still building up…but I’m wondering what limiting factor to expect with TC19 (including food costs to level up heroes), food, recruits, or clothes?

If rugged clothes are going to be the chokepoint, I could shift my three-flag farming from 8-7 to 7-7 now and build up more of them. (Yeah, I lose out on some XP, but I really don’t need more common herbs!)

If rugged clothes aren’t going to be a limiting factor, I’ll probably stick to 8-7 or 6-8 if I’m running low on crude iron.

What have people farther along than me found, especially if you use your TCs in a similar style?

3 Likes
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I’m currently out of rugged clothes. They will be your limiting factor

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Ham is the priority. Recruits second. With that said, unless you have a weakness that can only be fixed by immediately levelling a hero in hand you need to stop using back packs.

Swords are cheap in regards to ham, but it too uses five recruits vs tc11’s two. If you need a better raid team to gather resources, then you have adecision about resource allocation to make.

Also, the cup- dropping nerf changed what you can lose from your watchtower when raided. Under the current revision (which may change again), build your tower as the return is better than mines and farms.

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I used up over 1k of my 3.3k rugged clothes in my first month of using tc19. Food was my only obstacle since I had a huge stockpile of recruits built up. Still, tc19 will eat anything you give it, so be careful not to over-commit and leave a camp paralyzed when you can’t feed all the heroes you’ve trained.

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I agree with Bud, hams are my limiting factor.

I had over 3700 rugged clothes (now down to 3300) and TC11 queued up for 120 days when TC19 started

50 heroes = 275,000 hams to create and another roughly 250,000 to level them up.

BTW - Current state of my training camps.

Camp 1 - TC11 queued for 100 days
Camp 2 - TC20 queued for 12 days
Camp 3 - Flexing between TC1, 2, 11, & 19
Camp 4 - Currently leveling from TC16 to TC 17, on its way to TC20

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Thanks for all the answers! If I put them all together, I get the following:

  1. Food is the immediate limit of what I can do with TC19. (@Bud, @johnboy29 )
  2. Don’t go crazy and get ahead of myself–I could easily make hundreds of TC19 feeders in less than a day…I could get my TC stuck idle for (potentially days!) while I’m totally food broke trying to use them to level up heroes. (@Wharflord )
  3. Long term, I will burn through my rugged clothes, it will just take a while. Farming 7-7 at least part time sounds like a good idea. (@NPNKY )
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I think many players overlook what they are trying to accomplish when they become too concerned with technique. And, that is especially true when what we had been working toward changes, but we do not reorganize to fit that new reality.

BWH, you made me rethink how I was using my feeder-hero production. I had used a method that brought a roster of 30 heroes (six 5* and 24 4*) to 2^60 and 3^60 quickly and smoothly, buy it had to be changed to start maxing a select group that is still being added to with an elemental and an event 10x each once a month.

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Quite possible. I’m very good at optimizing things like building my fortress and farming, and feeding techniques…which means my heroes will grow faster, and without unnecessary bottlenecks. That is part of any winning strategy.

Choosing the right heroes to develop is a whole 'nuther thing.

For me, the team goal right now is 10~15 heroes of the right mix for serious damage to titans in any color. Fortunately, at least with the 8* titans my alliance is dealing with, 4* heroes are sufficient, and can even be useful at 3/60 'tho 4/70 does more damage and survives a lot better. The needed pieces are well established and not too hard to get… Titan Attack Fundamentals - (new player Titan guide) - #4 by hazard

It is a long game; I have most of the pieces now, but I’ll be refining it and maxing them for another couple months…

What will be more interesting is forging really good raid offense and defense teams in the next phase. The ‘fun’ part of that is finding powerful synergy among the group of heroes I already have, and trying different strategies.

That kind of bigger picture stuff is easier to lose sight of.

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I found recruits to be my limiter, since I usually drown in ham. That said, 2 recruits + 1 rugged clothes every minute, and you can do the math how fast my stockpile of rugged clothes vanished (I had several TC20, and used two of them nonstop to make 19’s till the clothes ran dry.) :wink:

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Same here. I still spam 8-7 as recruits was my main bottleneck.

My current setup with a balanced goal of creating decent heroes and being able to level them efficiently but gradually (color matching and as many uncommon as possible).

2x tc20 with spawning time at 7am each alternate day. This gives me a little bonus for waking up and facing the universe. At the end of each day I add 1 to the queue of the one with the shortest clock.

1x tc11 on permanent build. Keep a couple of days in the queue as an emergency fund of materials.

1xtc19. Using level 2 when backpacks are available and spamming tc19 when I have a surplus of recruits. I found spamming tc19 wasn’t sustainable and I like having a steady stream of uncommons as recruit to xp value.

Probably not the best way but I am enjoying the daily reward and an ability to level reasonably well.

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I loved having constant heroes and TC19 gave that, but after building my lineup solely with 1* heroes over days and days, you know I was missing 2* feeders! :grin:

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Hmmm…looking at my farming options…best recruits/WE that I’ve found is 8-7 or 6-8 at 3.0 recruits/WE. I tend to fill my three monster chests/day there, and usually spend the remainder of my WE at 12-9, 2.5 recruits/WE, with better crafting items and better XP…or doing quests if they are worthwhile.

I’m really not likely to change my farming for more recruits than I’m already getting, unless I skip 12-9 entirely…

OTOH, I farm 7-7 over 8-7, I drop down to 2.7 recruits/WE, but gets me more rugged clothes. Doesn’t sound like I need to make the switch now, but I might someday.

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Could you please tell us the way you optimize your resources?

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How do I optimize resources?

The TC strategy I described in my initial post is one good example.

Another thing was my general fortress build strategy; I pretty much have only upgraded buildings if they will get me to TC20 faster, and have ignored them otherwise, with two exceptions:

  • I have barracks level 3, 'tho I’ve go troops to upgrade when I get it farther along after TC20 is running…
  • I upgraded forges; one to 8 so I could craft anything up to Axes for titan attacks, even if my main one was busy, and the main one to 17 so I could stockpile dragon attacks and bombs for this challenge event. (Which was a raging success!)
  • I upgraded houses a bit beyond the minimum I needed so I could store a full set of flags worth of recruits. (Normally I upgrade storage to the absolute minimum I can get away with)

Farming is another thing to optimize. I started this topic as way to see if my current farming strategy was best for me going forward or not…

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I had over 2000 when I first got to tc 19 and my problem was food. I apologize I didn’t read everything but if your farms aren’t leveled you’ll be frustrated.

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When I hit TC19, I had 1800+ rugged clothes and all farms at 16. In the past 6 weeks, I got all farms to 20 and have 200 rugged clothes left. I ran out of food 5 or so times early, but then it was not a problem. I used probably 40-50 a day. After the farms were all at 18, my limiting factor was recruits. I farmed 8-7 exclusively when there were no events or rare quests going on. I go through 36 flags at least twice and sometimes three times a day.
I always use up my swords and backpacks first, then feed the remaining recruits to TC19. I’m sure this is not the most efficient way to train, but it fit the best with my current play time/style.

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You will run out of food 1st… I had over 21 days in elite camp made about 600… problem is the food to ascend

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You will only run out of food if your farms are 17 or below. Higher than that, food should be fine unless you are using multiple World flasks every day.

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It’s difficult to say what the bottleneck with TC 19 will be. I had 3500 rugged clothes, all level 20 farms and I dropped cups to get 600k ham from raiding ever day. I would run TC 11 x 3 and TC 19 x 1-2 hours every day then back to TC 11 x 4. Still, food (ham) was my bottleneck because I was raising 5 x 5* heroes. When it was time for ascension, I would have to run 4 x TC 11 for a day to recover. So if you are training 5* heroes, food is the main shortage, but you get more every day. You just have to run TC 19 in short bursts.

Today, I am raising 3 x 4* and 2 x 5*. I’m down to 300 rugged clothes, so maybe the items may be a concern, but I always run out of recruits before food now (as they would with 1 or 2 as well).

If you are raising 5 x 4* and have a massive backlog of recruits, then you will run out of rugged clothes. You will also be the proud new owner of a deep hero roster because that’s 310,000 xp you just used.

So farm 7-4 or 7-7 for rugged clothes, but the most pressing concern is resource production. Feeding up a team that you use constantly is important. I would recommend maxing farms / watchtower early. This way, you will have that food surplus early.

DON’T WASTE YOUR FOOD AT MAX CAPACITY! if you are maxed out, make potions. I once made 3000 minor healing potions as a joke. When you are fighting high level titans, you will use them up. All of them. Make more. If you ever ran 8-7, you will have an infinite supply of common herbs. Make more healing potions. Level up your troops. Make more mana potions. There will come a day, (when you have TC 19) where you will not ever be able to make potions (until you run out of rugged clothes). Store up for the long winter.

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I’m actually out of recruits and not out of rugged clothes. Ham is an issue for a couple of hours after I train a 100, but no bg deal.

I don’t think I’ll ever have enough recruits to use my rugged clothes.