Sub 200 Adventures

It's been a little while since I made my sub-200 journey, so I had better get this blog post done before I forget it entirely!

First off, what is sub-200?
This is just an easy designation for having fewer than 200 trophies.  When you begin playing Clash of Clans, you start out with zero trophies.  It is because of this, I think, that Supercell introduced a special match-making mechanic at the lowest trophy levels.  Why 200 specifically?  Who knows.  They had to draw the line somewhere.  So new players under 200 trophies are sort of in their own Clash of Clans dimension that you and I can never get to.

It's very interesting to experience.  As you creep down toward 200 trophies, you see some extremely low level bases, mostly town hall 2.  But once you drop below 200, it suddenly looks like I'm up in gold league again!

Here are some screen shots showing the sudden change.  First is a shot of my base, followed by what I saw when I went raiding.

Here you can see my trophy count is exactly 200.

And this is the base that was available for me to raid at 200 trophies.

After losing that raid, you can see I dropped 3 trophies and am now below 200.

And below 200, this is the first base that shows up.  What??

Anyway, someone made the discovery that they could go and hide down there and not worry about being attacked.  I don't know when that happened and I don't know who made that discovery.  But eventually it was also discovered that people were hiding down there, so others made the journey down to attack and loot them.

So now that we know what sub-200 is, why would anyone go all the way down there?
The answer to that is simple: easy loot!  What makes it potentially so easy is that all you have to do is train goblins and archers and go after collectors.  There's no worry about losing the battle, because that will just send you lower!  In fact, you want to make sure you don't win.

So how do you get there?
By intentionally losing battles as quickly as you can.  You accomplish this by dropping just one troop and then surrendering the battle.  At first you can drop very quickly, losing 30 trophies at a time.  But when you get closer to 200, you're only losing a few at a time.  It gets even slower as you go, often losing just one each battle.  I got all the way down to 75, so you can guess how many battles I lost!  If you have a Barb King or Archer Queen, it's more efficient to just drop them on the corner of the map and surrender.  That way you don't lose any actual troops.

If this is so great, why doesn't everyone do it?
Well, it's certainly simple and easy to understand, but it's actually a time consuming pain.  You have to drop a troop and then surrender, followed by waiting to reload your base.  And then you do it all over again.  It's been too long since I did it so I don't remember the exact amount of time.  But it took at least an hour to get down there.

And the catch is that once you get down there, you can't stay.  Unless someone makes the huge mistake of giving you a shield, you will get shot back up in trophies the second you log off.  That's because other people are using you to drop trophies!

If I decide to try it, what tips can you give me?
First off, just use archers and goblins.  You can have two barracks training one and two on the other, which almost means endless raids.  That is unless you dump most of your army on a base.

As with regular farming, you want to find the right bases.  30k gold doesn't sound good at all, but it is - when you get it every 30 seconds!

Wall breakers and giants could be helpful for some bases that have vaults, but it's not sustainable unless you gem your troops.

While you are going, you will see some of the same bases over and over.  It's such a strange experience.  If you're lucky you can raid the same base more than once!  That is assuming, of course, that you don't give anyone a shield!  And under no circumstances do you want to one-star anyone!  That will send your trophy count in the wrong direction.

Unfortunately, I think this trophy range used to be a lot more profitable than it is now.  Once people get tired of going down there and the crowd thins out, it will likely be a better place to farm.  You'll notice lots of pumps and mines are empty, and I'm guessing it's because those people just logged off.

I don't know when the ideal time is to try this out, but I was there Saturday night.  I doubt that's the best time to try it, as there are probably way too many other people trying it as well.

One thing that was fascinating was going to bed with 75 trophies and waking up with 799!  Since I decided to head back to my normal trophy range, that initial boost was nice.  But then it was an absolute pain getting back up into gold 1.  Enough of a pain that I won't be trying sub-200 again any time soon.

But for those looking for a completely different Clash of Clans experience, I'd say it's worth trying at least once.