Clash of Clans Upgrades to Delay or Skip for Faster Progression

To speed up progression in Clash of Clans, delay upgrades that fail to change combat interactions, break thresholds, or alter raid outcomes. Reallocate your laboratory research queues and builders toward core combat spells, primary troop levels, and heavy base defenses.

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Low-Impact Spells to Leave Underleveled

Certain spells provide their primary functional utility at base or intermediate levels, making additional laboratory research wasteful.

Earthquake Spell

The main role of the Earthquake Spell is clearing pathing through walls.

Fixed wall mechanic: Exactly four Earthquake Spells of any level will destroy any level of Wall. A Level 1 Earthquake Spell opens the same path through max-tier Walls as a max-level spell.
Diminishing structure damage: While higher spell levels increase listed damage percentages against standard buildings, repeated casts on the same structure suffer steep diminishing returns.
Next action: Leave the Earthquake Spell at Level 1 unless running a specialized zap-quake strategy with specific hit point requirements. Route Dark Elixir and laboratory time into primary dark troops or hero equipment instead.

Jump Spell

Upgrading the Jump Spell extends its duration without improving unit speed or spell radius.

Duration scaling: Level 1 lasts 20 seconds, Level 2 lasts 40 seconds, and Level 3 lasts 60 seconds.
Attack timing constraints: With a three-minute attack limit, ground strike squads usually cross a breach in under 15 seconds. The 40-second window provided by Level 2 offers plenty of time for slow units, heroes, or late cleanup troops to cross.
Next action: Stop upgrading the Jump Spell at Level 2. Reallocate regular elixir and laboratory time to key ground units like Root Riders, Super Wall Breakers, or spells with active stat scaling such as Rage and Freeze.

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Defensive Upgrades and Traps with Poor Breakpoints

Defenses and traps justify their gold costs and builder timers only when higher levels reduce the number of hits required to eliminate common attacking units.

Spring Trap Increments

Spring Traps eject units based on exact housing space capacity. Upgrades that increase capacity by only one or two points rarely change troop interactions against common ground targets:

Hog Rider: 5 housing space
Giant: 5 housing space
Miner: 6 housing space
Valkyrie: 8 housing space

If an upgrade raises trap capacity from 16 to 17 or from 18 to 19, it still cannot bounce an additional 5-space Hog Rider or 8-space Valkyrie. A 17-capacity trap ejects three Hog Riders (15 housing space) and leaves 2 capacity unused, performing identically to a 15-capacity trap.

Next action: Check your Town Hall meta. Only upgrade a Spring Trap if the target level reaches an exact threshold that ejects an extra troop. Otherwise, spend gold on Giant Bombs or Seeking Air Mines.

High-Level Mortars and Isolated Small Bombs

Mortars: While effective against swarms at low Town Hall levels, Mortar damage scaling falls off against mid-to-late-game armies. The slow, low chip damage does not threaten tanky units, Queen Charges, or air attacks.
Small Bombs: A single, isolated Small Bomb often fails to eliminate an equal-tier Wall Breaker before detonation.
Next action: Postpone Mortars and standalone Small Bombs until all heavy core defenses (X-Bows, Inferno Towers, Scattershots, and Air Defenses) are finished.

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Upgrade Priority Comparison

Route resources into upgrades that directly influence survival and three-star success rates:

Category	Delay or Skip	Prioritize Instead	Tactical Reason
Spells	Earthquake Spell (Levels 2+)	Rage Spell, Poison Spell	Four Earthquakes break any wall regardless of level; Rage and Poison actively scale offensive damage and defense reduction.
Spells	Jump Spell (Level 3)	Freeze Spell, Invisibility Spell	Level 2 Jump duration covers standard troop transit; Freeze and Invisibility neutralize high-threat defenses directly.
Traps	Off-threshold Spring Traps	Giant Bombs, Seeking Air Mines	Extra capacity between troop thresholds ejects no additional units; Air Mines reliably counter Healers and Warden pushes.
Traps	Isolated Small Bombs	Tornado Trap, Skeleton Traps	Single Small Bombs fail Wall Breaker kill thresholds; Tornado and Skeleton Traps disrupt enemy pathing.
Defenses	High-level Mortars	X-Bows, Scattershots, Inferno Towers	Mortar chip damage is easily out-healed; core defenses provide the sustained burst damage required to stop attacks.