Strategy Guide for Leveling Up Clash Royale Cards

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Knowing which cards to level up when, what cards to request, when to donate cards, how to use trades, and when to use wild cards for what are important for getting the right cards leveled up quickly. With 15 levels of cards, it really helps to know which cards can get by under leveled and which should be upgraded with haste.  This guide is here to help with these things and more.

How to Level Up Card Quickly

Upgrading cards from level 1 to 14 requires getting more and more copies of that card or using wild cards along with paying cash. It's also possible to get books that upgrade a card directly to the next level and medals that pay the cost in gold coins for the upgrade. Getting from 14 to 15 requires using 50,000 elite wild cards.  Both books and medals are best used for level 13 cards to move them up to level 14. In the case of books, the best time to upgrade a card is right after it reaches 13.  Here are the best ways to get Cards, Coins, and Elite Wild Cards.


Best ways to get copies of cards
  1. Clan Wars is the best way to earn cards. More specifically getting your first 100 medals. Doing this requires starting one clan wars battle between Thursday and Sunday. You can quit or lose or do something else while the game goes on if you want. Just losing a single clan wars game will give you hundreds of free cards.  If your clan wins, you'll get a free legendary card as well.
  2. Card Mastery - each card mastery goal you read gives you significant reweards and some of these rewards are cards and wild cards.
  3. Requesting Cards from clan members. While this isn't the best way in terms of the total number of cards you get, this method helps both you and your clan. It's worthwhile to request cards, if possible, a couple of times or more a day.
  4. Opening free shop offer. Every day there is one free shop offer. You can also trade gold for cards if you have lots of extra gold.
  5. Opening win chests. Every time you win a game you gain a chest. You can keep upto 4 and opening them when possible is a good source of cards. When possible, try to always be opening a chest. A season pass can make this slightly easier.
  6. free and season pass monthly rewards. Every month you get rewards that unlock every 5 crowns you gain per game. This is a good source of cards that you should be earning for free just for playing.
  7. Daily Goals - winning 3 games per day gives you a daily reward, and doing this every day is best.
  8. Season Challenges - You can earn 1,000 season tolkens per day plus earn more tolkens for special challenges. These can be traded for cards, gold, books, Shards, and other rewards.
  9. Ladder Rewards - every month you can rewards by advancing on the ladder. This offers some nice rewards, but will not be your main source of cards.
  10. Tournaments - these also offer some cards. It's usually worthwhile to spend 500 gems for these rewards.
  11. Trophy Road Cards - Early on, this is a great source of cards, but as you level up you'll get more cards through other means
  12. Leveling up your King Tower - same as trophy road
  13. Special options - Sometimes Clash Royale has special offers and events that are a great source of cards. Sometimes these require just logging in every day and other times earning a certain number of crowns in a certain time

Best ways to get coins
  1. Season passes, if you spend real life money, is a good source of coins. If you are going to spend money, this is the best option for most things. It's best to time when you get the season pass to when Clash Royale is offering a good evolution for free with it
  2. Clan Wars. Your first 100 medals in Clan Wars will give you thousands of gold, so just losing a single clan wars game between Thursday and Sunday is a the most time effective way to get gold coins. In addition, Clan wars games give significant amounts of gold for each win, and some for losing. Duels give the most money.
  3. Opening win chests - Most win chests include some gold, and some are all gold coins
  4. Free shop offers - when these are coins, they are a quick and easy source of gold coins
  5. Donating Cards - Donating cards you have gives you gold coins in addition to experience
  6. Free and paid season pass rewards are a great source of gold coins
  7. Daily goals will sometiems give gold as the rewards also
  8. Card Mastery Levels are a great way to earn significant gold
  9. Winning games will give you gold coins for the first 20 wins each day
  10. Gold Rush Events will give you extra gold for destroying enemy towers
  11. Season Challenges will give tokens that can be traded for gold coins
  12. Ladder - winning at ladder can give gold coins
  13. Trophy road  can also give some gold coins


Best ways to get elite wild cards

You can get elite wild cards from moving up the ladder every month. This is the best source for elite wild cards.  You also get elite wild cards whenever you get cards that you have already maxed out.  This means that every direct and indirect way to get regular cards can also translate into elite wild cards.

Which Cards to Level up First

Not all cards are equal. When you first start playing, the one card that can most help you advance quickly is usually your evolution. Not all evolutions are the same, different cards have different roles. Some are tanks that both do damage and act as a type of shield for other units and towers. For these cards, both hps and damage matter. At 3 elixir the knight has a strong evolution and works with many different hands. It's a card you start with and is usually your best first evolution. If you decide to either spend 8 dollars to start with an evolved knight (and use your free wild cards to level it up) the knight is the card you want to get to 14 and then 15 first and you want to level it up as much as possible as quickly as possible. When you get to level 13, you want to use your first book to get this card to 14. Because the knight is an evolution and both takes and gives damage, it's the best card to level up first for most people. If you don't use the knight, you will want to focus on your tank. This could be a Megaknight, a Giant Skeleton, or Prince or Dark Prince or whatever card you use to put in front of your other cards to attack other units and soak up damage.

If you have 2 tanks and they are different levels (i.e. common and rare), you should focus on both tanks. However, if they are the same rarity (i.e. both common) it's usually a bad idea to try to level them both up at the same time and you might want to temporarily remove one from your hand if it gets under leveled.

The next card you want to upgrade is your DPS card, or damage per second card. That's you card that is usually a glass cannon. The card that hits hard, but has a moderate number of hitponts. Sparky, bandit, inferno dragon are examples, but so is lumberjack and others. These cards should be cards that benefit both from the damage and the hp increase form leveling up.  Ideally this card is a different rarity from your tank (i.e. common and rare).

Your next priority is usually trying to upgrade the highest card for each type in your main battle deck. So that means focusing on your tank, or tanks, dps and then whatever cards are different rarity, so ideally, you're focusing on a common card, a rare card, an elite card, and a legendary card, as well as a champion. Trying to get the one in your deck for each as high as possible. 

How long to do this? Only do this focus on a single card for each rarity enough to get one deck to all level 14 cards. If you are not sure what you want your final deck to be, that's ok, but only focus on those cards you're sure will be in your primary deck. If you're not sure what cards to use, pick a few cards that work with almost every day and only focus hard on those. It's ok if you are only sure about 1 or 2 cards, get those to 14 and then move to the 60/20/20 rule. It's also ok to move to the 60/20/20 rule early, but you should, at a minimum, get 1 card to level 14 if possible and that should be your tank. If you have an evo, you really gain by getting one evo to 14 that you can fit into your main deck.  As you are doing this, keep an eye out for cards that are very close to the next level and especially cards next to a level that opens up card mastery rewards. Sometimes spending 1 legendary card will let you earn back 2 legenary cards with card mastery and the deals are even better for less rare cards.  Card mastery also gives experience and gold, so level up cards when it makes it possible to get those rewards.

The 60/20/20 Rule

Most of the time this is how you should be splitting your resources, time, cards, and coins. The 60 20 20 rule says:
  1. Spend 60 percent of your resources trying to level up your primary deck until you get all cards to 14. If you don't know what primary deck you want, try out different decks in season challenge games where there is no harm to losing until you find one you like, look on this website for deck examples and try them, talk with your clan and research online, or do whatever is needed. You want to become an expert with 1 deck eventually. At some point, you'll even up with every card maxed out after a decade or so and it will eventually work out. That said, it's best to figure this out before that point.
  2. Spend 20 percent of your resources on the 32 cards in your 4 clan wars war decks.
  3. Spend 20 percent of your resources on all cards. You want to focus on leveling up cards near points where it makes it possible to get new card mastery levels. Card Mastery is very, very important and you want to get every mastery level for every card as quickly as reaslist as it gives big rewards.
This isn't a hard rule, but it's important to focus on your primary deck with most of your resources. That's what's most important. It's what wins trophy road and ladder.  Over time, clan wars is more about participation than winning or losing. If you lose 16 clan wars games a week, you get 1600 medals and most clans are happy with that. Winning more clan wars games, however, gives you more gold and is well worth it. So, you do want to invest a little in those cards.  The 20 percent remaining spread around all cards is important too. It helps with when you later switch around cards. More importantly, it helps with card mastery, and it helps with tower levels and experience.

Trading Cards

You've seen the trade tokens and are wondering when you should use them. The answer is that you should use them right away to get your first card to level 14. Ask your clan members to trade for the card you want and offer them every possible choice in return. Sometimes, it can help to put up multiple offers for the same card to speed it up. After you use up all your trade tokens for a rarity or have all your primary deck cards up to level 14, you can save up trade tokens for when you decide to modify your main deck or to level up clan wars cards, but you should usually try to save up some trade tokens to make a trade with your clan members when they need to get a card to level 14 in their main deck.

Wild Cards

For wild cards, you want to use them as you get them to get your first card to level 13 (remember, you want to use a book to get it to 14). The same is true for getting all the cards in your deck to 13, but, when it comes to the timming for moving from 12 to 13, wait until you have a book so you don't accumulate cards above the minimum needed to reach 13, otherwise, using a book will waste a few cards.  After getting a card or 2 of that rarity to level 14, you'll want to divide up your cards using the 60 20 20 rule. Use most of your cards to get your primary deck to 14, but some for clan wars cards and some for all cards with a focus on reaching where you need for card mastery. Eventually you'll level so many cards up that you'll end up focused just on card mastery cards and you'll be leveling cards up to 14 just for level 14 mastery rewards, and then, you'll try to get every card to level 14. After that, you'll trade in wild cards for eilite wild cards and try to get all your cards to level 15.

Cards only to use when high level

Some cards are worthless if they are under leveled. What does that mean? When you reach 5,000 trophies, there is a maximum card level you can use for the early ranks of the ladder. At first, cards and towers are capped at level 11. It moves up to 12, 13, 14, and 15 as you move up the ladder. Underleveled cards are cards under the max level.  Trophy road also has a certain general tower level that most cards are at a certain trophy count. It's possible to have over leveled cards for trophy road. These are cards higher than the typical level at that trophy level.

Generally speaking, most cards will work about the same as long as they are within one level of where they should be. For example level 11 arrows will kill level 12 archers, bombers, and firecrackers. However, at 2 levels under, many cards are worthless. For example, arrows 2 levels down will not kill archers, bombers, or firecrackers. Not all cards are equal and some are more hurt from being under level than others. Likewise, these very same cards tend to be most helped by being over level too.

Cards where levels matter the most are tanks. Cards that are designed to take damage and protect other cards, as well as doing damage themselves really need to be at or above level. Before explaining specifics, let's youse a hypothetical example of war ships. Let's imagine you have a battleship fighting another battleship and both imaginary ships have 100 hitpoints and do 10 damage. Let's imagine each level increases it by 10 percent. At the same level both ships would destroy eachother at the same time. Now, let's imagine one has 1 level higher 110 hps and 11 damage. In 10 hits it would destory the other ship and have 10 hps left. Let's imagine a 2 level difference. it would have 121 hps and 12.1 damage. This time it destorys the other ship in 9 hits and has 31 hps left. with me so far?

Ok, so now, let's imagine there are the battles ships mentioned before and they are each supported by smaller destoryers who only get attacked after the battleships are destoryed and those destoryers have 20 hps and do 5 damage each.  So, plus 2 levels for one of them would be 24 hps and about 5 damage. So, let's imagine that both navies can upgrade one of their ships to level 12. One navy decides to upgrade the battleship and the other upgrades one of the support ships. The first navy would have 121 hps for it's main battleship that would do about 12 damage and the other navy would have 100 and 10. The first navy would have both support ships do 5 damage and have 20 hps, the second would have 1 ship like that and the other would do 6 damage with 22 hps.  let's say they fight. The first fleet would do 12 + 5 + 5 damage 22 and the second would do 10 + 6 + 5, 21, The first battleship would have 121 hps and the 2nd 100. The 2nd navy's battleship would eventually be destoryed after 5 attacks and the first battleship would have 10 hps left. The next attack would destory the battleship and the upgraded destoryer for the other navy. 2 attacks later and the final ship for the second navy is destoryed, while the first navy loses 1 destoryer and keeps a completely undamaged destoryer alive.  Simply put, the battleship is better to upgrade than the destoryer.

Well, in Clash Royale the tanks that do damage and are put in front to soak up damage are the most important to upgrade first and be high level. 

These tend to also be the more expensive cards. Cards like Giant Skeleton, Megaknight, PEKKA, and other cards with a lot of hitpoints and a lot of damage are the best to upgrade. It costs the name amount of money and same number of cards to upgrade a 6 elixir card as a 1 elixir card. NEVER upgrade your firespirt or skelotons to level 14 while leaving a 5 plus exlixir card under leveled.  Spells can be useless under leveled too much, but they only do damage, they don't tank.  Cards that hide behind other card need enough life to survive spells, but cards in front of other cards need the health even more. 

So, bottom line, never, never, never use a card over 5 elixir that's low level. Higher elixir cards are only usefully when they are high enough level to do their job and the reality is that a pekka that's under leveled isn't usefull and is a waste of elixir. On the other hand, when over leveled some of these cards can be very strong. This is what makes an evo knight so strong if leveled up quickly.

Some cheap cards are still useless underlevel too. Spells usually need to be within 1 level to work right. Wall breakers and other win conditions are a problem when under leveled. Generally speaking, it's card to win down  by 2 or more levels. That's not the same thing as impossible, and this is where our next second comes in handy.

Cards usefull under level

Some cards manage to be usefully 1, 2 or even 10 levels too low. Of course, more than 1 level down still makes them less usefully, but they have value where most cards don't. These tend to be special cards and spells that focus on the card effects and not damage. Here are some prime examples:
 In general, you can get away with spells being 1 level under other cards and it usually is ok. It's not ideal, but they only do damage and can usually kill what they can kill one level under.


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