Obstacles
Obstacles are natural objects—trees, logs, rocks, and related foliage—that spawn randomly within your village. New villages typically begin with approximately forty obstacles. These can be cleared for a modest Gold or Elixir cost to free buildable space.
Summary
- Obstacles occupy buildable tiles and can prevent the placement of Buildings.
- While bases can be designed around existing obstacles, this becomes impractical at higher progression levels. Players typically remove an obstacle, relocate it with a Shovel of Obstacles, or stash it via Village Edit Mode.
- Using a Shovel of Obstacles makes the item permanently movable and eligible for stashing; it can still be removed later for standard rewards, with no extra compensation for having used a shovel.
- Queued obstacle removal can be canceled before completion, refunding 100% of resources (unlike the usual 50% refund on most upgrades).
- A village can contain a maximum of 45 obstacles; once reached, regular obstacles stop spawning until space is cleared.
- Gem Boxes and event-themed obstacles ignore this limit and may spawn even above the cap; obstacles stashed in Village Edit Mode still count toward the limit.
- The “Nice and Tidy” achievement grants Experience and Gems for removing obstacles.
- Troops can be deployed beside and, in some cases, directly on top of obstacles.
- Since the Halloween 2014 update, most obstacle removal times were reduced; Mushrooms are excluded.
Undecorated Obstacles
- Each obstacle that is removed can yield anywhere from 0 to 6 Gems.
- There are two distinct cycles that govern the number of Gems awarded upon the removal of obstacles in your Home Village.These cycles run concurrently and are independent of each other, including those associated with Obstacles in the Builder Base. Therefore, removing an obstacle will only advance one of the cycles listed below, without affecting the progression of the other cycle.
- Cycle 1: Applies to original obstacles in the Home Village (those that appeared when you first created your Home Village). The rewards for this cycle are 4, 5, or 6 Gems. The cycle pattern is as follows: 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 3, 1, 0, 2, 0, 0.
- Cycle 2: Applies to spawned obstacles in the Home Village. When you remove these obstacles, the reward is governed by the following pattern: 6, 0, 4, 5, 1, 3, 2, 0, 0, 5, 1, 0, 3, 4, 0.
- On average, each obstacle cleared yields 2 Gems. Please note that this pattern does not include the 25 Gems granted from the Gem Box.
Vegetation:
- Vegetation respawns at a rate of one item every eight hours, unless all available spaces in the village are occupied or the 45-obstacle limit has been reached.
- With the exception of the Gem Box, an obstacle will only spawn if there is a minimum 1-tile buffer zone between the spawn space and any other building or obstacle.
- Given the respawn rate of vegetation and the potential for Gems to be obtained upon its removal, regularly clearing vegetation can provide an unlimited, though occasionally slow, source of Gems.
| Obstacle | Size | Removal Cost | Removal Time | Experience Gained | Respawn Weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Mushroom | 2x2 | 100  | 10s | 3  | 10% |
 Bush | 2x2 | 250 | 10s | 3 | 20% |
 Trunk 1 | 2x2 | 1,000 | 10s | 3 | 10% |
 Trunk 2 | 2x2 | 1,000 | 10s | 3 | 10% |
 Fallen Trunk | 2x2 | 1,000 | 10s | 3 | 20% |
 Small Tree | 2x2 | 2,000 | 10s | 3 | 20% |
 Medium Tree | 3x3 | 7,500 | 15s | 3 | 5% |
 Large Tree | 3x3 | 10,000 | 15s | 3 | 5% |