Is a Second Lab Researcher Coming to Clash of Clans

> Quick answer: It's being looked at, not announced. The team said they want to move pets into the laboratory and add a second researcher, so you could run two upgrades at once. That came out of an interview, so treat it as direction rather than a date.

Here's the part almost nobody mentions. A second researcher already exists in the game today. The Goblin Researcher does exactly this job, for gems, whenever he's available.

So the real change wouldn't be the concept. It would be making it free and permanent.

Worth being precise, because the loose version of this is already spreading.

The laboratory upgrades troops, spells and siege machines. That's the full list. It unlocks at Town Hall 3, which makes it one of the first buildings you ever touch.

Heroes and pets cannot be upgraded there. Pets live in the Pet House, which arrives at Town Hall 14 and handles their upgrades on its own timer.

So the claim you may have read, that pets currently compete with troops for a lab slot, is wrong. They run in parallel already, in two different buildings.

I read the building pages to confirm that before writing, because I'd seen it stated the other way round twice this week.

One research at a time is the actual rule, and it's the whole bottleneck. You cannot cancel a research once it starts either. You can only finish it early with gems or the right book.

The Goblin Researcher is the bit that changes how you should read the roadmap talk.

When he's available, he lets a second research run at the same time as your first. It costs gems. That's the trade.

He isn't permanent and he isn't always there, which is why most players think of him as an event thing rather than a feature. Our Goblin Researcher guide covers when he shows up and whether the gems are worth it.

The point for today is simpler. Supercell has already built and shipped the mechanic. Two concurrent researches works, it's tested, and it doesn't break the game.

That makes a permanent version far more likely than a feature they'd have to design from nothing. It also tells you what the sticking point is. Not the code. The economy.

This is where it gets interesting, and where I'd push back a little on the framing.

If pets move into the laboratory and you get a second researcher, the stated result is that you could run a troop and a pet together, exactly as you can today across two buildings. Or two troops, which you can't.

So for a Town Hall 14 or higher account, the honest gain is one extra troop research slot, not two. You already had the pet one.

That's still significant. The lab queue is the longest queue on a maxed account, and troop research routinely runs past two weeks per level at the top.

But for anyone below Town Hall 14, who has no Pet House at all, it's a straight doubling of research throughput. That's an enormous change for a mid game account, and nobody's talking about it that way.

The risk is the obvious one. If research gets twice as fast, costs go up somewhere to compensate. Nothing has been said about that either way.

Two researchers isn't a hard feature to build. Supercell has shipped it. So why isn't it permanent yet?

Because research time is a pacing tool, not an inconvenience. It's one of the few things holding a maxed account back once builders and gold stop mattering.

Double the throughput and every account finishes its army a season earlier. That pulls a lot of players to the end of the content faster, and the end of the content is where people quit.

So the question they're solving isn't whether players want it. Obviously they do. It's what replaces the pacing once it's gone.

That's also why I'd expect a cost to arrive with it if it ships. Higher elixir prices, or the second slot gated behind a building upgrade, or both.

Worth remembering when you read the excited version of this on the forums. A free second researcher with no strings attached would be the most generous change the game has made in years, and the game doesn't usually work that way.

Ask any long term player what actually holds their account back and you'll rarely hear defences.

Builders can be bought. There are six of them, plus the Builder Apprentice, and hammers skip whole upgrades outright.

The laboratory has one researcher, no equivalent of a sixth builder, and books that only finish the thing already running.

So a base can look maxed and still lose wars, because the army inside it is two levels behind. That's the gap this change is aimed at, and it's why the community keeps raising it.

I counted the ways to speed up research and there are three. Gems, the right book, or the Goblin Researcher when he's around. Compare that to the number of ways to speed up building.

If the lab is your bottleneck, magic items are the only lever you fully control today. They're also the ones most players waste.

A Book of Fighting finishes a troop or a siege machine. A Book of Spells finishes a spell. A Book of Everything covers any of them, which makes it the most valuable of the three by a wide margin.

None of them start a research. They finish the one already running. So the book is worth exactly the time remaining on that upgrade, nothing more.

That single fact should change how you use them. Burning a book on a spell with four days left is throwing away most of its value. Holding it for a top level troop research at twelve days is getting three times the same book.

The instinct to clear the thing that's annoying you is the expensive one. Point books at the biggest timer on the screen, not the upgrade you want most.

And start the long research first, then book it. Starting a 12 day research and immediately finishing it with a book is the correct order, not a trick.

Nothing dramatic. This isn't a reason to change your plan.

Keep the lab running every single day. An idle laboratory is the most expensive mistake in the game and it's invisible, because nothing on your base looks wrong.

Save books of fighting for the longest research, not the one that annoys you most. A book saves the same amount whatever you point it at, so point it at the biggest number.

If the Goblin Researcher appears and you're sitting on gems with two long researches queued, that's a reasonable spend. It's the one case where buying time actually buys progress.

And watch Supercell's own blog rather than the forums for this one. Interview talk moves fast and gets distorted faster. Our Town Hall 19 roundup tracks what's been genuinely confirmed, and you can copy current layouts from the base browser while you wait.

One habit worth building while the lab is still a single slot. Queue the next research the moment the current one finishes, even if it isn't the one you'd have picked. An hour of idle lab is an hour you never get back, and you can always let a cheap research run overnight while you decide on the expensive one.

I've lost more progress to an empty laboratory than to any bad upgrade choice. The wrong research still moves you forward. No research moves nothing.