How The Personal Break System Works

After the Town Hall 11 Update (December 2015), the Personal Break System has changed a lot and I have received lots of questions about this. Don’t worry then, I will help you out!

Clash of Clans Take a Break

In Clash of Clans, you have 4 hours for playing until get forced onto a Personal Break (PB). During a 6-minute PB, you have to give other players a chance to attack your village.

  • When your village gets any shield, your PB Timer will be reset.
  • Staying offline without Shield and Village Guard for 15 minutes will reset your timer.
  • You can buy 2-hour Village Guard with 10 Gems to extend your PB timer.
  • The Village Guard is always considered your online time.

Note:

  • During the 6-minute PB, If you don’t get attacked or get attacked but don’t get any shield, you will have another 30 minutes of playing time along with the Village Guard.
  • After 30 minutes, you will be forced onto another 6-minute PB, during this period, If you don’t get any shield, you will receive another 30 minutes of playing time + Village Guard.
  • Again, after 30 minutes, you will be kicked for the third Personal Break but this is the last time. Regardless of If you get a shield or not, your PM timber will be reset and get a Village Guard depending on your current league.

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160 COMMENTS

  1. The pbt timer is glitchy. I always leave my game when my troops are training giving people a chance to attack, rather then this time away counting as my off time, I still get the message that I have to leave the game. If supercell doesn’t want people to play, they should just shut down now or fix this problem with the timer.

      • gotta ask the question “is it my fault that I am not attacked during the 6 minute time out” and the answer is absolutely not. Therefore why on Earth do they feel the need to kick me twice more before letting me play? There seems to be a determination to offer my hard earned resource to others at any cost even if that cost is people leaving this game hand over fist because of the ridiculous new rules.
        Sort it out SuperCell, You are making this game more and more unplayable.

        • Couldnt agree more! I can not see any other reason than possibly making it harder for people that stay online too much, but i feel more like they want to force us to get stuck and work harder (longer time playing) for the upgrades (resources) 🙁

          Do they want us to play or not ???

          • IMHO no… i bet they are on a pinch right now :>
            pbt are shit, if my “deduction” is right.
            1. they are run out of money i mean supercell, because its online game, and they need server, and again server maintenance aren’t cheap
            (including ISP bill every month,etc) even it’s just mobile game just look the stats how many people playing dis,and their main profit are just ppl buy gems.

            2. people hate ads, back to number 1

            soooo to fix this i believe the “pbt” are the solution.
            pretty much that my thinking, forgive my bad english sir.

        • i agree, wtf i lost almost 1 million resource in a day! and my th level is 7, super cell now being unbelieveable greed really, think why the hell the shield system now are f**kin ridingculously decreasing not gone in 1 attack and don’t forget guard ststem, oh you want play 6 hours like before huh? buy the 2 hours guard!
          y u no why?it’s because f**K you give me money!
          dis game now reminds me a lot to WoW….well f**k…..

        • Or, when you finally got raided, lost like 300k of each and got that shield, still you decide to make an attack, loose 4H, get “Client and Server Out of Sync” You paid the cost of the attack, and lost 4H Shield and got no attack, thats just awsome! And thats me playing from a wired Computer with 250Mbit fibre connection… makes me think the “out of sync” was caused on purpuse …

  2. This whole thing honestly is too complicating. Supercell is trying to get so many players to be competitive but it’s just not the style of most players. They think everyone is hardcore trophy pushers who try to keep their accounts on 24/7. This is just so bothersome for normal players who are just honestly trying to farm a little. Why is it someones fault if no one attacks them. I just don’t get it.

  4. OT: elow Potter, can u make a post about list of bugs/glitches/errors for this new updates?.. so that many of us will be aware and maybe other players can share their experiences.. just a suggestion… ^_^

  5. I really wish there was a definition of what “awhile” meant for staying offline. I think I was on for maybe an hour or so, went offline for at least an hour, and come back and suddenly I’m getting PBT messages. It’s almost like the game considers you online even if it’s just cached in the background but not really running.

  11. This is very user-unfriendly. I just want to log on, hang out with my nephews, and attack during ads on the TV.
    I don’t want surprise kicks for random amounts of time. I’d need a separate clock app just to keep track of them (when is The Kick coming ? When can I log back in ?), and that’d only solve the “suprise !” issue, not the “let’s make a game users aren’t allowed to play” issue.

  12. everyone please rate clash of clans on Apple App Store and on Google play store. I wrote a review on both because I have 2 accounts. I changed my ratings to 1 star. The people are speaking up, clash of clans is now down to 3.5 stars and #40 in Canada for free apps, #52 in US, and #72 in a European App Store. This should send a clear message to Supercell.

  13. Great in-depth explanation of the PBT system.

    I am here to tell everyone who us frustrated with it , to relax. Supercell will not exist without players and it does everything for the player’s sake.
    The PBT was changed to make more resources available to clashers everywhere.
    Now imagine i’m playing 6 hrs straight, which I actually did before the update 😉 , I would push trophies or
    Wait for my builders to finish his work and dump all those resources into walls and upgrades. The new street makes a bit hard to stay online for a long time and hence makes it easier for all the players to find more loot which instead contributed to the economy.
    Don’t get frustrated you’ll get used to the changes eventually and don’t lose hope. Keep clashing 🙂

    • Here is my problem with pbt. I was given my first break attacked and lost 1388 dark elixir, let back on with 15min guard. Kicked off again and lost 2887 dark elixir, let back on with 15min guard. Kicked off 3rd time, lost 2202 dark elixir and finally received a shield. All my builders are occupied and all i could do is watch 6477 dark elixir dissappear! I have copied Ash’s th10 farming layout and see what happens. I’m personally disappointed in the new system. Six hours was not too long. You were kicked at that point and let back on after being attacked regardless of successful attack or not.

  14. Please tell supercell, that all of this change make us frustated and no longer have fun with this game, many of my friend leave this game because of those all stupid change, used to we play this game to have fun, not to get frustated

  15. they say the loots will be more but i dont see this specially at th9 i m getting way less loot with barch attacks n this PBT is just beyond ridiculous… all this is done to ask people 2 invest more money into the game coz now u cant sustain high resources for long… yes they did introduced th11 but it did nothing for majority of the players except make it more unplayable…

    • idk about you but i have been getting more loot after the update with just doing barch attacks. ive hitting villages and finding many with 300k-500k in gold and elixer. ive found some in the 600k-700k and barch attaked them and have gotten about 400k-500k from them. Im also a th9 and since this update ive been able to speed up on building my walls faster, troops faster, archer queen and defense. Only thing that is still a drag is just the wait time for them to go up another level but thats about it.

  17. Here is my problem with pbt. I was given my first break attacked and lost 1388 dark elixir, let back on with 15min guard. Kicked off again and lost 2887 dark elixir, let back on with 15min guard. Kicked off 3rd time, lost 2202 dark elixir and finally received a shield. All my builders are occupied and all i could do is watch 6477 dark elixir dissappear! I have copied Ash’s th10 farming layout and see what happens. I’m personally disappointed in the new system. Six hours was not too long. You were kicked at that point and let back on after being attacked regardless of successful attack or not.

    • THey shoudln’t be able to get to your Dark Elixer without destroying 30% of your base. Get your DE in the centre with your TH and it will stop this happening. I either get a sheild and they steal a little gold/elix or get 100%ed, lose DE but gain a 16 hour sheild.
      Make sure they have to get through a lot of your outer buildings to get to your loot. Even having your Builder huts inside can help 🙂

  19. This would be an issue when clan war is about to end and you’ve been staying online to avoid your clan troops being used while defending.

    Why SC need to make it so complicated? I have stayed offline for 6 minutes and if I don’t get attacked that’s should not be my problem!

      • I just had a thought Will, if they were worried about people staying online indefinitely due to bots, then they could have simply implemented a kind of check every couple of hours by asking people to answer a question or something else that requires an actual human. Another thing they could have implemented was a simple time tax. Every hour past six hours would have cost you some resource or opened up certain vulnerabilities like allowing your storage containers to change color thus alerting people that they were not shielded and could be zapped. There were so many things that would have done that it makes me wonder if they lack creativity.

  21. It’s just sad that they implemented this specifically to combat botting, then lied to the community about their reasoning.. when there are way easier ways to get rid of the bots within a 2 month period of time. Just ban every player that gets over 800 “attacks won” within a 12 day period. Common sense method of getting rid of them. Instead of lying to your entire game community out of fear more people will learn about bots available, how about putting some of those math skills required for programming to use and figure out max boosted possible wins within a 9hr period of time(excessive play time to begin with) through a 2 week timespan. Stop punishing an entire community over what 5% of the community is doing.

    • Wow, very well put Floyd!
      If that was really their biggest beef, then I agree. A little statistical analysis would easily illuminate the culprits. Here is a scary thought, what if SC doesn’t care about the bots or cheating apps. I didn’t hear any of the SC people even allude to that problem. It seems like they need some designers that look at what worked in the past made improvements instead of tearing it all down. Right now I feel like they burned it down and are trying to reproduce their success on the ashes of their previous game that was extremely well rated. Their ratings are starting to tank. I wonder if the SC management will have the guts to fire some people over this when they lose money as people leave?

  22. The game has become very frustrating!! I have not been online today. I mean after all we have other things to do than being obsessed about Supercell. I have been attacked once. I try now to log in the game and modify my base and the game says that I have been playing too long and need a break!!! What is the point of all this rubbish? Opponents had 24 hours to attack me. Is it my fault that only one person did? May be we have had too much ….. from Supercell and may be it is just the time to stop wasting our time and move on to something else.

  23. Now that I have played for a while I think that cutting the personal break in half was quite extreme. Why didn’t they reduce it by an hour or an hour and a half and see how the game played? Cutting the time in half is a shitty move. And to top it off they didn’t even give us a countdown timer so we would know how much longer we had. SuperCell, y’all suck!

      • Well, right now I think they totally suck as well. I think I may go online and negatively rate them. My trophy count has totally stalled at about 3130-3150. What they did is really stupid because after a 15h 30min shield break I only get to raid for 3 hours and then I get pummeled again for another 15h shield. They are actually making me play less considering that I have to use very powerful armies just to break even on my trophy count.

        Hey, didn’t they already announce what the “Christmas” update would be? It is going to be an hour more added to personal break time, slightly longer village guard times, a personal break timer, and they are nerfing the larrys. The only thing other than that is that there is going to be a one gem boost for the holiday update period. That was going to be it. It won’t change much of anything.

        If I were you I would raid as much as I could with the super powerful lvl 3 Bitches before SuperCell makes your larrys weak. You should push to legend. Hey, what clan are you in anyway? What is your game name?

  24. If the way described above worked, I’d have no issues with it. However, that does not appear to be how it works in game. I played for about 2 hours last night in a push to get gold for an upgrade. After that turned off iPhone for 90 minutes but did not get attacked (low resources so better targets). After 90 minutes I logged on to fill clan castles and empty collectors. I couldn’t because apparently I needed a personal break. Tried a few times and eventually got on, donated and emptied and went to bed.

    Today, logged on 4-5 times at work to donate and empty collectors but no attacks. Maybe 15-20 minutes on CoC total. Got home but couldn’t log on for 15 minutes because apparently I still needed a break. Once I logged I see that I was attacked twice today both by 1 Archer as people were dumping trophies.

    So in the last 18 or so hours, I’ve been on CoC less than 30 minutes. However, since I have low resources leading to not being attacked/picking up a shield, my break time is being enforced.

    This certainly is not fitting the model described above.

  31. 1. Too complicated
    2. I had a very small, 15 minute window to make my 2nd war attack today. I was offline for 4 hours. When I returned I couldn’t log in because of a “personal break.” I’d been offline for 4 freaking hours!

    Anyway, I wasn’t able to use my attack because my window closed before my break was too close to ending.

  37. I dont really have a problem with anything else besides the personal break crap. I mean, come on!! Havent played all day and then i get a message that says my villagers need a break? What? What the hell?! supercell cant tell me what to do. Its like they are trying to control u. I wanna just collect my loot not wait for someone else to take it from me. The only reason i redownloaded COC was b/c of updates and my cousin. Looks like ill have to delete it again :

  38. I barely even play anymore since that last horrible update and get these personal breaks when I try to log in… It says becuase I’ve gone too long without shield. Supercell really knows how to screw up a good thing.

  39. No, I dont like this. Just because Im on doesn’t mean I’m pushing for loot or trophies. Mostly is chatting and doing a raid or 2 here and there. It’s unfair if I’m not attacked. When I’m asleep I always get raided or at least attacked. Why isn’t that good enough?

  41. 4 hours of play is too long for some of you fuckers. Some of these posts blow mind reading them…….bunch of dumb asses can’t even form a correct sentence. You all need to be going over basic English instead of playing COC.

  44. well that’s my decision made for me I played for about 10 mins went out down town etc came back after about 6 hrs went to go on to take my second attack in war (with about 5 mins left ) and “personal break” so I have missed my second attack in war by 2 mins .
    Goodbye supercell I am thinking about suing you for taking money while enforcing unreasonable unwanted and without recourse of opting out actions which directly effect the sum of money spent without offering a option to leave the contract due to the enforcing of unreasonable terms which were not part of the original terms and conditions .
    and for withholding the use of the application/server while holding monies payed for the use in such application/ server while not due to maintenance or/and server downtime not caused by supercell or their isp.
    Further more I will inform my credit card company with regards to the new regulations which have been enforced and with accordance with financial credit law they could in principle sue aswell .

    have fun.

  45. I am relativly longtime clasher. My first reaction was WTF! I now that the whole update thing in coc is about getting more bucks from the gemmers and if the game will be still popular we will get another updates soon. I now that i never reach maxed up base .

  47. People are just stupid. They’ll complain when they don’t even know what a simple break is meant to do. For you retards that can’t use your brain. The break is to stop people from getting touch apps to keep them online 24/7 to avoid being attacked. So stop complaining about a 6 minute break which basically gives you a 30 minute shield and let’s you raid in that time. If you get kicked off even after you leave the game for hours. You an idiot for not closing your app properly. So blame yourself. COC is better off without you. Please just leave. A few 100 players don’t make a difference to the millions who play

  49. I personally think it’s an OKAY idea. I mean, you gotta lose some resources. If everyone’s online, then where do you get anything? Everyone would WANT something like this. SuperCell is trying to make us learn to use, and get the resources we want quick.

  53. I still don’t understand what it means. I can’t play during personal break or what? “Forces into Personal Break”, “Have to give players a chance”. Why can’t you just say that with plain English?

  54. The first warning it gave me, it instantly kicked me offline. And I had just farmed MILLIONS, and was about to buy a 2 day shield to keep me safe until I had builders free to spend the resources. It gave me NO chance to do anything, spend resources, use gems to buy a shield, nothing. Just said in red “You will be kicked shortly” and then within 2 seconds, it did it. Bullsh*t.

  57. I busted ma ass to collect 120k f dark elixer for bowler upgrade bt made 115k dark elixer den dis fuck msg … I don’t understand wat der prob is I don give a fuck abt trophies… I seriously started hating dis fuck game…

  59. i was online on Coc for like 6 hrs in row and i looted like 30k Dark elixir ….and now it shows this messege and also My clan leader told me that ” Hey Preda, can you read this message!?” and i was like it was something new and then after a short time, i got this warning>>….

  60. So much of crying over 6-18 min xD haha. I sit with clash open on my pc to donate to my clan while I am working and I totally understand why ppl need a chance at my delicious resources. I don’t understand why ppl must rate clash 1 star because of butthurt. Its a great game guys if it wasn’t why would you be so angry over having to stop playing it for a few min? hahahahahahahaha

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