Little Bit Of Everything

Background:

It takes approximately 150 days or so to get a Lv 30 Archer Queen at TH9. I've found a way to make this grind a bit more enjoyable for me personally, and wrote a guide on it.

The Strategy:

Have an effective set-up to protect DE
A good attack strategy for farming DE
Allow good timetable to max out walls
Max out Queen first, and remaining time-table for maxing King is compatible with remaining building upgrades

I'm assuming all buildings are TH8 maxed levels. If this is not the case, I highly advise you to max out buildings and carry over 6M gold and elixir, and 20-40K DE into TH9.

Phase 1:

Complete the initial priority upgrades:

Build Archer Queen Altar
New Walls
Laboratory (See Laboratory Upgrade Priority section below for upgrade sequence)
Spell Factory
X Bow x2
Clan Castle
New Buildings

Hopefully during the same time, you are keeping up with laboratory upgrades.

Summary: Use the DE you carry over from TH8 to immediately get your Archer Queen (Optional is doing the first upgrade if you managed to bring over 40K+ DE). You want Laboratory upgraded ASAP to continue with troop upgrades. Spell Factory as well will be a boost to your attacking strategy with one extra spell. Main army comp for farming during this Phase will be Barch. I personally like having the CC upgraded early, as I like to spam troop requests (you can check out a "REQ N GO" clan to get troops while farming). You want to get all of the new buildings ASAP as they don't take long to build, and will help you on defense.

Recommended lay-out: Kraken's Crevice by TheJ

http://forum.supercell.net/showthread.php/433830-Kraken-s-Crevice-A-Pre-X-Bow-and-X-Bow-Upgrading-Farming-Base

Laboratory Upgrade Priority:

Barbarians - Having these and Archers at lv 6 for Phase 1 and 2 will help you immensely
Archers - See above
Balloons - Lv 6 Balloons is a vital part of the army comp used to farm DE
Lavahound - Lv 2 hounds are crucial to getting 3 star attacks without use of Archer Queen
Everything else.

Phase 2:

Xbows to lv 3
Teslas to lv 7
Dark Elixir Drills to lv 6
Army Camps to lv 7
One Dark Barrack to lv 6 (optional both barracks)
Finish Skull Walls upgrade

Summary: The xbows and teslas are the key defenses I use in my DE farming set up, and with these at the highest possible TH9 levels, even with lower level other defenses, I can still protect my DE extremely well. I opted to finish Elixir upgrades first so that excess elixir I get later on can be used on Wall upgrades.

Phase 3 (The Grind):

Change defensive layout to this by RandyChaps:

For my own base, I made some slight alterations regarding the surrounding defenses and buildings, but keep the center core the same. I found this is an extremely good set up, to protect your DE. Basic premise of the layout forces attacking troops to destroy everything around the borders before targeting the Center.

For remaining wall upgrades you should prioritize the inner ring, and then the outer ring, and then the remaining walls in the inner compartment.

Against air troops, the air mines do not target lavahounds because of the distance from air defenses, but if any balloons or minions goes inside the core, the mines will be triggered.

This layout is extremely good for defending DE but bad at protecting other resources (although its not awful. Try to get some small gold upgrades one if you manage to save up; otherwise, dump everything you can into walls.

Key points to remember:

Use the suggested attack strategy (detailed in a separate section) I get between 10-20K DE a day, while only attacking once every 1-2 hours.
Use all DE on Queen upgrades (do not spend any on the King unless you are absolutely leaking DE)
Spend all elixirs on wall upgrades (I try to get Lavas if possible since it's harder to store 3M of a resources; otherwise, get your Leggos upgrades)
If you manage to save enough Gold, try to upgrade your air defenses, wizard towers, mortars one by one. Every now and then, if you are planning on playing for a long time, you can switch farming methods, stay online and try to save up for the bigger upgrades. Basically spend your excess resources on walls so you don't get looted.

DE Farming Strategy:

20 Balloons (lv 6), 60 Minions (higher the better), 4 Rage Spells.

The set up and base selection:

Keep all 4 barracks cooking balloons, spell factory producing rages, and for each cycle queue up 60 minions total.
You don't necessarily need to use rage spells for every attack
Only go for bases with 1.5K+ DE
Look for "rich" TH8 with a lot of loot (1K DE, 200K/200K Gold and Elixir)
Abandoned bases or bases with DE near the border are very easy to hit

The release:

Lure CC, Use King or your own CC troops to kill. Don't spend too many minions.
Target Wizard Towers > AD. It takes a decent amount of time for 1 AD to take out a swarm of minions, but only 2-3 shots for a Wizard Tower.
Use rage spells if needed

Probably should try to get a hands on approach to learn the limits of this attack. You will get better with practice and get to know when rage spells are needed.

General rule of thumb: This set up with only 1-2 rage spells can 100% a maxed TH8.

Because of the long training time, I don't need to play that often, and can usually get 10-20K DE per day.

Phase 4 (Everything Else):

So if you have reached this point, you obtained your lv 30 Queen! Huge congrats! It took me about 7 months to get my Queen to lv 30. I'm sure there is a similar strategy I can make for TH 10. Please feel free to check out my additional notes on warring without using a queen.

Clan Wars Guide Without A Queen: coming soon

Archer Queen Upgrade Time Table: charts and graphs coming soon. You generally farm 10-20K DE per day, after lv15, it takes 7 days to finish each upgrade, so you are getting 70-140K DE. With 2 lv6 drills, you will get around 30K in this time frame, but we also have to factor in DE costs for lab upgrades. If you plan everything well, you should be able to get enough DE for the next upgrade as soon as your current upgrade finishes.