What to do with excess gold/elixir in the early game?

Question

I started playing only a few days ago and still have about a day's worth of the newbie shield. I concentrated on upgrading my income while only upgrading my town hall if I absolutely had to. Since I'm not spending any money for gems, I currently have two builders.

I'm finding, now, that I'm generating more resources than I can hold and have lost some resources from a collector being full a time or two. Since my 2 builders are constantly upgrading something, it's difficult to sink excess resources into something productive (especially gold).

Since I'm at a level 3 town hall, the laboratory was a huge help for sinking excess elixir. What are the other constructive, builder-less things I could do with excess elixir/gold while preserving my shield?

Note: I'm open to changing tactics if I can more effectively manage the resources I'm generating.

Answer 1

Walls are certainly a way to burn excess gold - as you get to 3 and 4 builders, it can be a good idea to leave one builder idle all the time to upgrade walls whenever you have spare resources from raiding sessions. Later, walls will also be upgradeable using elixir, but for your early-game question it's specifically gold.

It's also a good idea to use excess elixir to clear objects from your land - clearing logs, bushes, etc, has a chance to give you gems, and it's one of the rare ways you get free gems in the game. If too many objects accumulate, they'll stop spawning which means you're missing chances at gems.

Also, you can use excess elixir to raid in the single player campaign. Getting certain tiers of stars in the campaign grants you additional gems from achievements.

Finally, in the early game, don't worry too much about wasting a bit of gold or elixir. As you progress a couple of thousand gold will be completely meaningless. If you have enough resources to keep your builders busy, that's 90% of what progression in the game is about.

Answer 2

If you have excess gold, you must not be upgrading your walls. Walls are very important throughout the game and it takes a while to finish walls, seeing as level 11 walls cost a cool 4 million. Focus on your defenses and resource buildings first, and then dump the remaining resources into walls. That way, you should never have any excess resources (unless, of course, you are waiting for your town hall to finish).