Heroes Update Released

Here are supercells release notes for the update which has just being released.

Heroes!
✔ Introducing Clash of Clans HEROES: The Barbarian King & The Archer Queen!
✔ Heroes are immortal! Unlike other troops, they will not perish in combat. If they are injured, they can simply sleep it off

Dark Elixir
✔ New rare resource: discover Dark Elixir, formed over aeons from fossilized Black Dragon bones!
✔ Use Dark Elixir to recruit Heroes and upgrade their abilities
✔ Build a Dark Elixir Storage on Town Hall level 7 and take the precious resource from other players
✔ Dig deeper: Dark Elixir Drills unlocked on Town Hall level 8

Cool New defences
✔ Two new X-Bow upgrade levels for maximum firepower
✔ You can now build two X-Bows on Town Hall level 9
✔ Two new wall upgrade levels: "Spikes of Pain" and "Flaming Magma"

Know your clan members
✔ Find out who are the most valuable members of your clan! Clan members now get a troop donation score (counted as Clan Castle housing space filled).
✔ Also, the "Friend in Need" achievement now counts donated troops in terms of Clan Castle housing space filled

Balance modifications & bug fixes
✔ Stockpile more Gold and Elixir! New storages added to Town Hall level 9
✔ Barracks level 8 upgrade cost reduced by 30%
✔ X-Bow range decreased to 11 tiles in Air & Ground mode
✔ X-Bow ammo capacity decreased by 25%
✔ X-Bow loading cost displayed in the info screen
✔ The Winter is over! Santa Spell and Unpleasent Present removed. And it has stopped snowing!
✔ You can now tap and hold the Create Spell button to queue spell production✔ Added new limits for the clan trophy requirments. 3000 is the new maximum.

In my previous post I said that you need a town hall level 7 for the dark elixir drill, you actually need a level 8 Town Hall but can buy the storage at level 7 and steal dark elixir.Level 9 wall is 1million and level 10 wall is 3 million which is a ridiculous amount of gold

There is also an animation for researching in the laboratory which is a purple glow coming from the building.

No new achievements or single player goblin missions which is disappointing.

Matchmaking is still based on trophy counts which is good for farming although maybe is technically unfair.

I imagine the game will be hard to play unless you are buying gems due to the cost and the waiting time for the new items (most of which are only unlockable at Town Hall level 9) I'm currently level 7, playing through the game at a slow pace and trying not to buy any gems so the update hasn't really affected me yet. Although, when looking around at other peoples bases to check out the updated items I spotted this on the base of a player who was at the time the number 5 top rated played on the leaderboard and is less than impressed by the update:
 


Although having checked back he seems to have rebuilt his base again...