The Boom Beach gameplay experience varies in characteristics from other Supercell labels. The most noticeable bit being the lone builder assigned to your base (technically it’s more than one builder, since it’s the village folks who pitch in to upgrade the buildings, but who’s counting). This forces the free-to-play players to bear the extremely agonising waiting period of their upgrades to finish. Although one can expedite the construction speed by spending gems, the scarcity of gems nullifies the viability of the process for extended periods of time.
To help navigate around this limitation, Supercell introduced the option to hire a new builder for multiple simultaneous upgrades in December 2016. Noticed how I used “hire” instead of “buying”. The said extra builder is leashed on a monthly subscription plan, and stays with you only if the subscription is renewed every month. The subscription plan goes for $2.99 a month (might vary geographically) and you are limited to only one extra set of builders at a time.
How to get the extra builder?
In order to get the extra builder, follow the following steps:
Step 1. Select the ‘Shop’ menu on the lower left side of your screen. This should be just next to the ‘Constructions’ menu.
Step 2. Select the extra builders plan and purchase it. It should be adjacent to the instant training subscription offer.
As mentioned before, the gameplay strategy for builders in Boom Beach is inherently different from other Supercell labels like say Clash of Clans. While Clash of Clan chooses to give ownership of multiple builders to the players in exchange of gems, which inturn are often bought in exchange of real money. Boom beach simply chooses to go with a different approach, as the amount of gems required would be too much to own a builder permanently, and would therefore be next to impossible to buy one.
The current builder hire rate goes at around $3 a month. Which would roughly buy you 300 diamonds in Boom Beach. So if a player were to buy a builder permanently in exchange for diamonds, the cost would jump to thousands if not tens of thousands.
It must also be noted that the viability and practicality of a second builder goes down as you progress through ranks. As you reach newer tiers, the cost of each upgrade goes up substantially, and so does the demand more resource accumulation. Testimonies of players have been unfavourable for a second builder at higher ranks, as it becomes harder to keep up with the demand for resources needed to keep both the builders occupied.
The second builder, again, is not needed as much for the bases in lower levels, as the average time needed to finish up upgrades are measured in minutes. This negates the need for a second builder in those ranks. Ideally the players in intermediate ranks would benefit the most from such a subscription based builder service. As both the average upgrade time and the average upgrade cost, both fall favorably for them.
