Join a clan.  You will get enough gold from the clan (with your help) reaching checkpoints in clan events to enable you to have enough shields always to be able to put up a new shield immediately after dropping one in order to make an attack.

Don;t join an open clan with a chief who has not been online for monthe and years.  Look for one which speaks your language, requires an application to join and where the chief and the elders have all been online within the last 12 hours.

Another very good source of gold is the completion of achievements.  Look at this site to see which ones exist

https://vikings.help/en/resources/achievements/

It helps to have a balanced sense of what it is to be destroyed.  What you mean by that is to lose your accesible stock of resources and your troops (to be zeroed).

Well, no one likes that but the fact is that an awful lot is NOT destroyed.  Your buildings are untouched.  Your hero and shaman are still there and have all their skills and equipment.  Your knowledge remains.

This is everything you have worked at to develop.

No doubt it will take a while to retrain an army.  But troops in the game are totally dispensible.  If you are keeping millions (or billions) of troops unused and unhurt you are playing in an extremely dull way.

As for rss, well they can be a bit scarse ar first but later you will have billions and the test is not to acquire them but to find ways to put them to use.  And if you join a clan it will happily get you passed the early stage providing as many rss as you can possibly need - it helps the clan for you to develop fast and it is one excellent way to put all that surplus to good use.

I agree that joining a good Clan is paramont for the enjoyment of the game. Will help in more waays then there are to describe. Knowledge and help from Clanmates has NO peer in this game, ESPECIALLY at first. Depending on your stage of the game you really shouldn't be attacking at all imo. Wait a bit, build up and get strong THEN start attacking.

Just in the past day, 3 of my clan members including myself have lost a 3 day shield way before it's time was up. We even had one member who took screen shots of the time the shield went up and the time she was attacked. Plarium did not accept the screenshots as evadance and ruled against her. I have spent a lot of money on this game over the year i have played. I strongly reccomend not even starting this game. You will get hooked and spend a small fortune on it. And when errors or glitches happen, plarium will NOT support you.

We DO hear a lot about the shields dropping early. ALWAYS its the 3 day ones. Wonder if thats a glitch that either can't be fixed or too time consuming for them to bother with. But search through the forum, many many many complaints about this. Always 3 day shield too. I don't even use my 3 day shields now, just the 8 hour and week ones. If you do many of the daily/weekly/monthly Tasks you'll be breaking that shield before 3 days are up anyway due to the "Successfully attack (insert number) Towns". 

My advice on shielding, do NOT use 3 day ones and train yourself to check that shield every day at least once. 

Hello Jarls! If you have any technical issues, please forward your request to our support specialists through the "Ask a question" button on the home page of the Guide: https://support-portal.plarium.com/en/vikings-web/faq. 

Have a great day!