Obstacles

In Clash of Clans, you may not realize it but the obstacles that pop up around your base are very important assets to your progress in the game. Removing the obstacles often provides you with gems which you can save up in order to buy all the builder huts that you need. And if you already have all the huts, you can gem barracks and troops as you need them which is extremely helpful when the clan war is running out of time, or the loot is plentiful in raids.

Obstacles no longer have a use in Clash of Clans defenses, it used to be that attackers could not place their troops on top of obstacles in the opponents base, therefore they were great for funneling troops and getting people to place troops exactly where you want them to. HOWEVER, obstacles are not as useless as you might think. If you leave the skeleton tombstones that pop up around your base when troops die then you can catch opponents completely off-guard with bombs, traps etc. You can even change your base around in order to get tombs in specific spots so it looks like a big bomb is blown up on a particular side of your base, thus tempting the opponent to attack from that side and giving you a huge advantage on defense.

As tempting as it may be to collect the tiny bit of loot that you get from the tombstones that appear in your village, I highly recommend that instead you use these to your own strategic advantage. Obviously once your base is full of tombs you'll have to gather them up, but when there is only a couple sitting there doing nothing and going nowhere you should try and use them to your advantage.

A lot of people also choose to keep the seasonal obstacles because Clash of Clans changes them every year and it proves how long you have been playing the game. This is a personal choice (I have my Christmas trees from last year) but I am just saying...free loot is free loot, plus there will be more random obstacles for years to come.