- This page is about hard levels regarding completion of a level. For Hard Levels rated by the game, click here.
Many levels, especially higher ones on Candy Crush Saga are considered difficult by the majority of players.
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|---|---|---|
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| The original Level 65, once considered so hard app retention dropped by 40%. | ||
| Episode | 
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| Level type | 
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| Jelly squares |  : 65
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| Moves | 52 | |
| Target score |  : 200,000 pts
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| Blockers |  
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| Other features | None | |
| Number of candy colours |
6      
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| Number of spaces | 65 | |
| Difficulty | Nearly Impossible | |
These levels usually consume several lives, and they have a low victory ratio, usually one win for every three or more tries. Levels can be hard for many different reasons. As you navigate through the wiki, and visit episode and level pages, the level header is colour coded corresponding to the difficult rated by this community. Hard levels have red and dark colour symbolism; the hardest are rated Nearly Impossible, and a few levels are Variable, given to levels that are difficult in most cases save a favourable starting configuration.
With the recent abundance of boosters and possibly even Gold upon participating or mastering in events and watching ads should they fail a level, hard levels can be ameliorated considerably for first completions. Please note that the ratings are given assuming the player played NBU, which is still the canonical way of replaying levels.
Every level type has the potential to have hard levels. The hardest level type, in Reality are timed levels, which is now extinct because of their difficulty. It is now thought to be mixed levels. The hardest level type in Dreamworld were thought to have been candy order levels, and the easiest was thought to have been moves levels.
Most levels marked as Hard Levels have skull markers (formerly hexagons), more intense dialogues, and a deeper colour scheme; such levels are known as hexagon levels in the wiki. HTML5 features two more types of hexagon levels, called "Super Hard levels", which formerly featured a thunderstorm, and "Nightmarishly Hard levels", which formerly featured Odus. These are usually designated to the most difficult levels in a given episode and across the game, respectively. Episodes can have multiple hexagon levels for each classification. Legendary levels were introduced in 2023.
What makes a hard level?[]
At crushingcandies.com, many will raise their voice on difficult levels. This shows pre-nerfed level 102.
- Move Limit - In some levels, the move limit is deliberately very low. This means a player must be very lucky with their moves. Most of the levels in Cavity Cave are hard due to this.
- Candy Colours - A level can have up to five or (now occasionally) six colours. With six colours on the board, the candies are much more mixed up and matches are harder to make, as are special candies, making a level harder than it would be if there were fewer colours. Changing the number of colours in a level is a very powerful redesign.
- A mass redesign reduced almost all six-coloured levels to five. On the flipside, the moves count has decreased. In overall, the effect is still a massive nerf.
- Awkward Layouts - The board can sometimes take a very complicated and confusing shape, sometimes a very awkward shape, making it harder to complete the level, even with fewer candy colours. In later levels, most boards are small to the point where it's even impossible to create special candies.
- High Target Scores - Previously, in some levels, getting the non-score requirements are relatively easy, but getting the target score is the hard part. You would need a good Sugar Crush to pass the level. However, most levels rarely have this. Nowadays, you won't need to worry about the target score, as the game will boost your score if you fail to reach it.
- Blocker - Blockers can make a level hard by blocking off jellies or by stopping ingredients falling to the bottom. A blocker with many layers can make a level hard by the sheer number of hits needed. This one mainly refers to big chunks of icing, large amounts of popcorn, or thick layers of sugar chest. For instance, 2115 has an extremely hard-to-reach five-layered icing at the end of the board, stopping ingredients.
- Liquorice Swirl - The liquorice swirl is not a hard-to-break blocker itself, but it can make a level much harder if there are large amounts of it, as it blocks striped candies, which can be quite annoying.
- Candy Bomb - An abundance of candy bombs, especially those with few moves in hard to reach places, can make a level much harder by further limiting moves. Biscuit Bungalow, formerly, had been known for having levels that players will lose due to an exploding Candy Bomb.
- Chocolate Spawner - A chocolate spawner can make any level much harder, as they are unbreakable and never stop producing chocolate. This will make a level much harder especially if they are in an awkward position.
- Popcorn - The popcorn (now a Liquorice Shell) is a tough blocker that can only be damaged through Special Candies; furthermore they block their effects much like Liquorice Swirls. Some levels feature numerous popcorn squares, often requiring strategic detonation by converting them into a Colour Bomb+Colour Bomb combo.
- Candy Cane Fences and Licorice Fences - In later levels, this can encase elements like special candies, such as colour bombs, and even blockers, such as candy bombs. Since they act as a board divider, it makes a level harder because you can't match candies from one side to another. Much later, Liquorice Fences can block the effect of both striped and wrapped candies. These include levels such as 3258 and 3741.
- Aggressive Magic Mixers - They will produce blockers every 3 moves, and overtake Special Candies. Some levels even have them spawn blockers randomly. Imagine if there are a lot of blockers being created in any fashion. Some levels also rely on the elements created by Magic Mixers, and then the destruction of Magic Mixers.
- Misplaced ingredients - In ingredients drop levels, you have to drop the ingredients where the green arrows are, but sometimes, the ingredients are just under a dead space, where an ingredient can't fall. It is hard to move a stuck ingredient, as you need to position the candies carefully to make a match.
- Too many ingredients - In ingredient levels, the ingredients are generated in the function of how many moves you make, but where there are too many ingredients needed when you run out of moves considering you didn't drop any ingredients, not all ingredients are present, forcing you to drop all the ingredients in the board to make a new one after one move. And it is really hard.
- Difficult Orders - Sometimes candy order levels can be hard due to the sheer difficulty of the order collection, or that the order cannot be created via matches.
- Combo orders always qualify. Besides often being difficult to create, you can only perform one combo per move.
- The difficulty of these levels can be further reinforced if they have a high chance of cascades, which can set off the special candies before they are to be used.
- Empty Jelly Squares - Some levels do not spawn candies on jelly squares. Because most jelly levels have double jellies, it can be hard if a jelly square is cleared but there are no candies that will spawn on top of it. This is really what requires a bit of timing of special candies. Only striped candies of any kind or jelly fish can remove empty jelly squares. This makes a player aim and relies on the position of the candies. It is much harder if they are in the corners.
- Toffee Tornado - Before they were removed, these candies land on a random candy on each move, and make it very hard to plan on your moves, especially in order levels calling for a combination of 2 special candies (2 combinations) because sometimes they land on one of your special candies and you have to make it again. With them removed, a lot of levels have been redesigned.
- Unstable Moon Scale and Short Moon Struck - Before Dreamworld was removed, there was a Moon Scale to balance between two candies. Some levels were designed to have a lot of cascades or that the scale is unstable, thus forcing Odus the owl, to fall, leading to a level failure.
- There is no direct and instant method to gauge the amount of imbalance to tip the Moon Scale. On Flash, the Moon Scale only animates after cascades end.
- In many cases, moon struck/s only last for one move. This limits the safe period in creating special candy combinations.
- Players struggled in these levels, which had an unstable moon scale and/or a short moon struck.
- Notorious Dreamworld levels: 24, 45, 54, 67, 68, 104, 123, 125, 141, 145, 163, 168, 202, 203, 163, 277, 311, 372, 383, 409, etc.
List of Hard Levels[]
You can find all hard levels defined by this wiki below:
- Category:Hard levels
- Category:Very hard levels
- Category:Extremely hard levels
- Category:Nearly impossible levels
- Category:Variable levels
Below is a list of hard levels defined by the game itself:
History of Hard Levels[]
- The infamous level 65 began a trend when levels ending with "65" were considered a struggle by people. (e.g.: 65, 165, 265, 365, 465, and 565). The trend ends at level 665 as it is somewhat easy. Another trends are levels ending with "17", "25", "67", "77", "82", "91", or "99". **However, since nerfs have happened, most of these trends are no longer true.
- Most very hard, extremely hard, or nearly impossible levels are odd-numbered. However, in high levels, most to almost all the levels are very hard.
- Levels in the 1-2-3 series are "hard" when the level number is in odd numbers but "easy" when even. 123 is hard, 234 is very easy, 345 is hard, 456 is easy, 567 is very hard, 678 is somewhat easy, and 789 is hard.
- Nowadays, most of them are no longer true due to a mass redesign.
- The distribution of very hard episodes and levels shift time after time.
- In the early days of Candy Crush, hard levels were often in the 100's and 200's, but since then, they have become easy.
- Eventually, they shifted to the 1000's, but now they are not as problematic as they used to be.
- Currently, harder episodes/levels tend to be in the 2000s and 3000's, then past 12000. This explains why newer episodes are much harder than the older ones.
- The hardest levels range mainly from the mid-2000s to the 3000's. Much of the 4000's are typically easier than the 3000's.
- Most hard levels tend to be easy to earn two and three stars except for the Dreamworld levels.
- Hexagon levels were introduced on v1.60 on mobile, and shortly before the release of Dozy Dawn on Flash.