What are your strategies for creating Color Bombs and Coloring Candies?

Another strategy for creating Color Bombs or Coloring Candies is when you have special events like the “Free the Octopuses” special challenge with 10 levels that started a few days ago.

The very first level of this Octopus challenge starts out with a pattern of yellow candies that is set up to make a Coloring Candy:

Once you make the yellow Coloring Candy, it is a fairly easy level to win, so you can keep playing it to make as many Coloring Candies as you need for your Daily Quest. This level 1 would also be good for a Daily Quest that requires those pink licorice tiles as it has 20 of them, and you can repeat it as often as you need to get the required number of pink licorice tiles.

Does anyone else us these special levels for other purposes like this?

To make Color Bombs or Colors Candies often requires “looking ahead” for a couple moves to see if the correct pattern for a Color Bomb or Coloring Candy can be created. (The Suggested Move algorithm does not do “look ahead”, so this is one way you can find better moves than the suggested ones.) In this example from Level 8 of the Sunny Tales event, I “looked ahead” to see that by matching the 3 yellow candies I could drop down the Green Candy to make a Color Bomb with the column of 4 Green Candies separated by the Yellow Candy. Move #1 was:

Move #2 was to move the Green Candy one space left to create the Color Bomb.

So now the grid had a Color Bomb ready to use! But how could I best use it? Looking ahead, I saw that if I created a Red Fish by moving a .read Candy 1 space up, that pattern of 4 Red Candies would create a Red Fish right next to the Color Bomb! So Move # 3 was:

So now it was simple to just combine the Read Fish + Color Bomb on Move #4, and that transformed the other 11 Red Candies in the grid to be 11 Red Fish, which in turn swarm all over the place and effectively spread the jam to both sides where I needed it.

So especially if you have a large, unobstructed working space like this at the CCFS level you are working on, consider using Look Ahead to see what special candies you can create and use!

@Brigdeez This site has a mail system, but you have to first make a few posts or comments to be able to use it. Meanwhile, why don’t you just list the 2-4 most pressing questions you have now, and I’ll try to answer them? The reason I started this discussion thread was that I could NOT find any guidance on basic CCFS playing strategies, nor on advanced strategies for making and using Color Bombs and Coloring Candies, or for the new types of blockers and helpers that will be introduced at the higher levels if you keep playing this game.

Basic CCFS playing strategy for a rectangular grid with top-down flow of candies:

1. Wait for the “Suggested Move” algorithm to highlight a possible move, but then carefully look BELOW that suggested move in the grid for either (a) a move that has the same value but is lower down in the grid, or (b) a move that can be made “indirectly” and thus match and destroy more total pieces of candy. A “lower down in the grid” matching of candies drops down more candies from the top and gives you more potential for “side effect” destruction as the candies rain down. An “indirect” move that destroys more total pieces of candy also results in more candy raining down, but also serves to re-arrange or re-initialize that area of the playing grid more thoroughly, and the more often you destroy and re-arrange the candy patterns, the more likely you are to be able to find or create some useful, high-value special candies like the Fish, Striped, or Wrapped Candies.
2. As most of the blockers will be at the bottom, try to destroy your way DOWNWARD as quickly as possible, (which is called a “depth-first” playing strategy). If you try to destroy across the entire width of the playing grid on the top before moving down, (which is called a “breadth-first” strategy), you will typically run out of moves before you an successfully unblock the things at the bottom. Once you’ve worked your way to the bottom, try to destroy things out to both sides to clear off all the blockers and win that level.
3. Choice of “helper” for that level: At the start of each level, the #1 choice of helper is in the middle position, the #2 choice of helper is on the left, and the #3 choice of helper is on the right. As a general rule, we try the first time with the #1 choice helper as that ismthe one selected by the programmer of that level. If after the last move you fail but are CLOSE to solving that level, you can re-try the #1 choice as with better luck on your second attempt, you may win the level. BUT, if your first attempt is complete failure and you are not even close to solving that level, try the #2 choice of helper. Similarly, if neither #1 nor #2 helper works for you, try the #3 choice of helper. But be forewarned that the #3 choice helper will change rather randomly and unpredictably to some other helper that will fit the candy colors involved at that level.

I hope this was comprehensible and helped.

But @Brigdeez , what level are you at? The difficulty level of CCFS changes to become noticeably harder as you get to 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, and 4,000(which is where some of the Advanced Strategies would come in). If you are having problems with a specific level, please post a screenshot of that level’s playing grid so I can get a sense of what you are facing.