Candy Crush Saga

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Tip for new players (nothing is random)

So you may or may not know that there is an algorithm that generates the levels. What is interesting is the algorithm also has a set win pattern(s) it that is used to beat the level. If you match these you will beat levels much more effectively and even beat the harder levels in fewer tries.

You will know when you hit the pattern, one of the following will happen: You will see lots of matches, boosters will pop or combos you could not even have guess with happen via new candies dropping.
Level difficultly defines how many patters their are OR how many times you can deviate from the pattern(s).
Booster are calculated into the above.
The algorithm is always updating as you play so if you can miss once the game will adjust drops to allow you to get back on track if possible.
Sometimes the level is built with no winning pattern. Ie you would need boosters.
Sometimes the algorithm does not work (level 300) or see 5 for 300
There is also a trigger on some levels that if you match the pattern exactly enough times the level goes into basically "auto play" see next point.
Levels can be normal, impossible, "auto play". Normal means if you mostly follow the pattern you will win with 0 or more turns, again depending on difficulty. Impossible means you need a booster or 5 to get a normal level. Auto play is when the game feels sorry for you or you trigger it like mentioned in 7.

There is probably more and I might not be exactly right on the mechanics but I noticed when I was making matches that we not the best for that move but could set something up it generally did. It was more than just planning ahead since many times nothing had dropped yet that could make the pattern.

Still lots of levels you cannot beat in one try or a bunch of tries but I have been getting way less 1 or 2 moves to win vs a win.

Welcome! 👋

Comments

[Deleted User]

Ya, noticed a player will be cruising along only to be stopped at the last or second last board and then you eventually win, even the next day. I mean they passed a bunch of hard levels already to be stopped by one that was not that hard? Odd.

christinewupp

https://community.king.com/en/candy-crush-saga/discussion/comment/2904475#Comment_2904475

It's great to see someone else doing this sort of analysis like I was doing. It's also comforting to see your findings are so similar to mine. It means I wasn't seeing things that weren't there. It's easy to see patterns just because you are looking for them, confirmation bias. So I'm really pleased your analysis mirrors mine so closely! I do think you've got most of it spot on.

At the moment I am enjoying my two games too much to start any new ones and as I said, I miss the chocolate and bombs in the early levels, making it all too boring to play from scratch. What I always thought was that from about 175 to 260 it's always the levels ending in 0 and 5 that seem to be the blocker levels. Sometimes it's 225, sometimes 240, sometimes all of them. I did always wonder if this was related to the win streak. Once that gets introduced they do let players get to the top win streak and then block them trying to make them spend their gold to keep it. I assume, like me you found that it's practically impossible to lose the episode races early on even though they give the impression that one player is running away with it?

[Deleted User]

Ya it is anecdotal but I have noticed somewhat of a pattern given the avatar. Both times I didn't see a change it was really easy, I mean 3 moves and the game would decide you give you nearly a winning board. My current avatar change, forget what it was, is generally harder but not excessively like I found with the troll.

That being said, the win streak really changes the odds atm. A full streak does seems to have a massive effect, this is the old streak I mentioned in another thread.

Another thing I noticed, with the no change I always had the old menu style that you see at the start of a new game and they never changed. Same with troll I think. This time I have volume controls for music and sound and all other options are wrapped into one menu.

Ya I look at the seed as just an unique id in a database table. Each seed might be totally random, tossed into a random group, or "the avatar" is the seed group.

From there all the setting and difficulties are tied to the seed/group. Week to week changes could affect all levels or just the high end ones if King chooses.

I do suspect once you hit x level all the seeds get the same difficultly or very similar ones anyway. Not from experience just from a design standpoint. Once players are locked in, best to give them all a similar experience. People get less angry.

Mostly used the database analogy since you could easily have random difficulties at 100 and 5000 but everyone has the same one at 3000 and 8000+ simply depending on how settings on kings side are done since it would just be changing one row/table id.

Again my sample size is very very small so it might just be coincidence.

christinewupp

https://community.king.com/en/candy-crush-saga/discussion/comment/2902942#Comment_2902942

@Pyrolight I spent some time checking this out in the summer and struggled to find a connection between the avatar I was given and the "seed" as you call it, I mean the difficulty of the early game. (I've stopped playing from scratch for now. Since they got rid of the chocolate and bombs I find the early levels too boring. )

Do I get this right that you have discovered there IS a connection with the avatar you are assigned and the difficulty of the early levels? I have found in my games that if the levels up to 260 are particularly hard then the game gets easier after that, and the opposite seemed to be true as well. If it's lucky boards all the way to 260 (when the bubble gum starts) the game is generally harder after that. I did wonder once if this whole "seed" thing is illusionary though, because King change the level difficulty every week, or more often even, so each time you start a new game it is bound to differ from the previous one. But in the summer I played two simultaneous new games and they were definitely very different. I tried this out until I got the same avatar on both games but still the two games were quite different, hence I figured it's not linked to your avatar.

However, recently when I have played a previous level by scrolling back in my two games to check out how long it would take me until the game allows me to pass a certain level, I have found they have taken almost exactly the same number of tries. I have a suspicion that King have done away with giving different players different levels and are now using different events as a main method to give each player a personalised and different experience. But it may just have been a fluke that both my games were in the same level difficulty test group.

[Deleted User]

To add to all of this, the "seed" you get at the very start is interesting.

Again I got the one that doesn't change. That is I have a custom avatar and usually I will see my avatar, a different one for a half second then mine again. I see a flicker but no change.

The level up to 200 have be much more forgiving in general, well post 50... good lord they were brutal.

This is exactly what happened last time I got the same "seed".

When I get the bubblegum troll it is... I don't have the words how overly hard under 200 is.

I have a feeling the seed also is a sort of difficulty test for x number of levels.

[Deleted User]

Thanks

For lucky boards I just use the term auto play from watching a ton of Mario Marker levels and the ones that are just hold right and you get music and whatnot. Lucky boards sorta feel like that as you are not really playing them anymore.

I did notice in general the game was more brutal, played to around 4000 years ago with just gold and it was not difficult to do. I suspect 2020 and the growth in people will lots of disposable cash and lots of time drove King to milk more than the whales as everyone started to be one. You see this everywhere but I noticed companies starting to pull back from this as people have a lot less money and time and drop games and other entertainment quite easily now.

Basically I suspect the last change was part of the greed cycle and King has added more tools to help with the increased difficulty without yet reverting the change. Basically it is more for new players to get them hooked. :)

King if you are listening some levels in general even at the low levels should not exist, ie 300. That is a flat out piece of poo. Bad design and boring.

For the one one move and one booster, I have a theory that you actually lost the level, ie too many moves that didn't match the algorithm and the game is simply allowing you to get within one move to force you to use a hammer or buy them and to give the impression you were so close in order to make you feel better. ie they are trying to mess with your head :P

Honestly, for the low levels at least, I can tell within about 4 moves if I totally messed up if it is not a pink level. If I make a bad move, the game usually lets you know, and see that a few more times in a row I know I have no chance.

Assuming you start to correctly hit the adjusted pattern the algorithm now has to beat the level (with 4 more moves than you have), you get to the end and maybe 1 or 2 candies are left. What I noticed, easier on the early levels, is that you can sometimes see the, assuming it is not one move, the two or three moves you would need to win. This is not something I think most people would notice if not specifically looking for it.

Now that is not to say the game does not straight up screw you at the end sometimes, I swear there is a mechanic to intentionally try and break streak chains.

It is odd, I almost find legendary levels to have a pattern and be easier than nightmarishly hard levels. That being said, ya I have noticed the algorithm adjust somewhat after a brutally long level.

Also I can say for sure, if you buy 6 hours of lives your next 1-3 levels are easier.

Which reminds me, the seed you get the first time you log out and in or restart the game after level 1 also affects everything. There likely is better and worse seeds. If you have Windows you can actually look at the game files and most of the settings are in JSON format so you could modify them. Disclaimer, this is just informational, do not cheat. :)

christinewupp

https://community.king.com/en/candy-crush-saga/discussion/429811/tip-for-new-players-nothing-is-random

@Pyrolight That's a fine analysis of the game! I am pretty impressed how close your description follows my findings! I've been analysing the game since the spring when many players found the game changed and got harder. I think at this point the free passes you describe as "auto play", and what we used to call "lucky boards" seemed to get fewer and fewer and on some levels never came at all. A lot of us used to rely on them as part of our playing strategy, but King changed the algorithms quite brutally. You really do need gold and/or boosters now to succeed in this game. I have definitely found there to be an unusually large number of levels which will leave players just one move or one booster short, and I think there is an algorithm that kicks in during the last few moves. A few moves from the end I can quite often sense if I will win or if I will just fail. The game definitely decides if it will drop the candies you need during those last few moves. And also I agree that if you play a booster then the algorithm will take that into account. I also think that each level does not stand alone. If I use boosters or extra moves or was stuck on a difficult level for long, then I always find that the next "hard" or even "legendary" level is easier to beat than expected.

Comments

[Deleted User]

christinewupp

https://community.king.com/en/candy-crush-saga/discussion/comment/2904475#Comment_2904475

[Deleted User]

That being said, the win streak really changes the odds atm. A full streak does seems to have a massive effect, this is the old streak I mentioned in another thread.

Ya I look at the seed as just an unique id in a database table. Each seed might be totally random, tossed into a random group, or "the avatar" is the seed group.

From there all the setting and difficulties are tied to the seed/group. Week to week changes could affect all levels or just the high end ones if King chooses.

Again my sample size is very very small so it might just be coincidence.

christinewupp

https://community.king.com/en/candy-crush-saga/discussion/comment/2902942#Comment_2902942

[Deleted User]

To add to all of this, the "seed" you get at the very start is interesting.

Again I got the one that doesn't change. That is I have a custom avatar and usually I will see my avatar, a different one for a half second then mine again. I see a flicker but no change.

The level up to 200 have be much more forgiving in general, well post 50... good lord they were brutal.

This is exactly what happened last time I got the same "seed".

When I get the bubblegum troll it is... I don't have the words how overly hard under 200 is.

I have a feeling the seed also is a sort of difficulty test for x number of levels.

[Deleted User]

Thanks

King if you are listening some levels in general even at the low levels should not exist, ie 300. That is a flat out piece of poo. Bad design and boring.

Now that is not to say the game does not straight up screw you at the end sometimes, I swear there is a mechanic to intentionally try and break streak chains.

It is odd, I almost find legendary levels to have a pattern and be easier than nightmarishly hard levels. That being said, ya I have noticed the algorithm adjust somewhat after a brutally long level.

Also I can say for sure, if you buy 6 hours of lives your next 1-3 levels are easier.

christinewupp

https://community.king.com/en/candy-crush-saga/discussion/429811/tip-for-new-players-nothing-is-random

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Enter for a chance to win Gold Bars and sweet in-game rewards in Candy Crush Saga!
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Off-Topic
This is your chill zone! Talk about anything that’s not Candy-related with other Candy players!.