Star Tournament (the tournament at the end of the map)

Nobody1

At the very end of the map, after you pass all the levels, there is a special tournament every week which is available only to those who have passed all the levels. I had seen it mentioned here in a number of threads, but never found a comprehensive guide to what it was like, and I always vowed that once I reached the end of the map, I would start a thread to try to give a full description for those who haven't reached the end of the map yet and wonder what to expect if and when they get there. And I apologize for those who don't want to read - I am trying to post a rather exhaustive description - I apologize for the length of the post, but I know I would have really appreciated it if I could have found such a post earlier on when I was working to reach the end of the map.

It's very hard to type on the device I would post the screenshots from, so I am going to put all the text in this post, and then follow with screenshots in a second post.

The Star Tournament is available only when you have completed all of the levels that have been released so far for your device. Each tournament runs from Wednesday to Wednesday; it opens as soon as the new levels come out (45 new levels are added each week on Wednesday), and lasts until the next Wednesday around 4am US Eastern Standard time.

When you click on the star at the end of the rainbow to enter the tournament, you are presented with a typical start screen for a level (it looks a little different, but is basically the same as a normal one functionally), which allows 3 starting boosters to be added, if you have them in your inventory and want to use them: color bomb, striped and wrapped, and lucky candy. After pressing Play, you play one of the special levels that have been created for the Star Tournament. These are different from the normal levels - they do not duplicate any of the levels in the regular game. I would say they are somewhat harder than the average level in the regular game, but definitely easier than most of the last couple thousand levels at the end of the map, so they are actually a bit of a reprieve from what you might have put up with to get to the end. It appears there are a set number of levels, and they repeat in the same order once you have cycled through all of them. I tried to take starting screenshots of each one, and I will post them below in a later post. I have 103 screenshots - this seems like a weird number so I would not be surprised if I forgot to get a couple of them - 105 would make so much more sense (7 episodes' worth), but the number I captured was 103. I confirmed that they do cycle in the same order. I suspect the starting point in the order is somewhat random - you start somewhere in the sequence at the beginning of the week, and then continue in order until you cycle through all of them, whereupon you start back where you began.

For each level you are presented, you have just a single chance to play it before moving on to the next level. The Star Tournament does not affect your win streak, nor does it pay any attention to any win streak you might have. This means there are never any extra starting boosters other than the ones you used from your inventory, which makes the levels more challenging. It feels more like Candy Crush did a number of years ago, before it got so booster-focused. Superchargers are also not available in these levels - you have to win them with no help other than normal boosters from your inventory.

If you fail a level, there's really no penalty at all for it - no win streak loss, no feelings of running out of time since there is no episode race - you just fail the level and go on to the next one, with the only loss being a loss of a life. If you successfully complete a level, you're awarded 1, 2, 3, or 6 points for that level based on the number of stars you get from the scoring at the top of the screen. Finally, here, sugar stars actually mean something - they're a huge bonus as you get an additional 3 points for the sugar stars! If you run out of moves before completing a level, you still get the offer to continue that you normally would on regular levels - either spend gold bars for a set number of extra moves, or (only offered sometimes) watch ads to get extra moves and/or boosters. The ad offers seem rather random - when I first started playing the tournament, I got several of these, but then went through a full cycle of levels before I started getting them again.

After you complete each level, you will see your place in the leaderboard. This appears to work a bit like the seasonal tournament final stages - if you enter early (which I have done both times I have tried it), the leaderboard is fairly short, but then it fills up slowly as time goes on. But it appears to be capped at 50 people. That makes me believe there are a set number of groups at the start of the week - they fill those up until they are all at 50, and then they probably start new groups after that. It would be interesting to try to wait a few days before starting it to see what the leaderboards are like at that point.

The prizes you get for the Star Tournament really aren't worth much, so it seems unlikely that it would ever be worth spending many gold bars to do well in it. The top prize is 8 boosters including a paintbrush and a UFO, and the second place prize is 5 boosters including a paintbrush. There are also basic ordinary boosters for places 3-20.

So with such small prizes, why play? Well, mainly because it's about the only thing you can do other than play old levels (for fun, and chocolate box, and maybe some event that works on old levels) when you get to the end of the map. Now would be a good time to mention some of the quirks of playing Star Tournament levels.

The Star Tournament DOES NOT count for the following:
- new levels or levels in one try for chocolate box
- wins for weekly contest
- daily win
- friends challenge
- season's pass
But the Star Tournament DOES count for the following:
- don't feed the troll
- top that
- the 30x multiplier for most of the seasonal tournaments

It's those last 3 points that probably make it the most worthwhile. I know that @christinewupp posted recently that she was able to win one of the recent tournaments just using the Star Tournament, so it can be quite useful for racking up colored candies quickly. It tends to have lots of levels where you can obtain a lot of candies rather fast, so it's pretty good for tournaments, if you can afford to spend the gold to go at the speed you need for winning.

The Star Tournament really feels different to play than regular play on new levels. Since there is no episode race, there is no feeling of pressure to complete a bunch of levels whenever you start one. And since there is no benefit from win streaks, there is much less pressure to try to win every attempt. It feels much more relaxed.

One bit of advice I would like to give for anyone who is approaching the end of the map and is accustomed to maintaining long win streaks for the extra boosters: When you're approaching the end of the map, it's finally time to start requesting extra lives from your friends. I know that I never paid attention to extra lives until I got to the end of the map - I would happily send them to anyone who requested them, but I never had a need to request extra lives, since I never ran out of them. If you're playing with long win streaks by using lots of boosters from watching ads, you almost never have less than 4 lives left - I think I got down to 3 just a few times between level 1000 and 18500. But with the Star Tournament, it often makes sense to just lose a level and go on to the next one, which might be easier to beat. So having lots of extra lives saved up suddenly becomes quite useful when you play the Star Tournament.

An interesting factoid: playing in the Star Tournament does not affect the game's idea of where you are on the map. If you have scrolled back to a much earlier level, say, level 11000, for instance, and then you jump forward and play in the Star Tournament, and then close the game, the next time you enter the game you will be back at level 11000. This can sometimes be useful, so it's a nice little trick to know about.

I think that's a pretty thorough description; I hope it is interesting and/or useful to someone. If anyone has any corrections or additional comments to make regarding the Star Tournament, please post them in this thread! If I have made mistakes above or left something important out, I will edit the post to correct it.

I will try to post screenshots next.

Nobody1

The end of the map: click on the star to enter the Star Tournament:

Once you do, you see this:

The instructions provided in the game:

A typical leaderboard:

A sample level (this is the first level I played):

I would love to post screenshots of all the levels as they currently are at the time of this posting (I assume King probably changes them periodically), but I would need to find a way to spoiler them to prevent having to scroll by so much noise. If I can figure out how, I will post them.

christinewupp

https://community.king.com/en/candy-crush-saga/discussion/488541/star-tournament-the-tournament-at-the-end-of-the-map

Thank you , there were a couple of bits of info I didn't know here. I always thought the Star Tournament levels were repeats of legendary levels from elsewhere in the game. I still wonder if maybe they could be disused older levels that have since been replaced. But as you've played all the levels quite recently you would have recognised them so you must be right that they are specific to this tournament. The tip that you can play it and still get back to a previously played level you'd scrolled back to was useful to me. I didn't know this and playing it had discouraged me from scrolling back.

Nobody1

I finally attempted to find a way to put (small) images here of every level that I managed to take a screenshot of in the Star Tournament, in the order that I'm seeing them occur. I hope it will be helpful - hopefully you can refer to this to see what level is coming next each time. Apparently the levels start somewhere randomly in this cycle each week (not sure if that is different for each player, or consistent among all players), but then go in order as shown below. The starting image is the first Star Tournament level that I saw when I first got to the end of the map, on Wednesday, February 19, 2025.

My apologies if I have missed a level, gotten one out of order, or have otherwise messed any of this up. I will be watching this list as I go through the levels in the future, and will try to edit these to fix them if I find mistakes.

Also, please note that these are a snapshot of the levels that appear to be in use as of the start of March 2025. I assume King updates them periodically, so they are subject to change. If they change and I am still around, I will try to update them when they do.

I found a couple of mistakes earlier as I was putting these screenshots together, so now I have a count of 101. We'll see what this ends up like once I have checked them all a few times. :-)