There is a rumour going around that I am an advocate for late entry to leaderboard competitions.
I would like to clarify that this is not necessarily the best strategy at all. It depends very much on how much time you have to play, and on your playing style.
This is what I found from the Jellynauts Gold Heist competition.
I have four participants. Please only look at the score needed to actually qualify: so the score for the player in 4th place is the one that I had to beat.
This one started Friday evening, so a few hours into the event.
This player started Saturday evening (24 hours later than Cornflower):
This one joined Sunday morning:
And this one joined Sunday evening, so with about 14 hours left on the clock:
(nobody on this board played in the final hour, so that is also the finishing board)
So the lesson learnt is:
It really does not make any difference at what time you join a qualifier/knockout round.* : If you can play three episodes per day you can win your ticket to the next round. So if you enjoy playing these leaderboard competitions (like I do - and it's the only thing I now actually enjoy in Candy Crush) you are silly to delay playing.
The late entrant had to play two episodes as well, so Allium did not have a truly easy ride. If the fun is competing and beating others, then why go for an easy ride anyway, even if there was one?
What matters is always the sprint finish and luck: Who else is in your group? There is no guarantee on this.
My second to last entrant who joined with 24 left on the clock had the toughest competition. When I woke up this morning I found this:
I almost gave up on that game at this point as that seemed too far behind with less than an hour to go. But then I remembered that this account has a lot of gold, so I bought some striped candies and hit them against my super charger as much as I could. That is a great strategy to score a lot of points very quickly, and in fact I only needed 40 minutes to overtake the player in third place with that strategy. It was fun!
When so much of this game is so boring and playing "against the game" has become so pointless with the AI now firmly in charge of the outcomes of levels and events, live leaderboard events are the only fun strategy element left in Candy Crush. So I would say: This is the time to actually play the game. Rest in between rounds.
Here is what I have to look forward to for my next round:
So my tips and strategy for the next round is this:
Join at any time you like*
Time your timed boosters from events well for some extra help. (the combo daily stamp plus weekly contest is a great!)
How you play these events depends entirely on what you are hoping to get out of playing Candy Crush.
Live leaderboard events are the only events in which we can still use some strategy. That is what I personally like about them. So I'd be a fool to join with just a few hours left on the clock.
*I still would advise to avoid joining in the first few hours: The most enthusiastic players always join early, so even though it's easy for a good player to beat them you would have to go through more episodes to do so. But then, if you enjoy the challenge….why not? I remember All Stars finalist Ben telling us that joining early in all rounds is his preferred strategy for practice purposes. That is a good point also!
