Candy Royale - Elite Challenge - Wanting to vent

I feel for you. We are all annoyed that when we are forced to play Candy Royal we have to click through 3 screens just to play. And then the option to play only comes up when you have repeatedly lost a game 5 times and are never going to win. But when you are winning you can't join the game. I hate it. We should be able to opt out of playing it.

Well, I used to ignore it also, but once you win once, like 800 GB, you can keep winning when it shows up if you've saved a modest amount of boosters (30 hammers and 30 switches). You have enough hammers to smash lots of rounds if needing maybe 10 candies, or lots to spare in buying the extra 10 moves, 16 moves, 25 moves and once I had to go to 56 moves more. But then your next Royale wind will gain back some of those.

Here is my take on the Elite Candy Royale event in my game this morning:

I had the version of passing 25 levels for a share of 1700 gold, which popped up at level 2346. I had the option to gain the super colour bomb as well, 10 levels into the event. I had just been given 1 hour of timed colour bomb from the daily treat machine and a half hour of wrap/stripe for free from the fishing boat.

Was it worth it?

Here's my maths:

As shown above I spent nothing on pre level boosters as these were free.

To keep my win streak I played 4 UFOs (13,9 gold each), 11 lollipops/switch (5.95 gold each), 2 striped candies (5.45 gold each) and played on for extra moves once for 10 gold and played one party popper at 29 gold each.

Spent in total: 171 gold

I won 213 gold from the event. So I got a net gain of 42 gold from Candy Royale, but in the process passed two episode races as well and won the 20 gold for Astros vs Aliens as well.

Was it worth it? I'd base that judgement on whether I enjoyed playing and I guess, the answer is: Yes, I did. It was worth spending an hour of my time on.

One word of warning to anyone from King reading this: Those were mostly levels not (yet) spoiled by recent rewrites, which greatly contributed to the enjoyment factor. I felt that I could win Candy Royale if I played the right boosters at the right time, and that is how the game should be. Please leave the levels as they are so we can feel a sense of achievement!

I don't consider myself a pro, I'm just someone who has figured out how the game works @paulcampbell12 and that is really just because I play a lot, at all level ranges.

The best way to get boosters is to play from the start and spend no gold until after level 200. By this level you would normally have over 300 gold bars from winning the episodes races. It does take a lot more patience now than it used to but King can never totally block players before level 200 because they would not want newcomers to quit before they are addicted to playing. So eventually they will always give you a lucky board that will help pass those early levels. Once you get to the legendary levels it's a balancing act between spending gold and winning it in the episode races and other events. For those of us who have enough gold and boosters stored up Candy Royale plays very differently: If you know you can afford to pay yourself out of a level put in the game to block you, then the event so many hate becomes enjoyable and as you saw from my calculations even profitable. You then approach Candy Royale with a totally different mindset. I do sometimes drop out if a level is unachievable with 10 gold bars and have noted that if I do then it will usually pop up again within a day. If I win it's a full week before it reappears. It must be an annoying nagging thing for players who don't want to see it and I agree fully that they should bring back the X to opt out.

The game now demands that we try to keep a win streak. This is a subtle change that we have seen introduced in 2024. Before, many levels were passable without boosters and many players enjoyed the game playing and replaying one level at a time until they could pass. This has changed and Candy Crush now wants us more than ever to try keep our win streaks at all costs. Candy Royale is just one of many events which work towards this, the super colour bomb is another. It's what King want us to do and how every level is now being (re-)designed: If you are on a top win streak and also play starting boosters many levels can be passed quite easily and most legendary levels can either be passed this way or will leave us 10 gold (less than 5 moves) or a lollipop short. This is the game design. So we are meant to spend this gold and those boosters. Often the game will give us timed starting boosters for free as an incentive and I am afraid that their refusal to add the often called for op out for Candy Royale is part of this incentive as well: The game is constantly nagging players to keep going, level after level, and spend money in the process. lt is how it is: Only profit matters to King and feedback from us is completely ignored.