My ultimate test: purple candy collection

I have an addition to make:

New player started the game early this week and played a few levels up to level 66. Then the second chance round came along. I started playing yesterday evening with 16 hour left on the clock. It was surprisingly easy to get to the top of the leaderboard and stay there.

There were 50 players on this leaderboard and only one (!) was from India, three in total from Asia. Mostly Europe and America, a few from Africa, a much more expected mix of players than the qualifiers.

I calculated my score for each episode from level 126 through to level 230. Each one of these episodes only scored between 45,000 and 50,000 purple. I was quite surprised since a lot of these levels were four colour boards with what seemed a lot of purple. But they do self terminate, it's hard to play them to the last move, and the red candies now start dropping as soon as the level is won.

Anyone who thinks that players at low levels are at an advantage need to also note that a player at these levels will have no friends and so will run out of lives and might have to buy indefinite lives to compete. I had to spend some gold bars for extra moves before I hit the first legendary an hour before the round finished as I was down to my last life. That definitely makes it harder for new players. It's not just about how easy the levels themselves are. And they score less purple per level than the higher levels.

With 33 hours to go I'm in the lead on both leaderboards that I started today. I very much like the green "playing now" that shows us who is actively playing. It helps to judge if I am overtaking players because I am faster or if it is because they have paused playing. It looks like I am a faster scorer than the others in my two groups, which is what I was hoping to find out. I'm not going to deplete my gold bars for this tournament any more though, it's not fun to play. They've made the levels unpleasantly hard, in the level ranges 300- 600 at least. Boring as well. I could swear I'm playing some of the same levels again and again, they are all so similar.

Poppy started with about 22 hours of the competition left. It did not take long for the leaderboard to fill up, nor for me to take the lead. The Star Tournament is THE way to score purple candies. As much as the level ranges of 17,000-18,500 are bad for scoring, the moment you get to the Star Tournament it all changes: Most levels have just 5 colours, most have cascades if you play a strategic party popper or UFO at the right moment. Many are predictable and easy to see through, besides they circulate, so the more you play this event the more you will know how to beat each level, and which ones to skip. I played for 90 minutes and this is my score:

I played at a leisurely pace here. I am not sure which levels King pick and if they still exist in the real game. Here is one with the chocolate glitch, which makes me wonder if these are now removed former legendary levels.

I also found this nice frog level, which could still be used to make the level last to the final move :

Clearly King don't care to remove such levels out of the event, so there will be players trying to take advantage of levels like the above. I fear King's way to deal with it is to stop any accounts with too much gold, or a really good track record, from participating in the big leaderboard events. Normally I would advise anyone with lots of gold and near the end of the game to try get to the Star Tournament before All Stars @MannyFae and @Nobody1 because from what I have seen today it's definitely possible to win using it if you have enough gold to pay for the right boosters at the right time and/or the extra moves necessary. Unfortunately Poppy does not have enough gold to do it the honest way and my Cornflower game with 20,000 gold is too far back to get here in time. Besides, they'll probably throw us all out of the tournaments like cookiemae, because we are too good at it.

@cookiemae For me it works for the chocolate box as I choose the UFO option for the last chocolate. I do use UFOs to pass the levels, so that works for me. It also counts toward "Don't feed the Troll" as I found out today to my delight! I did not realise that. Top That worked as well a few weeks ago, though I have not seen this event since. Thanks for recommending it in the first place. I always discounted it as being any use for anything until you told me about it.