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Spearmint Snowstorm is rigged
christinewupp
Posts: 10,858 
in Discussions
I have spent this morning testing out one particular level of Spearmint Snowstorm after having played and taken screenshots of about a dozen of them.
So far I have not come to repeats and reached the second gold chest for the event.
What I know so far:
Most of these levels are impossible to pass without spending gold for extra moves, even for players on a top win streak plus super colour bombs enabled. Many of these levels require more than one UFO to pass on a first attempt. Some require a UFO plus a party popper to pass, or a UFO plus extra moves.
I think all players get the same sequence of these levels.
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Comments
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This is the level I played today:
On my first attempt I had win streak plus starting boosters enabled and failed by a long way. On my 24 subsequent attempts using up all my lives from friends I used all three starting boosters and failed. I tried a variety of strategies, including using a striped candy to make a colour bomb/stripe combo when the game created a colour bomb and using a UFO near the end. I tried following the suggested moves or using my own best judgement. You name it, I tried it. There was no lucky board, not even nearly. Usually the end result looked like these screenshots:
I have 20 more similar screenshots.
I used up another 5 lives after being at the stage where I was offered +255 extra moves. No change and my conclusion must be that this level algorithm does not contain a lucky board or any help to pass without paying.
@Insertnicknamehere I am interested in your comment from another thread that you thought King were testing out a new level difficulty, worse than "legendary". Do you think this could be part of these tests?
Well, as I stated before QueenB did run a survey on this event from last time it appeared (and I do remember it was then equally horrible) and this is a screenshot of the poll results:
Mine was one of only two votes in the "I didn't enjoy it" column! I'm not sure if everyone else is just oblivious, if any of these people actually played the event or what, but I suggest we are wasting out time analysing levels and trying to point out the obvious if so many players are just so naive they will pay to play the game and then claim they had a fun time doing it.
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We cannot get rid of this event. Once loaded onto our devices we are stuck with it.
My advice would be:
- Do NOT play starting boosters after your first attempt. As with all legendary levels play them on your first attempt as you might get a double colour bomb combo, which will help with these levels. But with only one colour bomb there is no way that starting boosters alone will help to pass these levels. Colour bomb+wrap and colour bomb+ stripe combos are completely ineffective.
- If you don't have any gold left in your accounts think about stopping to play until the event is finished. The levels replaced by Spearmint Snowstorm are much, much easier to pass. This event is a money grabbing insult to players
This is the normal version for me of the level I tested out above:
I just passed it on my first attempt with no boosters and 5 moves to spare.
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100% true
Extremely stupid levels. I probably had to spend more than 100 golds on just 3 of them. And the rewards aren't even worth it.
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I really wonder who the hell voted on that "... I'd love to have more events like this"
Cuz this event is ridiculous
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I am interested in your comment from another thread that you thought King were testing out a new level difficulty, worse than "legendary". Do you think this could be part of these tests?
Ya, I saw it with Alien Invasion as well and even in the one game I started recently. Basically they added a, what I suspect will be hidden, difficulty setting that does not allow for a lucky board. You basically have to all but match the algorithm perfectly to pass without turns.
Also as you noticed boosters and such mean nothing for this difficulty setting.
There are currently 7 versions of "difficulty (the 7th one I think is new).
{
"name": "dynamic_difficulty_v7",
"enabled": true,
"strategy": "legacy",
"majorVersion": 2116,
"minorVersion": 1,
"configurationId": 2116,
"parameters": {
"mode": "2"
},
"serviceConfigurations": []
}, {
"name": "dynamic_difficulty_v6",
"enabled": true,
"strategy": "legacy",
"majorVersion": 3013,
"minorVersion": 0,
"configurationId": 870,
"parameters": {
"min_extra_moves": "15",
"percent_extra_moves": "50",
"stagger_fail_attempts": "3",
"stagger_max_fail_attempts": "15",
"stagger_percent_extra_moves": "10",
"var_percentage_filter": "true",
"control_group": "true"
},
"serviceConfigurations": [{
"type": "otaService",
"parameters": {}
}
]
}, {
"name": "dynamic_difficulty_v5",
"enabled": true,
"strategy": "legacy",
"majorVersion": 3009,
"minorVersion": 0,
"configurationId": 438,
"parameters": {
"min_extra_moves": "15",
"percent_extra_moves": "50",
"stagger_percent_extra_moves": "10",
"stagger_fail_attempts": "3",
"stagger_max_fail_attempts": "15"
},
"serviceConfigurations": []
}, {
"name": "dynamic_difficulty_v4",
"enabled": false,
"strategy": "legacy",
"majorVersion": -1,
"minorVersion": -1,
"configurationId": -1,
"parameters": {},
"serviceConfigurations": []
}
Also the below is the info for the event aka expedition.
{
"name": "expeditions",
"enabled": true,
"strategy": "legacy",
"majorVersion": 13975,
"minorVersion": 0,
"configurationId": 13975,
"parameters": {
"event_start_timestamp_in_seconds": "1739869200",
"event_end_timestamp_in_seconds": "1741593600",
"active_booster": "0",
"catalog_id": "expeditions_rewards_more",
"number_of_milestones": "3",
"episodes_between_milestones": "1",
"number_of_tiers": "5",
"number_of_repeating_tiers": "3",
"collection": "Exp_SpearMint_NM_SG_Feb25",
"tier_ordinals_0": "1,2,3,4",
"tier_ordinals_1": "5,6,7,8",
"tier_ordinals_2": "9,10,11,12",
"tier_ordinals_3": "13,14,15,16",
"tier_ordinals_4": "17,18,19,20"
},
"serviceConfigurations": [{
"type": "otaService",
"parameters": {
"crateName": "expeditions-snowstorm",
"version": "1.17.0",
"baseUrl": "https://candycrush-live.midasplayer.net/s/ota/",
"manifestPath": "crates/be58c6d7d3e1e7ed95a0e7e32b81123c/manifest.json",
"contentRootPath": "crates/be58c6d7d3e1e7ed95a0e7e32b81123c/files",
"manifestHashAlgorithm": "MD5",
"manifestHashChecksum": "2c29a8efe2a5a0bc1b492ebcb0a84187",
"sizeUncompressed": "14973505",
"sizeCompressed": "6740247",
"compatibilityMode": "major_version"
}
}, {
"type": "cdsService",
"parameters": {
"domain": "expeditions",
"instance": "exp_snow_feb25_new_set",
"syncStorage": "true"
}
}
]
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Wow @Insertnicknamehere that is a hell of a lot of computing stuff! It's impressive though understand nothing! But it seems that by different means we both come to the same conclusion here.
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I couldn't agree more with you on this. In fact the names are available to see when you click on the little icons in this thread. It's an interesting one. Yes, only @MannyFae and myself chose the "didn't enjoy" option. Some of the people who wanted more are people who have never commented in this community (were they real?) and then of course there was our favourite spammer Courtney, who cares about nothing other than the exit button.
Check this thread:
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What you see is called JSON, it is just a format for data. All I did was actually take the configuration file and toss a few examples into the thread. Some of that won't have any meaning unless you reference the actual game code, some is somewhat self explanatory.
Basically with this and poking around the json parts of the game code you could likely tell in general what to expect from the game as far as mechanics go.
At the bare minimum
{
"name": "expeditions",
"enabled": true,means I have the event but that does not mean I actually get the event in my game. ie weekly_contest is also enabled but no one on windows get that one.
This is of course just a surface layer view you would need the actual game tools to really take a deep dive.
Note changing these files does nothing. They are generated from the game code and save file and are more of a reference. You would have to manipulate the save file but again you would need the tools to do that. Also that would be blatant cheating.
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An interesting observation about the names of voters. There are so many with zero discussions or comments, and so many names I never encountered. I can't help but wonder if they are real as well.
I only played the first few levels of this event in December, and those were not good, but doable. If the later ones are impossible to complete without a double color bomb combo start, it's worse than Legendary. Looks like I won't be playing much for another couple of weeks 😕
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"number_of_tiers": "5",
"number_of_repeating_tiers": "3",
"collection": "Exp_SpearMint_NM_SG_Feb25",
"tier_ordinals_0": "1,2,3,4",
"tier_ordinals_1": "5,6,7,8",
"tier_ordinals_2": "9,10,11,12",
"tier_ordinals_3": "13,14,15,16",
"tier_ordinals_4": "17,18,19,20"A way to look at the data here:
- So one starts with each tier think of them as normal, hard, super hard, nightmarishly hard and @$%# me that is brutal :D.
- There are three repeating tiers
- The repeating tiers will not be random.
- Based on the alien invasion I would say, tier 0, 3 and 4 were what was repeated.
- There is no indication if all levels of a tier appear as levels or it is just a selection from them.
So basically if one played only a few versions of the event one might have only see the first two tiers and not dealt with the higher tiers and the repeating nonsense.
I have the game that has them, might test them out. It also has the new fish which might make a difference. I am curious now haha.
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