Life at the end of the map - a discussion

I know that most people never make it to the end of the map, but I have read here that some have estimated that as many as a million players might be there, and with 180 million users in 2024, that might imply that 1 in 200 players have been there at one time or another. So while somewhat rare, there are certainly quite a few of us who have made it. And I know for sure of several players who are regulars here who occasionally talk about what it's like there. And also, it seems to me likely that people who would bother to come onto a forum for Candy Crush are probably more likely than the average person to be someone who made it to the end of the map. So I was hoping there might be quite a few of us at the end of the map, and that those of us who are there might use this thread to share ideas of how to handle being there.

I just arrived at the end of the map 2 weeks ago, so I'm very new to it. I know that @christinewupp has at least 4 active accounts, and uses her end-of-map account more for experimentation than for heavy playing, but her comments have been very helpful to me as I have adjusted to the change of being at the end of the map.

I have several questions for anyone who is there:

1. When do you play new levels each week? Do you play them as soon as they come out, or do you spread them out over the week, or do you save them up and do several weeks' worth at once? Or did you simply stop and decide that was enough?
2. Do you ever play in the Star Tournament if there are no special events going on, or do you only use the Star Tournament when you need it to collect candies for special events?
3. How do you handle the chocolate box? Do you try to maintain it as a gold chocolate box, or do you let it expire during the week and then try to get it back to gold before the next week starts? What are your strategies for dealing with it?
4. What other strategies or tricks or techniques do you have that might be useful to others?

So far, I have been playing new levels as soon as they come out. It's all new to me and I can't wait to try everything as quickly as possible. But I'm not sure it's a good strategy.

I have been playing in the Star Tournament regularly because I figure it's a chance to get good at these levels. I've found interesting strategies for handling some of the levels, but others seem pretty impossible without using tons of boosters. So at the moment I'm still experimenting.

I had a really bad week so far since the new levels came out this week. First of all, while I did get an episode race on the first of the 3 new episodes, it disappeared from my game on the second and third, so I only got gold on one episode race this week. The same thing happened to me last week too - the episode race disappeared 2 episodes from the end of the map - very sad. Then, as I was getting close to done with the new levels, I lost my win streak on the next-to-last of the new levels because I decided to chance watching ads for extra moves rather than burning more boosters at the end, and on the third ad, I got an "ad of death" - the screen just went black and the app was completely unresponsive. After waiting for about 10 minutes and trying everything I could think of to recover it, I finally had to just exit the app and restart it, whereupon I got the message that my supercharger was lost and my 80-ish level win streak was lost. So sad. And then, after I finished the last 2 levels and decided to fill the next chocolate box, on the fourth order my first option was 2 party boosters, which seemed excessive, so I tried again hoping for maybe 1 party booster or 1 or 2 UFOs, but instead got 3 options of unplayed levels or levels first try. So now my gold chocolate box is going to expire 4 days from now, and there's no way for me to prevent losing it, making me heavily regret trying for better than the 2 party boosters. Very frustrating - I'll feel guilty all week about it. So I'm really curious about people's answers to question #3 above.

Some tricks that I have picked up on that might be useful to others:

1. @christinewupp pointed out to me something I never would have guessed - if you play the last level on the map every day, it always counts as a Daily Win. During my first week at the end of the map, I didn't get any Daily Wins. Thanks so much for that tip - this makes possible the excellent strategy of timing Daily Wins such that you hit the sixth win just as you are about to start new levels once they are released. I'm looking forward to trying that next week!
2. I like trying to keep my lives at less than 5 as much as possible with the Star Tournament. If I have 4 or 5 lives, I'll stop what I'm doing and play the Star Tournament without using any boosters until I'm back down to 3 lives or less. That gives me the most chances to earn stars. It is true that on most levels it's pretty hard to win with no boosters at all, but sometimes it happens, especially on a few of the very easy levels. And occasionally I'll go ahead and burn a free switch or lollipop hammer when I'm really close because why not? I got them from watching ads anyway.
3. You can play the Star Tournament in between playing old levels to fill a chocolate box order. Once you scroll back somewhere earlier in the map, if you go to the event and play the Star Tournament, and then want to go back to the earlier place you were on the map, you can simply exit the app, and when you return, you'll be back at the earlier place on the map where you were before entering the Star Tournament.
4. I do have Sweet Cinema, and so I am trying to grow my gold bars by using ads only to play all the new levels. This week was particularly tough - levels 18516 to 18560 had a lot of really nasty levels, from my perspective. But I had saved up 125 free switches and 125 lollipop hammers during the week before, so I had no problem going through all 45 new levels using nothing but boosters gained from watching ads. So my gold bar stash is growing, albeit very slowly.

I'm very much looking forward to hearing any insight anyone else might have about how you handle being at the end of the map. If you are at the end of the map, please respond here - it would be a nice way to identify which members here have made it!