Moon Scale

The Moon Scale is an element in Dreamworld levels, where the main mascot of Dreamworld, Odus, an owl, balances on in the levels.

On the moon scale, on either side, there are two different candy colors. Players must get them in equal quantities, or else Odus will fall and the level will be failed.

Odus will only give a full update at the end of each move. So if Odus takes 10 candies to fall and you destroyed 12 of Colo(u)r A but then felt lucky to destroy 3 of Color B, Odus will not fall. The calculation of the status is Abs(Color A - Color B) or at the end of a move, or |Color A - Color B|

There are exceptions to this rule:


 * a) when your last move fulfills the clearing condition (including making the last move for Moves levels)
 * b) when it is the move before Moon Struck takes effect.
 * c) when the last move remaining is used. Although a player would fail but the Moon Scale does not tip over.

The moon meter is filled after a certain number of moves made by the player, which varies per level. Note that Shuffles do not fill however. On the Facebook version, it used to hurt players because a shuffle wasted a move (no longer the case with the release of Sour Salon).

When the moon meter is full, the player receives Moon Struck. This removes one or two candy colours appearing in the moon scale, meaning a player has fewer colours on the board to deal with. This effect sustains for a certain amount of moves that varies per level. At this moment, the board blinks and you are allowed some moves which decrease the moon meter until the moon scale is back to navy blue and the moon meter down to zero. After those moves, the board returns to normal, and the moon scale will change the two candies you have to balance.

Stability


Balancing a Moon Scale is really easier said than done on most levels. The reason being is a player almost always must destroy candies in sets of three or more. Colour bombs are the most dangerous special candies here because they can take down a lot of candies and cause all kinds of cascades.

Depending on the level, a Moon Scale can handle a certain amount of candies before Odus falls. The moon scale seems to be less stable in some levels than in others. For example, level 203 only takes a mere imbalance of 5 candies for Odus to fall down while level 368 takes a whopping 18 candies of imbalance to make Odus fall down.

Level 202 used to have the most unstable Moon Scale in the game along with level 203 before the update, but it was nerfed, and now has a normal Moon Scale but with a shorter Moon Struck.

The moon scale has been known to have the following levels of Odus's stability (worried-panics-falls):


 * Unstable: 2-4-5, 3-5-6, 3-5-7, 3-6-8.
 * Normal: 4-7-9, 4-8-10, 5-9-11.
 * Stable: 5-9-12, 5-10-13, 6-11-14, 6-12-15, 7-13-16, 7-14-18.

Trivia

 * When a player loses the level and pays to play 5 more moves, the Moon Scale actually goes back to neutral even if the owl would've fallen on that move.
 * The moon scale is more responsive on mobile devices than Facebook, making it hard for players to predict how the moon scale is going to tilt in Facebook.
 * Levels 230, 469, 470, 490, 493 and 546 require fewer moves to completely fill up the moon scale than the duration of Moon Struck.
 * The levels with the least number of moves required to completely fill up the moon meter are levels pre-buffed 434, 439, 486, 494, 505, 506, 507, 508, 510, 555 and 567 at 3 moves each. The level with the most number of moves required to completely fill up the moon meter is Level 146 at 36 moves.
 * Candies matching the colour of the left side of the Moon Scale are removed if the board has only five colours.
 * The two candies that appear on the Moon Scale after an empty meter will always be two of the four colours left on the board before Odus returns. This can make it more dangerous to make cascades as there are so many candies of that colour.
 * Apparently Coconut Wheels and Jelly Fish that activate will help rebalance Odus if he fell. In other words, if you made a move that would supposedly make Odus fall, he would fall. If you make a move that he rebance, it will save him.
 * The Moon Scale does not actually come into effect until the first move of the level is made. So if there are levels that drop candies such as Level 10, Moon Scale is not affected. Ironically, on Facebook, Odus is actually flying before all the candies stop. On mobile devices, the two colours appear on the moon scale only after all the candies settle.
 * Any candy that is destroyed whether after the first move is made and by a non-move (ie. Lollipop Hammer), it will affect the Moon Scale.