Hard Levels


 * This page is about Hard Levels regarding completion of a level. For Hard Levels regarding earning three stars click here.



A hard level is a level on Candy Crush Saga that is considered difficult by the majority of players. These levels usually require multiple tries, and have a low victory ratio, usually one win for every three or more tries. Levels can be hard for a many different reasons. Any level type has the potential to have hard levels.

The hardest level type in Reality is thought to be mixed levels, and the easiest is thought to be timed levels.

The hardest level type in Dreamworld is thought to be candy order levels and ingredients levels, and the easiest is thought to be moves levels.

Many Hard levels also have special effects on the level screen. Levels marked as Hard have hexagonal level markers, and have more intense dialogues; such levels are known as Hexagon levels. However, not all hexagon levels are hard (Level 10 is a very easy hexagon level, and Level 1000 is a somewhat easy hexagon level), and not all hard or even extremely hard levels are hexagonal.

What makes a hard level?
Candy Bomb - An abundance of candy bombs, especially those with few moves in hard to reach places, can make a level much harder. Biscuit Bungalow as of late has been known for having levels that players will lose due to an exploding Candy Bomb.

Notorious levels: 97, 100, 122, 134, 147, 265, 266, 275, 350, 374, 425, 445, 482, 491, 534, 549, 562, 565, 566, 567, 575, 589, and 646.

Blocker - Blockers can make a level hard by blocking off jellies or by stopping ingredients falling to the bottom. A blocker with many layers can make a level hard by the sheer number of hits needed. This one mainly refers to big chunks of icing.

Notorious levels 147, 181, 290, 305, 311, 350, 414, 422, 461, 463, 549, 562, 565, 578, 617, 688, and 765.

Move Limit - In some levels the move limit is deliberately very low. This means a player must be very lucky with their moves. Many hard Dreamworld levels (that aren't often complained because of Moon Scale) have this problem.

Notorious levels: 33, 46, 97, 100, 256, 323, 360, 445, 463, 476, 533, 534, 733, 734, and 861.

Notorious Dreamworld levels: 69, 70, 72, 73, 78, 79, 89, 116, 323, and 338

Layout - The board can sometimes take a very complicated and confusing shape, sometimes a very awkward shape, making jellies hard to reach.

Notorious levels: 45 (old), 133, 285, 305, 310, 342, 414, 432, 434, 444, 450, 458, 578, and 765.

Chocolate Spawner - A chocolate spawner can make any level much harder, as they are unbreakable and never stop producing Chocolate. This will make a level much harder if they are in awkward positions.

Notorious levels: 158, 167 (old), 184, 213, 380, 410, 434, 450, and 578.

Liquorice Swirl - The liquorice swirl is not a hard-to-break blocker itself, but it can make a level much harder if there are large amounts of it, as it makes striped candies almost useless and can be extremely annoying.

Notorious levels: 210, 241, 293, 375, 382, 410, 520, and 533.

Difficult Orders - Sometimes Candy Order Levels can be hard due to the sheer difficulty of the order collection, for example a very hard-to-obtain special candy combination, such as mixing two colour bombs.

Notorious levels: 130 ,140, 149, 153, 165, 169, 215, 254, 341, 347, 377, 419, 421, 425, 566, 647, 655, 656, 670, 677, and 699.

Notorious Dreamworld Levels: 130, 141, 149, 169, 182, 195, 202, 237, 266, 341, 419, 425, 430 (especially), 448, 489, and 543.

Candy Colours - A level can have up to six candy colours. With six colours on the board, the candies are much more mixed up and matches are harder to make, as are special candies, making a level significantly harder than it would be if there were five, four or three colours.

Notorious levels: 65 (old), 140, 165, 254, 347, 377,, , 419, 421, 461, and 688.

High Target Scores - In some levels, getting the non-score requirements are relatively easy, but getting the target score is the hard part. You would need a good Sugar Crush in order to pass the level. However, most levels rarely have this. Here are the list of some levels where you can commonly fail it because you didn't reach the score.

Notorious levels: 63, 97, 169, 183, 258, 608, and 1304. Some Dreamworld levels (i.e. 55 and 608) have this.

Misplaced ingredients - In ingredients drop levels, you have to drop the ingredients where the green arrows are, but sometimes, the ingredients are just under a dead space, where an ingredient can't fall; it is really hard to move a stuck ingredient.

Notorious levels: 95, 117, 242, 315, 409, 445, 500, 586, and 660.

Too many ingredients - In Ingredient Drop Levels, the ingredients are generated in function of how many moves you make, but where there are too many ingredients needed, when you run out of moves considering you didn't drop any ingredients, not all ingredients are present, forcing you to drop all the ingredients in the board to make a new one after one move. And it is really hard.

Notorious levels: 30, 74, 325, 357, 376, 500, and 660.

Toffee Tornado - Before they were removed, these candies land on a random candy on each move, and make it very hard to plan on your moves, especially in order levels calling for a combination of 2 special candies (2 combinations) because sometimes they land on one of your special candies and you have to make it again. With them removed, a lot of levels has been nerfed.

Notorious pre-nerfed levels: 414, 417, 419, 421, 425, and 432.

Empty Jelly Squares - Some levels do not spawn candies on Jelly Squares. Because most Jelly Levels have double jellies, it can be hard if a jelly square is cleared but there are no candies that will spawn on top of it. This is really what requires a bit of timing of special candies. Only Striped Candies of any kind or Jelly Fish can remove empty jelly squares. This makes a player aim and rely on the position of the candies. It is much harder if they are in the corners.

Notorious levels: 246, 256, 280, 414, and 597.

Aggressive Magic Mixers - They will produce other blockers every 2-3 moves. Imagine if there are a lot of blockers being created in any fashion.

Notorious levels:, , , , , , ,

Unstable Moon Scale and/or Short Moon Struck - In Dreamworld, there is a Moon Scale to balance between two candies. Some levels are designed so that there are going to be a lot of cascades or that the scale is very unstable, thus forcing an owl to fall down. You lose the game if Odus falls down. The list goes on and on because there are pretty much way more levels that have an unstable Moon Scale. The following levels are the levels where players find a big struggle at mainly because of the Moon Scale. However, there are more levels with a bad Moon Scale and a very short Moon Strike. There is for sure a longer list than what it is right now.

Notorious dreamworld levels

EX: , ,, , 68, 104, 123, 125, 141, 145, Pre-nerfed 147, 163, 168, 202, 203, 227, 277, 290, 311, 372, 383, and 409 etc...

Hardest in the game
Ever since levels 65 and 147 got major changes, polls were created to determine the new hardest level for the Reality and Dreamworld segments. Nowadays, hardest levels belong to the high levels in high episodes. Most oftentimes, a mixed level tops it out.

List of Hard Levels
You can find all hard levels defined by this wiki below:

Category:Hard levels

Category:Very hard levels

Category:Extremely hard levels

Below is a list of hard levels defined by the game itself:

Category:Hexagon levels

Trivia

 * The infamous level 65 began a trend when Levels ending with 65 tend to be considered a struggle by people. (e.g.: 65, 165, 265, 365, 465, and 565). The trend ends at level 665 as it is somewhat easy. Another trends are levels ending with 67 (except 167 and 267), levels ending with 77 (except 177), levels ending with 99 (except 299 and 599) are all hard too. Levels ending in 91 also tend to be quite hard (except for 291 and 791) ex: 91, 191, 391, 491, 591, 691, etc.
 * Most very or extremely hard levels are odd number. However, in high levels, most to almost all the levels are very hard.
 * Levels in the 1-2-3 series will be hard+ when the level number is the odd number but somewhat easy or easier when even. 123 is hard, 234 is very easy, 345 is hard, 456 is easy, 567 is very hard, and 678 is somewhat easy. 789 used to be extremely hard level, but after second nerf, it became easy.
 * Most newer episodes are much harder than the older ones.
 * Most hard levels tend to be easy to earn two and three stars with the exception of the Dreamworld levels.
 * On web version and mobile version since 1.60.0 has an icon hexagon. If on the map has the hard levels, this icon will appear. They are known as hexagonal levels. A congratulation message will appear if you pass the hard level.
 * It should be noted that the hard level could be due to past version such as level 65 which is extremely hard in the first and second version but not the current version.
 * Early levels which may cause difficulties for newer players are also marked as hexagonal.
 * However, after Bonbon Beanstalk was released, all hexagon level icon disappeared completely. They reappear after a few days. It dissapeared again when Apricot Alley was released. In the release of Praline Pavilion, all the hexagonal levels became a little gold circle with a skull at the bottom. In the release Custard Coast the hexagonal levels reappeared.

Gallery

 * See here for the gallery of hard levels.
 * See here for the gallery of hexagon levels.