Level 289/Dreamworld

With five colours instead of four making it harder to create special candies, plenty of five layer icing and liquorice swirls causing many moves to be spent to clear them, the liquorice swirl dispenser compounding the problem of clearing blockers, the moon scale being unstable with respect to the orders required, moon strucks which come late as it requires 20 moves to fill up the moon scale, moon struck duration being too short at only 5 effective moves, the moon struck being not that powerful as it only removes candies matching the colour on the left side of the moon scale as the board has five colours, and a high three star target score makes this level hard to pass and earn three stars. It is available to be voted as the hardest level in Dreamworld and the hardest level in Dreamworld to earn three stars.

Difficulty

 * The initial space is very small, and colour bombs cannot be created at those spaces.
 * Five colours makes it difficult to break though the five layered icing.
 * Even though you only need to collect 100 of both orange and purple candies instead of 150 in its counterpart in Reality, it is much more difficult to do so with five colours.
 * Colour bombs are harder to create due to the increased colour.
 * The icing will cause many moves to be spent to clear them.
 * Moon struck will prevent candies matching the colour on the left side of the moon scale from spawning. If orange or purple colour appears on the left side of the moon scale, 14 additional candies of that colour will have to be collected in addition to the 3 candies the player has to collect six moves after the moon struck.
 * This level is much harder than its counterpart in Reality in terms of passing the level and earning three stars.
 * The orders are worth 21,000 points, which is more than the one star target score.

Strategy

 * Concentrating mainly on the icing is key. It is essential to open up the board as quickly as possible before the first moon struck arrives. However, this requires extremely good luck.
 * A good tip is to clear the icing located near to the liquorice dispenser which in turn should allow the space required to create the colour bomb (refer to the picture for details).

Difficulty

 * Even though the presence of five colours should cause fewer moves to be spent to create special candies, its Reality counterpart has four colours for all the moves available. Hence, it is harder to create special candies compared to its Reality counterpart.
 * The orders give 21,000 points. Hence, an additional 54,000 points for two stars and an additional 94,000 points for three stars have to be earned through matching of candies.
 * Even though the two and three star score requirements are the same as its Reality counterpart, the extra colour makes them hard to reach. Moreover, the orders require require 100 fewer candies compared to its Reality counterpart, requiring 10,000 more points to be earned through matching of candies.
 * The starting available board space is limited and only has two quadrants, making it impossible to create a colour bomb.
 * There are plenty of five layer icing which require plenty of moves to clear them, reducing the number of moves available for sugar crush. To make matters worse, an extra colour makes it even harder to clear them.
 * The liquorice swirls and the liquorice swirl dispenser compound the problem of clearing the blockers.
 * The need to collect a large number of orders with the amount of blockers present requires huge cascades and special candy combinations which in turn gives a huge amount of points.
 * Moon struck removes candies matching the colour on the left side of the moon scale, lasts for five moves and occurs twice. This makes it much easier to create special candies. However, considering that its Reality counterpart has four colours for 45 moves, the moon struck duration is much too low to boost the score as only 11.11% of the Reality counterpart has four colours in the Dreamworld counterpart. Furthermore, the moon struck duration will be wasted in attempts to clear the blockers.
 * Overall, the moon strucks may not be enough due to their short duration.
 * Even after the first moon struck ends, it is not much harder to create special candies. However, the blockers and available board space negate this advantage.

Trivia

 * This level suffers from the empty slot glitch, like level 325 Reality version 1.
 * This is one of the few levels in which the player has to collect a huge amount of candies.
 * This level is selected to be the most boring level of 2014, though it got the second in the first round.