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. 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 Jelly Levels, and the easiest is thought to be Timed Levels, as there are no particularly difficult timed levels except 134, 182, and 462, which are considered the hardest 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.

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, 122, 134, Original 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: Original 147, 181, 285, 305, 311, 350, 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, and 734.

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, 133, 285, 305, 310, 414, 432, 434, 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, 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 combo, such as mixing two colour bombs.

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

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: 140, 165, 254, 347, 377, 419, 421, and 688.


 * 65 was taken off this list after a recent update on the Facebook version removed one colour and turned most of the inner jellies from double to regular.

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 and 608. Some Dreamworld levels (ie 55) 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, 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 - 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 combos) because sometimes they land on one of your special candies and you have to make it again.

Notorious 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.

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. Most often times, a jelly level tops it out.

List of Hard Levels
You can find all hard levels here:

Category:Hard levels

Category:Very hard levels

Category:Insanely hard levels

Trivia

 * Levels ending with 65 tend to be considered a struggle by people. (EX: 65, 165, 265, 365, 465, and 565). The trend ends at level 665 as it is considerably easy.  Another trends are levels ending with 67 (except 267 and 467), levels ending with 77 (except 177), levels ending with 99 (except 299 and 599) are all hard too.
 * Most very or extremely hard levels are odd number.
 * Levels with the number like 123 will be hard+ when the level number is the odd number but considerably easy or easier when even. 123 is hard, 234 is very easy, 345 is hard, 456 is easy, 567 is very hard, 678 is considerably easy. 789 used to be insanely hard level, but after second nerf, it became easy.