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 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.

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, 445, 482, 562, 566, 567, and 575.

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, 549, 562, and 578.

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, 323, 445, and 463.

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, , 310, 414, 432, 434, 458, and 578.

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, 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, and 410.

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, 377, 419, 421, 425, and 566.

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 or four colours.

Notorious levels: 140, 165, 254, 347, 377, 419, and 421.


 * 65 was taken off this list after a recent update on the Facebook version removed one color 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: 97, 169, and 183, where it's much more of a problem on Facebook than on iOS. There is an exceptional case in 97 where it is claimed that iOS is harder than Facebook, though the target score is the same - 100,000. 258 is a level where the Target score may be an issue. 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, and 586.

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, and 500.

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 and 414

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 levels (Dreamworld Only): , ,, , 68, 104, 123, 125, 145, Pre-nerfed 147, 202, 203, 227, 290 etc (please expand list)

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.

Difficulty Clusters
A difficulty Cluster is a set of multiple levels where they show a lot of difficulty overall.

The original difficulty Cluster was from levels 180 through 184.

Here are a list of known difficulty Clusters:

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. (ie, 65 itself, 165, 265, 365, 465, and 565).