Sugar Drop

The  was officially introduced in Candy Crush Saga in June 2015, with this announcement on King.com's blog.

This feature allows the player to win boosters by collecting a certain number of the eponymous sugar drop candies. Sugar drops can be collected in the latest level of player progress, as well as in specially marked levels denoted as Sugar Track levels. The feature is activated in rounds such that once you have collected all the rewards in one round, you must wait a certain amount of time before you can use the feature again.

A list of levels which are best for collecting sugar drops, as voted by members of this wiki, can be found here.

History

 * Note: There are major changes after release of Fungi Forest.

The Sugar Drops feature was first introduced on a trial basis on April 22, 2015 and remained in A/B/N testing for a few months, before being announced and rolled out to all players. They showed variations in features to test which version is suited best for players.

During pre-release stages, some users did not have the feature, including some with advanced game progress. Users who did have the feature had different versions of it, with differences in the following areas:


 * Number of candies to collect per round (120, 240, 600)
 * Number of rewards (3 or 5)
 * Length of cool-down period between rounds (4, 8, 12 hours)
 * Ability to collect sugar drops from the same level more than once

The feature was significantly updated on the web interface, with the release of the 66th episode, Soda Swamp. This release included the addition of information screens on the web, as well as changes to the reward screens.

Sugar drops (candies)


Sugar drops have the properties of ordinary candies, but they have a white band imprinted with the letter "C". Sugar drops can be collected to obtain rewards.

These candies are created in special sugar track levels, as well as in the current level of progress, but they are not truly "spawned" onto the board. Instead, when the user or a conveyor belt generates a cascade of 5 or more matches, such that Mr. Toffee can be heard saying, "Sweet", "Tasty", "Delicious", and "Divine", a stream of sparkles arc from the center of the board, and change a standard candy at random into a sugar drop.

One sugar drop is created regardless of the size of the cascade. Cascades created in between moves, such as by the movement of a conveyor belt, a party popper from cake bomb, can also cause sugar drops to be created. Cascades during Sugar Crush do not create sugar drops, however.

When sugar drops are matched, they go into the collection jar.

Note that an already formed sugar drop cannot be converted by anything else, such as colour bomb + striped candy combination.

Current level of progress

 * The latest level of your progress will always give sugar drops once per game, whether or not it is on the Sugar Track (unless it's a Timed Level on mobile). You will be able to collect sugar drops from your current level of progress just like a standard track level. When you have moved to a new level, the feature will be activated on that level. The current level of progress is displayed on the map with a Sugar Track level icon.
 * If you have restarted the game, your current progress will be activated again.
 * Note that if you have completed an episode but get stuck due to checkpoint or no more new levels, the final level is not counted as your current progress.

Sugar Track levels
Please note that this section details the behaviour of those levels which are on the Sugar Track. The activation and deactivation characteristics herein do not apply to the current episode of progress.

Sugar track levels are shown on the map with a large icon with the letter "C", when the Sugar Drop feature is active. These levels spawn sugar drop candies which the player can collect to obtain gifts. Sugar track levels can usually be played only once per round, after which, they are deactivated for the remainder of the round. However, when the player completes a sugar track level without collecting any sugar drops, they may be able to play the level and collect drops again. Additionally, when a player earns a reward, the last sugar track level played may often be played again. Some of these apparent inconsistencies may be due to program defects.

When you click on a sugar track level to play it, a progress bar is shown, indicating the number of candies you have collected thus far, and the number needed for the next reward.

On non-sugar track levels, the progress bar is shown, but it is grayed out. This is one way to tell if a sugar track level has been de-activated, when you fail a level and click retry to play it again. Another method is to check the progress bar after playing a level, where the bar may gray out, indicating that no more drops will be available here.

There are three sugar track levels per episode, starting with the fourth episode, Chocolate Mountains. The first sugar drop level is Level 36. There are sugar track levels of all level types, and in the full range of difficulty from very easy to insanely hard.

Please note that timed sugar track levels are enabled on the web version only, not on mobile.

On the mobile version, if the level chosen in mystery quests happens to be a sugar track level, you can collect sugar drops just as if you are choosing that level directly on the map. You cannot collect again if you have collected even a single sugar drop in one of your attempts, even if you failed the level, but this can be thwarted if you quit the application.

Collection jar
On the web version, the collection jar is located below the objective list (ingredients, orders, etc.). On mobile, it is located in the same position as the moon scale in Dreamworld.

During play, sugar drop candies matched are collected in the jar. The number of candies collected is displayed on the jar. At the end of the level, whether you pass it or not, the sugar drops from the collection jar get added to the total needed for the next reward. One must go to the Level cleared or failure screen to collect them.

Typically, the player is credited one sugar drop for every one collected. However, for some reason, web version players can earn double amount of drops if they manage to pass the level. For example, one plays level 666 on web version, collects 46 drops and beats the level, his/her collection will be added by 92, which can result in gaining three rewards.

Claiming rewards
When you complete a level that brings the sugar drop count to the number needed for a reward, the animated rewards window is displayed. The sugar drops are poured from the collection jar into a mechanical contraption, which mixes them up. A gift box then pops out, and instantly opens to show the boosters won, but you must press the Claim reward button to add these to your supply of boosters. The next screen confirms the boosters have been added. You must then press the Sweet! button to resume game play.

If you have more than one set of rewards to be claimed (either by collecting enough drops for multiple rewards, or by mobile device being offline during collection), all rewards will be claimed together.

On mobile version, you must connect to internet in order to claim rewards. Otherwise the gift box will not open.

Known issues

 * Sometimes the present doesn't open even though the Claim reward button lights up.
 * On mobile, if connection is bad, sometimes the present does not open immediately, but when the connection has been repaired, the contents will still be added to your inventory.

Rewards

 * A total of five rewards are issued, after 24, 60, 84, 120 and 180 candies respectively. Before release of Fungi Forest, the pattern was 48, 164, 264, 420 and 600, which is still applied to some of the players.
 * Known rewards include the following boosters: lollipop hammer, jelly fish, colour bomb, coconut wheel, free switch, striped and wrapped, and lucky candy (must be unlocked first), and gold bars.
 * The types of rewards received are random, and may not be related to the tier or the reward program.

Cool-down period
Once the final reward of the round has been won, the Sugar Drops feature is deactivated. Currently, the cool down is 8 hours, although there were variations in previous releases. During this time, when the player clicks any level to play it, the sugar drops progress bar displays a timer indicating the amount of time remaining before the feature is reactivated. The cool-down period syncs between web version and mobile device (when connected to internet).

If you have collected too many drops beyond the final reward, those drops will be kept for the next track, but only up to one less than the requirement of first reward.

On mobile, sugar track levels are still indicated by larger icons during cool-down. There is a notification message if the application is running when the cool-down is over. You also need to connect to internet when the cool-down is over, in order to reactivate previous sugar track levels.

List of levels with sugar drops


Note: Sugar Drop levels during specific period are excluded on the list.

TIP: How to know levels with sugar drops (web version):
 * You let cursor any levels are locked on the map. If a C-shaped icon appears, this means it is the level with sugar drops.

Trivia

 * This feature was introduced prematurely on the teaser video of level 906 one day before the official release of the 62nd episode, Polka Park.
 * This feature was officially introduced when the 44th Dreamworld episode, Nocturnal Nuisance was released.
 * This was the first new feature to be introduced since the UFO in Gummy Galaxy. The next new feature after this one is locked chocolate, introduced in Siberian Sorbet.
 * This feature is only available in Reality. In Dreamworld, there are no levels that have this feature.
 * A glitch may cause sugar drops to spawn in Dreamworld, but they cannot be collected.
 * On mobile, you can collect sugar drops at any time, however you must connect to the Internet to claim rewards. As such, the cool-down will not be activated as long as you have rewards unclaimed.
 * As of mobile 1.60, reward box will be reserved until you connect and claim. If there are more than one set of rewards, they will stack and you can claim them altogether.
 * If one of the rewards has more than 3 copies, it will be shown as two icons.
 * Also in mobile 1.60, the cool-down does not activate if the application is not running. However if one connects to internet, the cool-down will be adjusted to correct value.
 * In the first version of the reward screen, Tiffi showed different emotions on PC than she did on the mobile version.
 * On mobile (as of 1.52.2), there is a glitch whereby the counter on the collection jar keeps showing zero. This does not affect the sugar drops you have actually collected and only affects if you are playing the first sugar drop level every time you open the game. This was fixed later.
 * On mobile, the introduction screen doesn't show timed levels, as they never give sugar drops. The left icon has been replaced with an icon for candy order levels.
 * If you have many computers around, with the same sign-in account, you can get many reward times for each stage reward.
 * Although the blog post states the rewards as "from boosters to lives and everything in between", it's not possible to earn extra lives from Sugar Track.
 * This is a rare occurrence: If the board has no standard candies after cascades, no sugar drop will be generated. One example is level 1132 where candy bombs flood the board and no standard candies will respawn. Another example is level 1394 which the board contains only candy bombs.
 * If a shuffling occurs, sugar drop candies will not be shuffled.

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