5 Shockingly Simple Candy Crush Tips

Even if you are a Candy Crush veteran, these simple tips may shock you. Like a lot of our readers, I've spent A LOT of time crushing candies, but it still took me a long time to figure out some of the nuances of the game. If you love Candy Crush and want to know every little trick and tactic to beat the toughest levels, you need to check out these Shocking Candy Crush tips!

5. Striped Direction

Like the charming boy band, Striped Candies typically come in only one direction. There are many times you'll find yourself with Vertical when you want Horizontal and vice versa. On some levels, it may even be impossible to make one or the other because the width of the board is too small. Don't despair! Instead, turn your lemons into a Lemonade Lake and mix two of the worthless wrong direction Striped Candies to make a Striped + Striped Candy Combo! This generally applies to any Striped Candy combo - they are not sensitive to the Stripe direction.

4. Chocolate Farming

In the early levels, you'll when you see Chocolate you can kill it with fire, and as agent86ix argues in his Chocolate article, you often should. Later in the game though, it may be impossible to completely "kill" the Chocolate - so it becomes more about maintaining, or "farming" the Chocolate. Several key rules that will make you a good Chocolate Farmer:

Using these tips you can allow Chocolate to grow into areas which are less important to you, and spend moves to break it only when it endangers your main goal. Happy farming!

3. End of level Special Candies

For most levels, reaching the end without completing the objective results in sad cartoon characters and "waa waa" music. However, there are two exceptions - Timed Levels and Target Score/Moves Levels. At the end of these levels, all Special Candies activate, counting toward your Target Score and causing further chain reactions, which will often create even more Special Candies and further the effect. In the case of Timed levels, even the "+5s" are treated liked Wrapped Candies. Activating Special Candies often requires spending moves (and time) - so if you are getting short on either, try and set up as many Special Candies as possible and hope that the end of level fireworks push you over the score target.

2. Bomb eating Chocolate!

Do you hate Chocolate? Do you hate Bombs? Well you're not alone, but guess what? They aren't that bad when you mix them together. A little known fact is that Chocolate treats Bombs like other candies, and may randomly decide to consume it. This is always an awesome treat, but on some levels with short Bomb timers, a lot of Bombs, or hard to reach Bombs, it can be borderline mandatory. Try and use long ranged Striped Candy attacks to remove Obstacles between the Chocolate and Bombs - then let the Chocolate do what it does best.

1. Timed level +5 combos

Finally, we have a Candy Crush trick that might amaze you. On Timed Levels, have you always thought that the "+5s" just appeared randomly? Well it isn't random. In fact, +5s will appear any time that you get sequential Combos of 3 or more in one move. This is pretty much the only place in the game where simple "match 3" Combos play a big role, because they are pretty unimpressive in the score category and you are almost always better off going for a Special Candy. In Timed Levels, however, time is everything. As such, it is worth paying extra attention to trigger chain reactions that will earn you those +5s. Like agent86ix suggests in his Beginner's Guide work from the bottom, and you'll often get lucky with a few extra Combos as the candies shift.

Need a break from Candy Crush? There are some great alternatives here or here. Good luck, and keep crushing!