How to Beat Candy Crush Saga Level 201

I noticed we were getting an inordinate amount of traffic off my last post from the search term “candy crush 201.” Although many of the tips  in that post are helpful for Level 201, I thought I’d write something specifically about 201 and how to beat it.

Here’s my terminology key for this post:

If these are wrong, comment and let me know. I’m still not sure of the real name of my “marmalade.”

First off, Level 201 is really freaking hard. You will almost certainly have to play it many, many times. See the last post at #1 for how to get infinite lives (and for other general tips). But most of all, try to have patience.

OK, now the tips:

1.  Prioritize your moves.

Examine the board and make moves in this order:

1. Create color bomb (brown sphere with sprinkles) anywhere by combining 5 the same color.
2. Create striped candy where it will likely be used to destroy jellies in the bottom-corner bins (so create in or next to outside two rows or bottom two rows of main bin). (Also, remember striped candies are striped opposite of how they’re created — see #5, bullet 5.)
3. Create wrapped candy anywhere on the board where it can be used soon to attack the marmalade that surrounds the color bombs on 3 sides of the board.
4. Create striped candy where it will likely be used to clear a row that has marmalade.
5. Match candies next to marmalade to wear it down. See also 4, below, for more on specific marmalade/jelly for 201.
   
6. Match candies in the middle of the board that clear 2+ jellies.
7. Match candies in the middle of the board (away from marmalade) to destroy normal jellies that are “stranded.”

Remember that focusing on destroying marmalade, creating special candies and hitting hard-to-reach corner jellies will lead to natural destruction of most of the normal jellies. So you shouldn’t worry about them unless you can’t find any other moves or you’re down to just a few “stranded” jellies.

Even if you’ve already cleared an area of jelly, don’t be afraid to match there if it means creating a special candy that can destroy marmalade or corner jellies.

2.  Use your color bombs wisely.

You get three for “free” at the beginning, but (of course) you have to slowly break your way through to them. When you do, look at the corner holding bins before you swap the color bombs. Unless you’ve already cleared those 8 pesky corner jellies, try to use your color bombs on the color best represented in those hard-to-reach jellies.

If you’re lucky enough to make more color bombs, my advice is to use them immediately or at least very soon. My attempts to save them and try to make a striped candy to swap them with always seemed to lead to them somehow getting set off and sort of wasted. Pick an adjoining color that is represented in the corner jellies or (if you’ve handled that) in the remaining jellies, and strike while the color bomb is hot!

One note: swapping two color  bombs on this level does reach the corner holding bins, at least on facebook (I have yet to re-create that magic moment on my phone on 201). However, in my attempts to navigate the two together, I used so many moves that I didn’t have enough left to actually win the level, despite the massive help. You might be better setting one off, then the other, then creating lots of special candies with your more homogeneous board.

3.  Consider using boosters if you have any.

I haven’t ever bought a booster in CCS; however, I was lucky enough to start playing on facebook during a week when they were giving them away free to celebrate the creator company’s anniversary (or “The King’s Birthday,” as they called it). I won’t tell you not to buy any; I will tell you that, if you have some or are willing to buy some, this might be a level worthy of their use.

This level is hard. It doesn’t allow you to apply any “extra 3 moves” gifts from friends. The first time I beat this level, I used the lollipop booster to knock out a couple of remaining jellies. I’m not familiar with all of the boosters, but let me remind you that the lollipop only destroys one “level” of jelly per lollipop. This means, if your last jelly is actually double-enforced, or has marmalade on it, etc., you will need one lollipop per level until all the jelly is gone. I say this so you won’t buy 3 lollipops to destroy three jellies, only to realize that you can’t because one of them was doubled. And now you’re out of moves and you hate life.

I’ve never used the teeth booster, but it looks like it would be very helpful on this level. This blog post (not my work) embeds a video of it wreaking havoc on chocolate, licorice and jelly in Level 70.

4.  Pay special attention to these marmalade blocks:

If you haven’t managed to clear all the corner-bin jellies, prioritize destroying these marmalade blocks first:

These blocks control whether the corner bins can re-fill. You can’t destroy a jelly that doesn’t have a candy inside of it unless maybe you swap two color bombs (haven’t tried it yet).

If this peril befalls you, it looks like this:

You have to destroy these marmalade-to-jelly blocks anyway; so make them a priority unless you’ve cleared all the jelly below them in the corner bins.

To be clear: will these tips work every time? No. Will they work the first five times? Probably not. Will they work eventually? Almost certainly. So give them a try. And remember to keep filling up on free, unlimited lives.

I’ll update this if I think of any more tips for this level. Feel free to leave your own or any comments/critiques for me in the comments section. Thanks for reading, and good luck with the Crush!