Level 17

**Level 17** is the seventh level in Candy Factory and the 4th ingredient level. To pass this level, you must collect 3 cherries in 24 moves or fewer. When you complete the level, Sugar Crush is activated and will score you additional points.

## Difficulty

Despite being rated as very easy, it can still be one of the harder levels in Candy Factory for a few reasons. Although there are five colors, which eases the creation of special candies, there can be few matches that are helpful in bringing the ingredients down. It is one of those levels where you are stuck deciding which useless move to make. The fact that the ingredients start in peninsulas don't really matter as you can bring them down from the bottom. Still, this level should be very easy for beginners.

## Tips

1. Focusing on bringing down the ingredients is the top priority. Read the tips below to get the best strategy.
2. First of all, the best special candy here is not the color bomb, but the vertical striped candy. Although both are somewhat easy to make with five colors and a rather large board, color bombs might not be very helpful unless combined with a special candy, as it does not remove a lot of candies from the board and actually rarely creates cascades and specials.
3. Avoid having two same colored candies below the ingredient as it will make it hard to clear through, unless you have a horizontal striped candy, or you can make a match on it.
4. Unless you can make a helpful match bringing down the ingredients, or making special candy and its combos, it might be helpful to play from the bottom of the board.
5. Wrapped candies alone are more helpful when placed between ingredients, to bring two ingredients toward the exit instead of only one. They are even more helpful when combined with any special candy. Double wrapped combos placed between ingredients can bring them halfway to the exit! Striped + wrapped combos can bring down at least two ingredients when placed in the right position and/or activated in the correct direction. Color bomb + wrapped are helpful in point scoring and usually will collect all cherries.
6. You don't need to make any striped + striped candy combo in this level, although they can help you conserve one or two moves. A striped + color bomb combo is the best combo in this level (besides double color bomb of course) as it can create vertical stripes in all three lanes with the ingredients.

**If there are fewer than 3 ingredients on the screen, then the board spawns up to 3 ingredients when possible.**

**1 Star: 40,000 Points**

**2 Stars: 50,000 Points**

**3 Stars: 60,000 Points**

## Difficulty of Earning More Stars

* The presence of five colors makes it easy to create special candies.
* The ingredients are worth 30,000 points. Hence, an additional 20,000 points for two stars and an additional 30,000 points for three stars have to be earned through matching of candies.
* The player is required to earn an additional 840 points per move for two stars and an additional 1,260 points per move for three stars.
* 24 moves are limited in earning a huge amount of points due to sugar crush and the limiting of the number of special candies created via regular matches. However, this point is less critical due to the low two and three-star target scores.

Previous Level: Level 16

Next Level: Level 18