I love Candy Crush Saga. I do. I can’t help it. I tried to avoid it. And yet here I am, smashing chocolate blocks and replaying levels just to make sure I have a flawless roadmap of 3-starred levels in my wake, just like you.
Let’s be clear. I hate the concept of freemium games. If I had my choice, I would rather pay for a game without being nickel-and-dimed to death… particularly just to keep playing.
If you’ve gotten past the first hurdle of Lemonade Lake in Candy Crush, you’ll understand what I mean. Perhaps you were like me and had gotten there without giving in to the frustrated impulse to pay real money to keep playing when you run out of lives, or when you have one more jelly square that you need to break and you’re fresh out of lollipops.
But at least with Candy Crush, I have options.
Tickets, please!
Whether you’ve paid to keep playing (no judgment), or you’ve ground through countless lives and idled through the 20 minute wait times, if you’ve got past level 35, you will realize that you are no longer able to progress.
If you’ve been paying your way through, this shouldn’t be a great concern for you. But if you want free and you’re looking for a way around shelling out (and once you start, the fun don’t stop), keep reading.
Facebook
If you were like most people and connected Candy Crush to your Facebook profile (a good idea if you want to play on multiple devices, plus you can take advantage of the daily bonus wheel), you’ll only be able to see two options to continue:
- Pay $0.99 to proceed
- Bother your friends on Facebook to give you tickets to proceed
Neither of these options are very pleasant to most people (unless you have a full friend circle that enjoys helping each other out in silly social media games). But there is a secret third option!
Mystery Quests
What are Mystery Quests?
There are extra levels that you can complete in order to earn (sour) keys. You can only complete one every 24 hours, and you will need to complete three of them in order to earn enough keys to progress. It is a little more time-consuming but it is FREE.
If you happen to be stuck at the jump-off point to the next stage of levels, check to see whether or not this option shows up under “pay $0.99 to play instantly” and “ask your friends on Facebook.” Most of you will not.
The Mystery Quest option only shows up if you have not synced your progress with Facebook. It looks like the game would rather you buy it or bother your friends than give you an easy option to keep playing for free.
You can unsync Candy Crush with Facebook temporarily by following these steps:
- IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have a lot of lives stocked up that were gifted to you by Facebook friends, logging out of Facebook may cause the number of your lives to go back down to 5.
- If you are in the roadmap screen, press the yellow button on the bottom left corner to bring up the menu.
- Press the red button with the door to go back to the Candy Crush splash screen.
- Press the yellow corner button again.
- Press the green button with the gear to go to Settings.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the options and Log Out of Facebook.
- Exit out of the menu (press the red button with the X in the top right corner).
- Press Play!
- On the Candy Crush roadmap, press on the airplane button where you were last stuck on.
- You should be able to see the third option for Mystery Quests now.
These Mystery Quests can be tricky, but they follow the same mechanics as any of the other levels. Just be patient and keep playing, you’ll get them.
Hope this helps!
(EDIT: For everyone asking where Mystery Quests have gone – I don’t know. I suspect King doesn’t much like the option of people continuing to play their game for – shudder – free.
As user Lori_7785 suggests, try setting your phone to Airplane Mode. I tried this out the other day myself and it worked for me, but I haven’t updated the game on my devices in a while so this may not work for everyone.)
Published: Jan 10, 2014 09:24 pm