Candy Crush Jelly is one of the most popular free-to-play mobile puzzle games, providing hours of matching candy entertainment. Advancing through its thousands of colorful levels requires patience, skill, and sometimes a store of the game‘s premium currency – gold bars.
Gold bars can be used to purchase extra moves, boosters, and lives when you get stuck on a particularly tricky level. They are also needed to unlock certain episodes and rewards. But buying gold bars requires real money – so how can you get them for free in Candy Crush Jelly?
An Overview of Gold Bars in Candy Crush Jelly
When you first install Candy Crush Jelly, you receive 50 free gold bars to help you progress. After this one-time only grant, the only free ways to earn gold bars are through timed Facebook rewards, winning the episode race, or via occasional event rewards.
The episode race pits you against four other randomly chosen players when starting a new episode. If you can beat the others and finish the race first, you‘ll earn 5 free gold bars. Coming in 2nd place gets you 3 bars, and 3rd place gets 1 bar. Focus on quickly clearing jelly and using strategic boosters to improve your chances of winning.
Outside of those limited options, Candy Crush Jelly heavily incentivizes spending real money to buy gold bars in bulk. Their monetization strategy centers around players paying to bypass timers, unlock content faster, or simply progress when they are stuck. Gold bars let you do all of those things.
Making the Most of Free Rewards
While gold bars will be scarce, you can take full advantage of Candy Crush Jelly‘s other free reward systems to conserve your premium currency.
Here are some tips:
Use free lives wisely: You receive 5 free lives per day. Try not to waste these on tougher levels where you‘re likely to lose fast. Start your daily play on easier levels to maximize your free lives.
Watch video ads for bonuses: Opting to watch a 30-second ad can reward you with a free booster, live, or lollipop hammer. Use these to help clear trickier levels.
Spin the daily Booster Wheel: This wheel provides a free powerup each day, which can include gold bars. Landing on the gold bars slice may reward anywhere from 5 to 50 free bars.
Activate the Daily Booster: This free powerup activated every 24 hours can make earning three stars on a level much easier. The extra points can help fill your Piggy Bank faster too.
Complete the Daily Quests: These mini challenges reward you with treats, which can be used to purchase lives, boosters, and gold bars in the shop.
Connect your Facebook account: Linking your Facebook allows you to earn free lives and gold bars from friends. Send and receive lives to build up reserves.
Piggy Bank Tips and Tricks
The Piggy Bank is a way to steadily accumulate gold bars over time through your gameplay. Here are some tips for maximizing your Piggy Bank rewards:
Focus on earning 3 stars on levels to fill it faster. The harder the level, the more bars you‘ll add by getting 3 stars. Use boosters to improve your star rating.
Only purchase Piggy Banks one at a time. Each bank unlocked will have different value bundles, so you want to buy them sequentially.
Wait until a Piggy Bank is full before unlocking it to get the best gold bar rate. Track it filling up via the meter.
Occasionally the game will offer Piggy Bank promotional discounts, like 20% off unlocking costs. Try to hold off until you see a deal.
Buy Piggy Banks strategically before starting difficult new episodes. The extra gold bars can really help overcome tough new levels.
Is Paying to Win Unavoidable?
Candy Crush Jelly definitely pushes players towards spending real money on gold bars when progression gets challenging. However, with some patience and skill, you can go quite far into the game only using your free rewards.
Apply strategy to maximize your daily freebies, utilize powerups at the right times, develop pattern recognition skills to match more candy, and take advantage of promotional offers. If you play thoughtfully and avoid wasting lives, you may be surprised how far you can go for free in Candy Crush Jelly.
That said, eventually nearly every player will get walled off at a near-impossible level which will require paying to progress. Candy Crush Jelly is designed to extract money from its most engaged players. The developer King makes over $2 billion annually from their games for a reason!
Paid Reward Systems in Other Top Mobile Games
The monetization tactics seen in Candy Crush Jelly are common across many hugely popular free mobile games. Here are some other top-earning examples and the premium currencies used:
- Fortnite: V-Bucks to buy Battle Pass tiers, skins, emotes, and season unlocks
- Pokémon GO: PokéCoins for items, upgrades, and Raid Passes
- Clash of Clans: Gems for instant building, resources, shields, and boosts
- Coin Master: Spins for raiding villages, attacking, and coin rewards
- Roblox: Robux to buy premium assets, avatar items, abilities, and more
All these games allow you to progress and enjoy core content for free initially, before hitting blockers that require premium currency purchases. Candy Crush Jelly is no different, but at least provides ways to play and gain rewards each day without paying.
Does Skill or Luck Drive Candy Crush Jelly Progress?
There is certainly an element of randomness in the Candy Crush Jelly board layouts and pieces you are given to work with. However, experienced players agree the game ultimately comes down to skill in strategically clearing objects, planning moves ahead, and making matches.
Having boosters or extra lives can help overcome bad luck in a given board layout. But in general, developing pattern recognition and match-making skills will take you much farther than relying on luck.
Paying for gold bars can help, but you still need skill to ultimately clear those challenging levels. The most successful Candy Crush Jelly players don‘t just buy their way to high scores – they develop real expertise in efficient matching strategies.
So while luck plays a factor, Candy Crush Jelly rewards those who master its gameplay mechanics above all else. If your skill level is not improving, buying gold bars alone won‘t get you much farther.
Final Tips for Free Candy Crush Jelly Rewards
- Save gold bars only for the toughest levels where you‘re truly stuck
- Watch ads frequently for free bonuses and multipliers
- Learn strategies experts use for matching huge cascades
- Take breaks if you lose several lives to avoid wasting more
- Spin the Booster Wheel daily and use free powerups wisely
- Add Facebook friends for unlimited free lives
- Purchase discounted Piggy Banks before starting hard episodes
- Focus on skill development over buying your way through levels
With some smart play and patience, you can enjoy Candy Crush Jelly‘s thousands of fun matching levels fairly far without having to buy gold bars. But eventually, be prepared to spend a little money if you want to progress to the highest episodes and complete the entire game.
