Candy Crush Saga special candies: how each one is made, and what the combinations do

Four in a row, an L or T, five in a row, and then what happens when you swap two specials together. A plain-English reference, with a note on which parts I could confirm and which I couldn't.

By MaxPublished 29 Oct 20263 min read

Candy Crush Saga is one of the biggest mobile games out there. This guide is built from King's own help article and the fan wiki, not from playing it. Wiki pages are volunteer-edited and games get patched, so treat the details as a starting point and check in the game.

Special candies are the main way to get through harder levels in Candy Crush Saga, and the part people forget is that the real power is in the combinations. Two specials swapped together do something different from either one alone. This is a reference for what makes each special, and what the pairs do.

Making the specials

A normal match is three in a row. Match more than that, or in a different shape, and you get a special candy in place of the match:

• Four in a line makes a striped candy. When it's matched, it clears a whole row or column, in the direction of its stripes. The fan wiki's page for it describes the stripes as following the direction you moved the candy.
• Five in an L or T shape makes a wrapped candy. It explodes and removes the candies around it.
• Five in a straight line makes a colour bomb. Swap it with a candy and it clears every candy of that colour.

The shapes above are generic drawings of the patterns, not the game's art. King's help article is where I got the wrapped and colour bomb rules (it's hosted on the Candy Crush Friends Saga community pages, and the rules match the main game's fan wiki caption for wrapped candies). The striped rule comes from the main game's fan wiki.

What the pairs do

Swap two special candies and you set both off at once, in a combined effect. These are the common ones, per the fan wiki:

There are also fish and coconut wheel combinations, and the fan wiki has the full list of those. I haven't gone through them here.

Which pairs I'd actually aim for

An Apple editorial piece on the game picks out a few that are worth chasing, and it lines up with the wiki:

• Striped + Wrapped is easy to make and cuts a wide path. It's described as good against blockers that keep spreading, like chocolate and bubble gum.
• Striped + Colour Bomb is good when the target is in a corner you can't reach otherwise, and it gets better the more candies there are of the striped candy's colour.
• Colour Bomb + Colour Bomb is hard to line up, but it clears every candy and takes a layer off obstacles, so it's a strong finisher on levels with single-hit obstacles.

The principle behind those is that the combination you want depends on the level's goal. A pair that clears lots of candies is wasted on a level where you need to break a specific blocker. A pair that gets a corner or a layer of something is wasted if you only needed the score.

A habit that helps

Don't set off a special the moment you make one. Specials are most valuable next to another special, so a board with two on it, even at a distance, usually has something better than "use now". Look at the board before the move, not after.