How to Beat CRIMSON — Lock & Load Boss Guide

CRIMSON is the eighth level of Lock & Load and the first commander you meet. He is the Legion’s quartermaster, he has never lost a shipment, and he is standing in the red dust of the foundry floor with roughly double the health of the trooper you fought one level earlier.

He is also, by a comfortable margin, the easiest commander in the campaign. That is not a knock on him — it is a deliberate ramp. CRIMSON is where the game teaches you that a boss is a different kind of level: he hits harder than the levels before him, his health bar is long, and you cannot win by clearing whatever is in front of you.

The arena is the foundry floor, which is one of the brighter battle backgrounds in the game. It is worth noticing because it is the last map where the scenery is not actively working against your ability to read the board.

CRIMSON is a move-economy fight. His health is long enough that a run of tidy three-matches will get you there, but only just, and any move you spend that does not start or extend a cascade is a move you did not have. Par on him is roughly double what the eighth level of a normal map would take, and the only way to come in under that is to stop treating the board as a series of separate matches.

Look for a swap that starts a chain rather than a swap that completes a line. The second one is always available and always worth less. Early in the map you can afford the first option; by level eight you cannot.

This is also the fight where you should forge your first Overload Charge on purpose rather than by accident. A line of five or an L-shape is worth the setup here, because CRIMSON’s health bar is the first one long enough that a single big hit is genuinely the difference between a clean win and a two-star scrape.

Honestly: nothing. This is the one commander you should beat without spending a booster, because every booster you use here is one you will want at Glacier or Void, and the coins are better banked. If you are stuck on him, the problem is your move economy, not your inventory, and buying your way past it will not help you on map two.

If you have already lost a life and you are on your last one, then yes — a Repair Kit is a reasonable purchase. Losing a run to the easiest boss in the game is worse than the coins.

Beating CRIMSON rolls you straight into Chocolate Forest with your score and your lives intact. If you came out of Lock & Load with three stars on most of the map and a life or two in hand, you are in good shape. If you limped in on your last life, spend a few levels of map two rebuilding — Chocolate Forest is noticeably more forgiving at the start than Lock & Load was at the end.