Cookie Clicker Wrinklers and Grandmapocalypse: Good or Bad?

Quick answer: wrinklers are good for almost every player. Ten of them cut your visible CpS in half, but they store five times your CpS and pay it back with a 10% bonus when popped. That comes to about 6 times your normal cookie income, paid in a lump. Let them fill up and pop them all before you ascend. Numbers below come from the game’s code, version 2.058, and we checked the 10-wrinkler case in the running game.

Sooner or later you will buy “One Mind”, the grandmas will start whispering, and fleshy creatures will crawl onto your big cookie and begin eating your production. Your instinct will be to pop them immediately. That instinct is wrong, and this guide explains the maths.

What wrinklers actually do

Each attached wrinkler removes 5% of your CpS from your visible income. Nothing is destroyed, though. The odd part is how the eaten cookies are stored: every wrinkler banks the whole share eaten by the group, not just its own 5%. With 10 attached, 50% of your CpS goes missing, yet each of the 10 stores 50% of your CpS. That is why more wrinklers pay so much better than a few.

When you pop a wrinkler, it disgorges everything it swallowed, multiplied:

The bonuses multiply together. The Skruuia spirit in the Pantheon adds +15%, +10% or +5% depending on the slot.

In the game at 10 wrinklers, we measured 5.0 times CpS going into storage and 0.5 times CpS still reaching the bank, and a mass pop paid the expected 1.1 times. This table covers production only, not clicks or golden cookie payouts. Two more catches: stored cookies cannot be spent until you pop, and your bank is lower in the meantime, which shrinks Lucky! payouts.

The cap: 10 wrinklers (up to 14)

The game limits you to 10 wrinklers at once (12 with the heavenly upgrade Elder spice, 14 with Dragon Guts as well). Once you are at the cap, no more spawn, and your CpS has stabilised at its reduced rate. Dragon Guts also makes each one eat 20% more and pay 20% more.

How to get a wrinkler: buy One mind to start the Grandmapocalypse, then wait. Each empty slot has a small chance to spawn one every frame, and the chance rises with each stage. By the code’s spawn rate, filling all 10 slots takes about 2.7 hours on average at the first stage and about 54 minutes at the last, or a fifth of that with the Unholy bait heavenly upgrade.

This creates the standard strategy:

1. Trigger the Grandmapocalypse deliberately.
2. Let all your wrinkler slots fill and feed.
3. Leave them alone for hours or days while you idle.
4. Pop them all before ascending, or when you need a large cookie burst.

Your displayed CpS looks terrible the entire time. Your actual accumulated wealth is growing faster than if you had no wrinklers at all.

Shiny wrinklers

A golden, shimmering wrinkler replaces a normal one on about 1 spawn in 10,000. It pays out three times the normal multiplier. There is also a shadow achievement for popping one, Last Chance to See.

If you are achievement hunting, note that some players deliberately keep a shiny wrinkler alive rather than popping it. Check which achievement you still need before you click.

How to pop a wrinkler

Click it quickly: a normal wrinkler bursts on the 3rd click and a shiny on the 8th. Its health recovers between clicks, so slow clicking only pokes it.

When you should pop them

• Before ascending. Always. Stored cookies count as baked when released, so they contribute to your prestige. Ascending with fat wrinklers still attached throws that away: when we ran the game’s ascension reset in a test with a wrinkler holding a trillion cookies, the stored amount was wiped and added nothing to the total.
• When you need a burst to afford a specific building or upgrade.
• Before a big combo, if you want a larger bank for a capped Lucky! payout.

When you should not

• Out of impatience because your CpS number looks low. That number is lying to you about your real income.
• Right after they spawn. They have eaten almost nothing; you get almost nothing.

Starting and stopping the Grandmapocalypse

The Grandmapocalypse advances through three stages as you buy One mind, Communal brainsweep and Elder Pact. A third of golden cookies are wrath cookies at the first stage, two thirds at the second and all of them at the third.

You can pause it with Elder Pledge, which calms everything for 30 minutes (60 with Sacrificial rolling pins) and pops every wrinkler with the normal payout. Elder Covenant also pops them and stops the Grandmapocalypse at the cost of 5% CpS, until you buy Revoke Elder Covenant.

Most players should not buy Elder Covenant. The wrinkler profit and access to Elder Frenzy (×666 CpS) outweigh a flat 5% loss by a wide margin.

The wrath cookie trade-off

During the Grandmapocalypse, some golden cookies become red wrath cookies. They can roll bad effects — Clot halves CpS for 66 seconds, Cursed Finger halts production for 10 seconds, Ruin eats part of your bank. But they are also the only source of Elder Frenzy (×666 for 6 seconds).

For anyone doing combo play, that trade is heavily in your favour. A ×666 window dwarfs the cost of an occasional Clot.

The summary

Wrinklers look like a punishment and are actually a savings account: ten of them turn into about 6 times your normal production. Let them eat, let them fill every slot, and pop them all before you ascend. The only genuine mistake is clicking them the moment they appear.

Play Cookie Clicker and start your own Grandmapocalypse.