Typical occurrence of the Grandmapocalypse during the final stage, version 2.0.
The Grandmapocalypse is a midgame event. The Grandmapocalypse affects both the 1.0 Update of the game, as well as the pre-update version. It affects the appearance of the game window and causes spawning of Wrinklers and Wrath cookies.
Warning message that shows up when you buy One Mind upgrade.
The Grandmapocalypse returned alongside various other grandma-related updates in version "1.03", which was then quickly updated once again with only Grandmapocalypse-related updates in version "1.031". It is triggered after buying the "One mind" upgrade from the Research Facility, and is furthered by buying "Communal brainsweep" and finally "Elder Pact".
A typical occurrence of the Grandmapocalypse in version 1.031, during the final stage.
Known effects of this event include the background changing into a painting of grandmothers slowly acquiring a demonic appearance and the Wrath Cookie occasionally (or once angered enough, always) appearing instead of the Golden Cookies. In stats page "Special" section which, among other things such as the research progress from the Bingo center/Research facility, indicates the grandmatriarch's mood, from "Awoken", to "Displeased" and finally "Angered". In the version 1.0393, the Grandmas in the Store section of the game start turning creepy and Wrinklers, leechlike creatures that decrease CpS (cookies per second) until popped, will start to appear.
Grandma's default icon in the store.
Grandma in the store when awoken.
Grandma in the store when displeased.
Grandma in the store when angered.
Starting the Grandmapocalypse
To start the Grandmapocalypse, you must have at least seven types of upgraded Grandmas, and at least six Grandmas. You will then have access to the upgrade Bingo center/Research facility. This will allow you different research/upgrades and eventually the "One Mind" Upgrade. This will give you a warning message, and if allowed will start the Grandmapocalypse.
Stage 1
Once "One Mind" is purchased, the Grandmapocalypse begins. The Grandmas are now considered "Awakened". Wrath cookies will appear 1/3 of the time, and Wrinklers will appear as well. Grandmatriarchs are in the background.
Stage 2
To get to the next stage, follow the Research Upgrades until you reach the "Communal Brainsweep" Upgrade. The Grandmatriarch Status will change to "Displeased." Wrath cookies will appear 2/3 of the time. The Grandmatriarchs are tinted red and have glowing eyes.
Stage 3
To get to the Final Stage of the Grandmatriarch form, you must follow the Research Upgrades up until you get the "Elder Pact." Another warning message will appear. The news broadcasts will turn into reports of the world ending, and the Grandmatriarch Status will change to "Angered." Golden cookies will be entirely replaced by Wrath cookies at this stage. The Grandmatriarchs show their true form as demonic beings in the background.
Halting the Grandmapocalypse
Once the Grandmapocalypse occurs, the primary way to revert to a non-apocalyptic state is to purchase/toggle the Elder Covenant, which is worth exactly 66,666,666,666,665 cookies. It is the last upgrade that can be researched in the Bingo Center (after the Elder Pledge) and puts an indefinite hold to the Grandmatriarchs' wrath and permanently reverts their state of mind to "appeased". This results in the background changing into original blue self and absence of the Wrath Cookie.
This purchase results in a 5% reduction of your CpS. In order to return to the chaotic state of the Grandmapocalypse, the Elder Covenant can always be revoked at a cost of 6,666,666,666 cookies (approximately 1/10000th the cost of making the contract). This also restores your CpS to normal. You can only purchase/toggle the Elder Covenent and Elder Pledge after purchasing the Elder Pact upgrade.
A way to put a temporary hold to the Grandmapocalypse is buying the Elder Pledge. Spending a few cookies on the Elder Pledge will put the genocidal grandmas to rest for 30 minutes. During this time their mood displays as "appeased". Every time an Elder Pledge is bought, its price goes up by a factor of 8, capping at 4,398,046,511,104 (meaning once this point is reached, it's actually "cheaper" during continual active play to leave the Covenant in place until you're making approximately 6.1 billion CpS - or 5.8 with it in place. Even whilst idling, if you're going to be away for less than about 12 hours, or proportionally much longer at lower production rates, it can actually be more "expensive" to break and remake the Covenant than just leaving it be). The upgrade Sacrificial Rolling Pins doubles the time of peace, making it an hour long, and halves the breakpoint where the Covenant ceases to be cost effective to 3.05 billion CpS (where also you need to be AFK for 24+ hours to make breaking and re-making it worthwhile).
The Grandmapocalypse can also be stopped by selling all of your grandmas. Doing this causes the Grandmatriarchs' status to disappear from the Stats page, causes Wrath Cookies to stop appearing, pops all Wrinklers currently feeding on the Big Cookie, and reverts the news ticker to the standard collection of headlines. The typical Grandma quotes that occur upon selling a grandma also appear. In the end-game this results in a higher base production rate than purchasing the Elder Covenant. This can be quickly tested by opening multiple tabs. Buying at least one grandma will restart the Grandmapocalypse at the point you left off.
Achievements
Template:Tabletop
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|Grandmapocalypse
|Trigger the grandmapocalypse for the first time.
|594
|-
|
|Wrath cookie
|Click a wrath cookie.
|595
|-
|
|Elder nap
|Appease the grandmatriarchs at least once. "we are eternal"
|79
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|Elder slumber
|Appease the grandmatriarchs at least 5 times. "our mind outlives the universe"
|80
|-
|
|Elder calm
|Declare a covenant with the grandmatriarchs. "we have fed"
|82
|-
|
|Wrinkler poker
|Poke a wrinkler 50 times without killing it. "Also the name of a card game popular in retirement homes."
|598
|-
|
|Itchscratcher
|Burst 1 wrinkler.
|105
|-
|
|Wrinklesquisher [note 1]
|Burst 50 wrinklers.
|106
|-
|
|Moistburster [note 1]
|Burst 200 wrinklers.
|107
|-
|
|Last Chance to See (shadow achievement)
|Burst the near-extinct shiny wrinkler. "You monster!"
|262
|-
|}
↑ 1.01.1Unlike most "number of actions" achievements, the Wrinkler and Reindeer achievements are counted in a single game, not all time: Ascending will reset the counter.
Background changes
As the Grandmapocalypse goes on, the Grandmatriarchs grow increasingly angry with each Bingo Center/Research Facility related upgrade. This is reflected in the backgrounds:
Awoken Grandmatriarchs, after buying the One Mind upgrade.
Displeased Grandmatriarchs, once you purchase Communal Brainsweep.
Finally, the angered Grandmatriarchs, after the Elder Pact is acquired.
Strategies
A profitable strategy involves stopping progression of the Grandmapocalypse after One Mind (i.e. buying Exotic Nuts, but not Communal Brainsweep). This holds the status of the grandmatriarchs at awoken, and allows for golden cookies to spawn alongside wrinklers, albeit with the occasional red cookie. Since each Wrinkler returns 1.1x all cookies eaten while they were present, rather than just the cookies that one ate, if you let 10 Wrinklers eat cookies for an extended period, when you pop them you will end up with a total of 6x as many cookies as you would normally get. Mixed with the frequent x7 Frenzy production from clicking Golden Cookies, the result is an average CpS that is over 10x your natural CpS. And since the "Lucky" golden cookie bonus is not affected by Wrinklers, you will still get the full amount from a "Lucky" bonus while you have the Wrinklers. In addition, you can also get the x666 Elder Frenzy, which will stack with your Wrinklers and give more cookies. For pure CpS speed, this is the best strategy.
It takes an average of 54 minutes, 14.4 seconds for all 10 Wrinklers to spawn during "awoken" status, 27 minutes, 7.2 seconds during "displeased", and 18 minutes, 4.8 seconds during "angered".
If you are very dedicated to the game, an advanced playstyle is to purchase everything up to Elder Pact, but not the Pledge or Covenant. This strategy hinges on a mechanic called "eldeer" - when a Reindeer appears during a x666 Elder Frenzy. The reason this requires constant activity and monitoring is because you will want to synchronize your wrath cookies and Reindeer. If a cookie is on screen, wait until it is either almost completely faded out or a Reindeer is on screen before clicking it. Always wait until a Reindeer is at the far right of the screen, over the buildings panel, before clicking it. This encourages cookies and deer to line up, and eventually you will hit the jackpot. Even if it isn't Christmas, and you don't have the Season Switcher upgrade, or you are trying to get Easter eggs, Halloween cookies, or Valentine's Day cookies, buying the Elder Pact, and thus having more wrath cookies, can be profitable just due to the Elder frenzy.
An often-overlooked factor is the usefulness of wrinklers to get seasonal upgrades. Halloween requires you to pop wrinklers to get its cookies, and wrinklers also can give you Easter eggs. For this reason, some people may choose to buy the Elder Pact, which causes wrinklers to spawn faster, even if they prefer Golden Cookies to Wrath Cookies.
Only if you use a full autoclicker (250+ clicks per second) is Pledging even remotely better than One Mind or Elder Pact. Although you have full golden cookies, you give up Wrinklers and their respective 6x CpS boost. If you prefer golden cookie gains, but also like to get lots of cookies, stopping at One Mind is far better. As said before, the higher Frenzy-Lucky chances are only beneficial if you use the max autoclick settings - other than that, the Wrinkler loss is not worth it.
Never, ever use the Covenant. Since all the golden cookie rewards (the only reason you would use the Covenant at all) are all CpS dependent, giving up your CpS to use them is illogical. If you must end the Grandmapocalypse, Pledging is much, much better. Exception: You can use Covenant to cancel a Pledge if it has a long time remaining and you need to go AFK. Simply get Covenant and then immediately revoke it. The Pledge will be cancelled and wrinklers will start to appear, quickly regaining the cost of doing this.
Since the 2.002 update, it has become even more beneficial to remain in Stage 1 Grandmapocalypse (One Mind without Communal Brainsweep) than proceeding to Stage 3. The primary draw of Stage 3 is the higher occurrence of Elder Frenzies. Originally, triggering an Elder Frenzy would cancel and replace any Frenzy or Clot effect already active, meaning that the prevalence of Wrath Cookies alone determined the relative effectiveness of Elder Frenzies. With 100% Wrath Cookies, Stage 3 had 3 times the benefit from Elder Frenzy than Stage 1 did. Since the update, however, Elder Frenzy will now stack with Frenzy and Clot. Assuming that these effects are active about half the time during the Stage they are most common in, we have:
In Stage 3, half of all Elder Frenzies will overlap with a Clot and be cut in half, while the other half will go as normal. This leaves, with E being a full Elder Frenzy. This means that Elder Frenzies are now only three quarters as effective in Stage 3 as they were before the update.
In Stage 1, Wrath Cookies only appear 1/3 of the time, so start at 0.33E instead of E; after that, half of all Elder Frenzies will overlap with a Frenzy and be multiplied by 7, while the other half will go as normal. This gives, meaning that Elder Frenzies are now 4 times as effective in Stage 1 as they used to be, overall being almost twice as effective as Stage 3 Elder Frenzies in the long run, despite being so much rarer an occurrence.
Subtle variations can be made for Clot occurring occasionally during Stage 1 and the presence of Dragon Harvest with Krumblor's Reaper of Fields aura, but will not alter the proportional effectiveness significantly.
In Cookie Clicker Classic
An example of the first stage of the Grandmapocalypse
When you hit 1,000,000,000 cookies, the final stage will be activated
The Grandmapocalypse starts once you've accumulated over 1,000,000 cookies. The screen becomes covered in a shaking, flashing, tiled background of grandmas. As you gain more cookies, the Grandmapocalypse becomes more intense, with more images of different grandmas of various sizes and intensity. Sometimes the background can stretch or can shake very hard. The Grandmapocalypse background is made with the grandma image from the shop on the right. If you cheat by adding over 1,000,000,000 cookies, you'll start to enter the 3rd stage of the Grandmapocalypse. Example: Having infinite cookies (1e,+99999) will bring you to the 3rd stage of the Grandmapocalypse.
The Elder Pledge
The Grandmapocalypse can be temporarily halted by purchasing the Elder Pledge, an upgrade which becomes available after accumulating over 2,000,000 cookies. It's like a neat kind of Grandmapocalypse Removal System. The first iteration of this upgrade costs 666,666 cookies and increases the effectiveness of your clicking, and boosts the CpS of your grandmas based on your number of portals. Tip: Turn flashing off so you can't see the Grandmapocalypse background.
Strategies
The boost in CpS from purchasing the elder pledge can be a huge gift in the beginning of the end game of Cookie Clicker. Players can increase their clicking output by over 100x with enough cursors which can give a huge boost to cookie output when saving for additional Portals or the coveted Time Machine.
Skull Grandmas later in the grandmapocalypse
Trivia
Sometimes, switching windows can cause the grandma background to get 'stuck' in its current state until you buy another upgrade that changes it. (Does not work anymore in version 1.0375)
Elder Covenant used to cost 666 trillion, and trillions back in the day were really hard to obtain and instead of 5% CpS loss it was 20%, so it was a lot harder to get it and get more cookies with it.
If the bug occurs, this is the result. It's zoomed out for the best effect.
|Grandmapocalypse
|Trigger the grandmapocalypse for the first time.
|594
|-
|
|Wrath cookie
|Click a wrath cookie.
|595
|-
|
|Elder nap
|Appease the grandmatriarchs at least once.
|Wrinkler poker
|Poke a wrinkler 50 times without killing it.
|Last Chance to See 
