Grandmapocalypse Guide

GPOC guide by CursedSliver on the Dashnet Forums Discord Server. Inherits some information from the old guide by “KARMAPOCALYPSE” over pastebin, _nyan.cat_, and Lookas123 over discord.

If you already know about most of the grandmapocalypse, tl;dr:
YOU SHOULD ALMOST ALWAYS TO GO STAGE 3. Stage 1 also works for the people who aren't wanting to be optimal. Stage 2 is terrible for active players, but is better than Stage 1 and Stage 0 for idling. No reason to stay in Stage 0 as Stage 3 is better with the cps buffs you get from the research upgrades, and you get 100% golden cookies whenever you want and full wrinkler bonus whenever not active.

====== OVERVIEW ======

Grandmapocalypse (with common abbreviation being GPOC (or any variation of capitalization thereof)) is a permanent event triggered by purchasing One mind. It has three stages in which grandmas are variously agitated, with each subsequent stage being triggered by purchasing Communal Brainsweep (for stage 2) and Elder Pact (for stage 3). After Elder Pact is purchased, one can permanently (with a 5% cps penalty) or temporarily (without penalty) disable gpoc by purchasing Elder Covenant and Elder Pledge, respectively, which now unlocks on the “switches” section of the shop.

One Mind, and all other gpoc upgrades are research upgrades unlocked from purchasing the Bingo center/Research facility, which unlocks after purchasing at least 7 grandma types with 6 or more grandmas. The bingo center costs 1 quadrillion and initially unlocks new upgrades at 30 minute intervals (but can be shortened down to 3 minutes with the Persistent Memory heavenly upgrade). The research tree goes as follows:

Specialized chocolate chips (1 quadrillion) -> Designer cocoa beans (2 quadrillion) -> Ritual rolling pins (4 quadrillion) -> Underworld ovens (8 quadrillion) -> One mind (16 quadrillion) -> Exotic nuts (32 quadrillion) -> Communal Brainsweep (64 quadrillion) -> Arcane sugar (128 quadrillion) -> Elder Pact (256 quadrillion)

Once Elder Pact is purchased, "Elder Covenant" and "Elder Pledge" becomes available. Elder Covenant permanently disables gpoc but with a -5% cps debuff for as long as its active (you can revoke it to get your cps back); Elder Pledge temporarily disables gpoc for 30 minutes with no penalty, and you can also upgrade it to last for an hour by purchasing the Sacrificial rolling pins unlocked from pledging 10 times. You can also cancel elder pledges by using Elder Covenant and then revoking it. Elder Pledge starts with a cost of 64 cookies and octuples each time its used, capping off at 4.398 trillion cookies after the 12th pledge, while Elder Covenant has a fixed cost of 66.667 trillion cookies.

During the event wrinklers begin spawning, which are brown worm-like creatures that “suck” on the big cookie, taking cps away. Wrinklers spawn faster after progressing through a stage. Wrinklers can be popped by clicking on them repeatedly, which gives all the cookies it ate back along with some interest. By default, up to 10 wrinklers can be on the big cookie at any time, and each wrinkler withers (in-game term for wrinklers taking away cookie) cps by 5% each, resulting in a 50% withering if all 10 wrinklers are present. This can be upgraded with various upgrades.

During the event wrath cookies begin replacing golden cookie spawns, with an additional 1/3 of golden cookies being replaced by wrath cookies after every stage; so 1/3 at stage 1, 2/3 at stage 2, and every golden cookie becomes wrath cookies at stage 3. Wrath cookies are almost identical to golden cookies but with a different appearance and a different pool of effects that it can give. Instead of only giving positive effects, it now has an approximately 50% chance to give some negative effects.

====== STRATEGIES ======

Gpoc should be reasonably prioritized over in both active and idle playstyles, especially when approaching gpoc for the first time. Before ascending for the first time for an idle playstyle, the whole research tree should generally be treated as a 6x cps upgrade for 31 quadrillion ; for an active player, the gpoc part of the research tree should be treated as an approximately +9% (with an additional +15% if halloween cookies are available) cps upgrade for 511 quadrillion, but it may have more value depending on the ratio of active vs idle.

If you are an active player, the goal of starting gpoc in the first place is to RUSH STAGE 3. Therefore, do not start gpoc before you have enough cps to get Elder pact relatively quickly.

Unupgraded wrinklers provide an overall cps bonus of x6, so it is a huge help for idle players. However, wrinklers only affect passive production and not clicks, so they are fairly negligible for active players.

Naturally spawned wrath cookies should always be clicked because the negative effects are much, much weaker than the positive effects, so clicking them will overall cause a cookie gain. However, active players should always strive for 100% golden cookies due to frenzies’ long duration allowing for easy buff stacking, so stage 3 and then pledge should be the goal for them. Other than that, the main uses for wrath cookies are to farm golden cookie clicks (since they have a ~6x chance for chains compared to goldens, and chains grant a lot of golden cookie clicks), farm easter eggs (since they have a 8x chance for cookie storms compared to golden cookies, and storms give a lot of eggs), or for getting elder frenzies for really big combos.

Always use pledge, NEVER USE COVENANT. Covenant has -5% cps penalty and no other benefits compared to pledging, and covenant is more expensive. Pledge’s time limit is not a valid argument as if it runs out, you can just pledge again, and if you are not there to refresh the pledge then having gpoc will only help due to wrinklers providing huge cps bonus to idle production. Overall, there is almost no use for covenant's intended function. It is only really usable in its ability to cancel pledges and its ability to optimize for non-meaty special lumps if you are gonna be away by the time the lump falls.

The "Wrinkler Poker" achievement requires one to click a wrinkler 50 times. Since wrinklers normally die in 3 clicks, you will need to adequately space out your clicks so that the wrinkler has time to regenerate its health before your next click. Generally, taking 1 second (or even a bit less than that) for each click is adequate.

Some common misconceptions below:

Stage 1 is the optimal stage to stay in.
NO. If you idle, you are missing out on the cps bonuses that the later research upgrades provides. If you are active, then you are just hurting your ability to combo by having less golden cookies, and wrinklers should be negligible if combos are properly utilized. Therefore you should ALWAYS go to STAGE 3.

Skruuia (pantheon god) improves wrinkler gain.
No. Skruuia does not improve wrinkler gain passively. Despite what the tooltip says, it only grants a multiplier when popping them, therefore, it is practically pointless to use it passively. Only TEMPORARILY slot it in diamond when popping wrinklers ONLY.

Dragon Guts is a good aura/better than breath of milk to use for idle.
No. Dragon Guts’ bonus is theoretically ~90%, which would almost make it better than breath of milk, but it is actually not 90%. Note that the stat that causes wrinklers to explode into 20% more cookies do nothing if you are not popping wrinklers, therefore we can effectively invalidate that effect on passive usage by slotting it when popping wrinklers only. Therefore, we see that Dragon Guts only provides a cps increase of ~60%.

You only need stage 1 to unlock the achievement "Grandmapocalypse".
No. You need to reach stage 3 (by buying Elder pact) to unlock the achievement.

====== TECHNALITIES ======

Wrinklers’ huge cps bonus comes mostly from the fact that each wrinkler gains the withered part of the cps, which is the contribution of every wrinkler currently eating. For instance, having 10 wrinklers withering 5% each means that each wrinkler is eating 50% of total cps. Since there are 10 and each are eating 50%, they are in total eating 500% of total cps, which is the source of the cps increase. In addition, each wrinkler has a default multiplier of 1.1x when popped.

Shiny wrinklers are a special, yellowish-white variant of the wrinkler that has a 1/10000 (or 0.01%) chance to replace normal wrinklers. Popping one gives the shadow achievement “Last Chance to See”. Its only practical specialty is its default multiplier when popping, which is 3.3x instead of 1.1x.
For farming shinies, you would want to optimize for wrinkler cap and wrinkler spawn rate. Therefore, an optimal setup would be skruuia in diamond, dragon guts, and alternating rows of Wrinklegill and Nursetulip on clay.

There is a 0.00001 chance (not percent!) each frame for a wrinkler to spawn in a given wrinkler slot (cookie clicker runs on 30 fps). It increases to 0.00002 during stage 2 and to 0.00003 during stage 3. Since there are 10 wrinkler slots, each frame the probability is rolled 10 times; because of this, the wrinkler spawn rate increases as the max wrinkler cap is expanded and decreases as the cap is filled up.

Wrinklers may be replaced with “Winklers” with a 1/10000 chance each time the game is opened. They are purely cosmetic and turn back into normal wrinklers after the game is closed and opened again.

GPOC achievements:
| "Grandmapocalypse"
|| Trigger the grandmapocalypse for the first time
(note that it has to be stage 3)

| "Wrath Cookie"
|| Click a wrath cookie.

| "Elder nap"
|| Appease the Grandmatriarchs at least once.

| "Elder slumber"
|| Appease the Grandmatriarchs at least 5 times.

| "Elder calm"
|| Declare a covenant with the Grandmatriarchs.

| "Wrinkler poker"
|| Poke a wrinkler 50 times without killing it.
(elaborated on above in the strategies section)

| "Itchscratcher"
|| Burst 1 wrinkler.

| "Wrinklersquisher"
|| Burst 50 wrinklers.

| "Moistburster"
|| Burst 200 wrinklers.

| "Sweetmeats"
|| Harvest a meaty sugar lump.