Grandmapocalypse

The Grandmapocalypse is an event that can be started early into the game. In earlier versions of the game such as Classic, this was a lategame event. Grandmapocalypse has always been in the game, both in version 1.0 and forwards and the pre-update version. It affects background appearance and causes Wrinklers and Wrath Cookies to start spawning.

Starting the Grandmapocalypse
To start the Grandmapocalypse you need to have at least 7 Grandma type Upgrades purchased, and at least 6 Grandmas, which will allow you to purchase the Bingo center/Research facility. With that you will be able to purchase new research upgrades, with a 30 minutes cooldown, and eventually the "One Mind" upgrade. If purchased you will get a warning message, and if allowed will start the Grandmapocalypse.

Stage 1
When "One Mind" is purchased the grandmapocalypse stage 1 starts and the Grandmas are considered "Awakened". Wrath cookies spawn 1/3 of the time instead of golden cookies, and Wrinklers appear at a slow rate. The background starts to show the grandmatriarchs.

Stage 2
If you keep purchasing research, you will reach an upgrade called "Communal brainsweep". This will start the 2nd stage and change the grandmatriarchs status to "Displeased", and Wrath cookies will replace golden cookies 2/3 of the time. Wrinklers will start spawning somewhat faster, and the grandmatriarchs will get a red tint and glowing eyes in the background.

Stage 3
The final stage starts when you've researched all the way up to and purchased "Elder Pact". At this point all Golden cookies are replaced with Wrath cookies, wrinklers will spawn even faster and the Grandmatriarchs will be "Angered". The grandmatriarchs will show their true form in the background as demonic masses of flesh in the background, and the News Ticker will start containing reports of the world ending.

Stopping the Grandmapocalypse
When Elder Pact is purchased, you unlock the Elder Plege switch. This temporarily halts the grandmapocalypse and unlocks the Elder Covenant switch. When the grandmapocalypse is halted or ended, the grandmatriarchs becomes "appeased". This changes the background to the default blue background, makes only Golden Cookies appear and pops all wrinklers, as well as reverting the news ticker to normal messages.

The Elder Pledge stops the Grandmapocalypse for 30 minutes, after which the Grandmapocalypse will slowly climb up the stages. Each time elder pledge is bought, it becomes 8 times more expensive, to a maximum of 4.4 trillion (4,398,046,511,104‬) cookies. After Elder Pledge has been used 10 times, Sacrificial rolling pins is unlocked, which can be purchased to double the time a pledge lasts to a total of 1 hour.

The Elder Covenant stops the Grandmapocalypse until you purchase Revoke Elder Covenant. Purchasing it costs 66.6 trillion (66,666,666,666,666) cookies and will reduce your CpS by 5%, and will remove Elder Pledge and its timer in addition. By paying 6.66 billion (66,666,666,666) cookies, you can Revoke Elder Covenant to get back your CpS lost, fade into grandmapocalypse and get back Elder Pledge.

You can also stop the Grandmapocalypse by selling all of your Grandmas. This will also remove the Grandmatriarchs status from the stats page. Buying at least one Grandma will start the Grandmapocalypse on the stage you previously were on.

Research upgrades and switches
After purchasing Bingo center/Research facility, you will start research. This takes 30 minutes and when completed unlocks the next upgrade, that upon purchase starts research again unless it's the last upgrade. This time can be reduced to 3 minutes with the heavenly upgrade "Persistent memory".

Strategy
The Grandmapocalypse may seem bad, but it actually has very many good sides to it. Each wrinkler gives back 1.1x of what all wrinklers have eaten, and the super rare Shiny Wrinkler 3.3x. This spreadsheet has information on how much CpS is gained from different amounts of wrinklers and shiny wrinklers as well as relevant upgrades. This is also affected by buffs to CpS, and debuffs to CpS, making CpS buffs very strong together with wrinklers. At the same time, you still get full unwithered amount of cookies from clicks and effects that give X hours/minutes of CpS such as luckies. This means wrinklers have not a single bad effect, since you can pop them at any time to get back your cookies. You always want to keep them as long as possible, until you need cookies for something that will give you a significant boost to CpS which would take too long to get without popping the wrinklers. This includes kitten upgrades, good 2x building CpS upgrades, high producing buildings and possibly Elder Pact. Wrinklers should also be popped before ascending.

As for Wrath cookies, they have a few bad effects, but what you can gain from them outweighs what you could lose from them. Wrath cookies have a chance to give "Elder frenzy" which gives 666x production for 12 seconds with "Get lucky", which together with 10 wrinklers gives 3,996x cookies for 12 seconds. This would effectively give you 47,952 seconds, or 13 hours 19 minutes and 12 seconds of CpS. In stage 1 and 2 you can get both golden cookies and wrath cookies, so you can stack a frenzy together with an elder frenzy in these stages for 7x more cookies. In stage 3 you can, at the cost of losing most of the benefit from wrinklers, pledge to get golden cookies again. When you then get a frenzy you can buy Elder Covenant, and then instantly buy Revoke Elder Covenant to enter Grandmapocalypse again. This guarantees the next golden cookie will instead be a wrath cookie which might then give an Elder frenzy, to stack the two buffs. If it doesn't you can pledge again and retry. These buffs and combos can be paired with Force the Hand of Fate in hope of getting a click frenzy, which there is a much larger chance to get compared to a regular golden cookie, and that will give you a very strong clicking combo.

Previously, "Eldeer", getting a Reindeer during an elder frenzy has been a very good strategy as it will give 666 times as much as a normal Reindeer when popped during an elder frenzy. This gives the achievement "Eldeer", but for anything else it is nowadays quite weak because of Force the Hand of Fate combos. It still produces a decent amount of cookies, so synchronizing Wrath cookies and Reindeer can still be worth it. They spawn at roughly the same intervals so if they become desynchronized you can simply save the game and then reload the page to synchronize them.