Wrinkler

A Wrinkler.

Ten Wrinklers feeding off the Big Cookie.

A wrinkler during the Christmas season

Wrinklers are twitchy leech-like creatures that, in normal gameplay, only start appearing during the Grandmapocalypse. They provide a large buff to CpS (cookies per second) during idle play, while appearing to be a debuff during active play.

Overview

Wrinklers appear within the game's left panel and slowly crawl toward the Big Cookie.

Twelve Wrinklers at the Big Cookie.

Upon reaching the big cookie, a Wrinkler will begin to feed upon it, withering the total CpS by 5% each. A total of ten Wrinklers can feed on the big cookie at once; twelve if Elder spice has been purchased. Each additional Wrinkler withers another 5% of CpS – two Wrinklers wither 10% CpS total, three wither 15%, and the maximum of twelve Wrinklers withering 60% of the total CpS. While the output of manually clicking the big cookie is unaffected, having enough Wrinklers will appear to halve the cookie production of every building and upgrade.

A Wrinkler can be killed, or popped, by being clicked on from three to five times. The game hints at this property by having a Wrinkler continuously shake when hovered over. When exploded, it will drop 1.1 × the total number of cookies withered during its life. If the current season is Halloween, a popped Wrinkler also has a 5% chance of unlocking one of the 7 Halloween cookie types. The stats menu will display how much of the current CpS has been withered, as well as the total number of popped Wrinklers. If a Wrinkler is popped before reaching the big cookie, it will not drop any cookies or upgrades.

If the Grandmatriarchs are appeased, whether via Elder Pledge, Elder Covenant, or by selling all grandmas, all the wrinklers on the screen will automatically be exploded, and will not begin to appear again unless the Grandmapocalypse is restarted.

CpS multiplier

Because Wrinklers store a percentage of the total wither rate, each additional Wrinkler adds a larger bonus than the previous one. The net increase in CpS is 0.5% with one Wrinkler, rising to 832% with the maximum of twelve. The twelfth Wrinkler alone increases net CpS by more than 120% of the pre-Wrinkler base value.

To calculate the effective CpS multiplier, assuming N Wrinklers present, the formula consists of:

• $N \cdot 0.05 \cdot 1.1 \cdot 1.05 \cdot 1.05$(withered CPS for each wrinkler. Each Wrinkler hoards 5% times number of Wrinklers present. Hoarded cookies are then amplified by a flat factor of 1.1 (10% gain after popping), an additional 1.05 (5% more cookies) with the Wrinklerspawn upgrade and additional 1.05 with the Sacrilegious corruption upgrade.)
• $1-N \cdot 0.05$(Remaining unwithered CPS)

Put together, this is

• $N \cdot (N \cdot 0.05 \cdot 1.1) + (1 - N \cdot 0.05) = N^2 \cdot 0.055 - N \cdot 0.05 + 1$without wrinkler upgrades.
• $N \cdot (N \cdot 0.05 \cdot 1.1) \cdot (1.05) + (1 - N \cdot 0.05) = N^2 \cdot 0.05775 - N \cdot 0.05 + 1$with 1 wrinkler upgrade.
• $N \cdot (N \cdot 0.05 \cdot 1.1) \cdot (1.05 \cdot 1.05) + (1 - N \cdot 0.05) = N^2 \cdot 0.0606375 - N \cdot 0.05 + 1$with both wrinkler upgrades.

From the above formula, we can draw the following CpS conclusion:

No. Wrinklers	CpS Multiplier	CpS Multiplier with one of: "Wrinklerspawn" or "Sacrilegious corruption"	CpS Multiplier with both: "Wrinklerspawn" and "Sacrilegious corruption"
0	1	1	1
1	1.005	1.00775	1.0106375
2	1.12	1.131	1.14255
3	1.345	1.36975	1.3957375
4	1.68	1.724	1.7702
5	2.125	2.19375	2.2659375
6	2.68	2.779	2.88295
7	3.345	3.47975	3.6212375
8	4.12	4.296	4.4808
9	5.005	5.22775	5.4616375
10	6	6.275	6.56375
11	7.105	7.43775	7.7871375
12	8.32	8.716	9.1318

Spawn Rate

Each empty Wrinkler slot has a (re-) spawn rate of 0.001% (0.005% with "Unholy bait") per Grandmapocalypse stage per frame (the usual framerate is 30 fps). The Skruuia, Spirit of Scorn and Garden plants can also alter the rate.

	factor
Grandmapocalypse stage	3/2/1 (One Mind/Communal Brainsweep/Elder Pact)
Unholy bait	5
Skruuia, Spirit of Scorns	2.5/2/1.5 (Diamond/Ruby/Jade)
Garden plants	1-0.15WA+0.02WR WA = # of Wardlichen WR = # of Wrinklegill

For example, if you have unholy bait and 3 Wardlichens in the garden when in Communal Brainsweep stage, the spawn rate will be r= 0.0001% * 2 * (1-0.15*3) = 0.000011%. On average, collecting all 12 wrinklers takes:

$\frac{1}{r}\sum_{k=1}^{12} \frac{1}{k}=\frac{1}{r}\frac{86021}{27720}$ frames

$\approx\frac{0.10344}{r}$ seconds

• On average, it takes 57 minutes and 28 seconds (11 minutes 30 seconds with "Unholy bait") for all 12 Elder Pact (speedup factor is 3) Wrinklers to spawn, from a starting point of 0 Wrinklers. With "Unholy bait" the time is reduced to 11 min 30 seconds}. For Communal Brainsweep, it takes 3/2 of that time, about 86 (17 with "Unholy bait") minutes. For One mind this is three times as long, which is about 172 (34 with "Unholy bait") minutes.
• As the CpS multiplicator gain from Wrinklers depends heavily on the number of Wrinklers, but respawn time also is longest for the last Wrinklers, one should not pop single Wrinklers on demand. The last Wrinkler takes about one third of total spawn time (18 min 31 s (3 min 42 s with "Unholy bait") for Elder Pact, see above), while CpS multiplicator is reduced from 9.1318 to 7.7871375 during that time. Ten consecutive pops will reduce CpS by a little more than 15% for on average 3 hour (37 minutes with "Unholy bait") cumulatively. A full Wrinkler rebuild has a much stronger impact on CpS (effective multiplier 3.59{How has this multiplier been calculated?}), but only for 57 (12 with "Unholy bait") minutes. After that, the full 9.1318 multiplicator from ten Wrinklers is active again. In other words: Extrapolating the full rebuild time to the one-by-one approach (~3 hour (~37 minutes)), rebuilding has an effective multiplier of 5.48762{?} over that time, while popping them in turn yields 5.22775{?}, about 5% less. Besides that, getting all withered cookies back at once may lead faster to a CpS increase by new buildings, and is also much less time-consuming and error-prone to perform.
• Upon opening the Cookie Clicker page (includes refreshing page)and regardless of their previous location, all actively withering wrinklers will be moved to upper right around the cookie in a clockwise pattern. The total amount of withered cookies will also be averaged and reallocated between each wrinkler.
• To get the maximum gain from wrinklers, you should leave them alone for as long as possible. If you need (or want) to pop a wrinkler, only pop one (obviously, the oldest one will give you the most cookies). Do not pop all the wrinklers! If you do so, you will lose wrinkler gain until all wrinklers respawn. Obviously, this will take longer than the respawn of only the last wrinkler (and the gain loss is much bigger). It may seem counter-intuitive, that popping only one wrinkler will grant you more cookies than popping all of them, but it is easy to understand, if you take into account, that the oldest wrinkler in the only-one-approach is about N times older than all the wrinklers in the pop-them-all-approach.If you wanna use your cookies I'd recommend popping a different wrinkler in a single pattern (you can turn around the cookie one way) each time so you don't lose too much from popping the newest wrinkler.
• The ratio between popping 1 wrinkler at a time, vs popping all wrinklers at ones is about 1.48. This is calculated by taking the cps multiplier at 11 wrinklers, and divide it by the 1 + the average cps bonus while the wrinklers spawn. This last fact can be pushed further by the fact that "Resurect Abomination" gives you the last wrinkler at ones, giving you an effective constant maximum bonus.

$\frac{1+11^2*0.055-11*0.05}{1+\frac{\sum_{n=0}^{11}\frac{n^2*0.055-0.05n}{0.0009(12-n)}}{\sum_{a=1}^{12}\frac{1}{0.0009a}}}\approx 1.48287$

Halloween upgrades

Main article: Halloween Season

Halloween Cookies are spawned randomly during the Halloween season by popping Wrinklers. Each cookie has from 5% to 56% depending on related "Spooky cookies" achievement, "Santa's bottomless bag" upgrade, "Mind Over Matter" dragon aura, "Starterror" prestige upgrade and wrinkler type (normal or shiny).

Easter upgrades

Main article: Easter Season

All Easter upgrades are egg/larvae based in theme and can be unlocked randomly when clicking a Golden Cookie, Wrath Cookie or bunny or popping a wrinkler. At base, a Golden/Wrath Cookie has a 10% chance to unlock an egg and a wrinkler has a 2% chance to unlock an egg. The "Hide and Seek Champion" achievement, "Omelette" and "Santa's Bottomless Bag" upgrades, "Starspawn" prestige upgrade, and "Mind Over Matter" dragon aura all increase the chance to unlock an egg.

Achievements

Grandmapocalypse achievements 

Icon	Name	Description	ID
	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	Burst 50 wrinklers.	106
	Moistburster	Burst 200 wrinklers.	107

To help keep track of how many Wrinklers you have popped, go in the "Stats" section, then look under "Special".

Season achievements

In addition to the above achievements, certain seasons have achievements which unlock based on random item drops from wrinklers.

Season achievements 

Icon	Name	Description	ID
	Spooky cookies	Unlock every Halloween-themed cookie. Owning this achievement makes Halloween-themed cookies drop more frequently in future playthroughs.	108
	The hunt is on	Unlock 1 egg.	166
	Egging on	Unlock 7 eggs.	167
	Mass Easteria	Unlock 14 eggs.	168
	Hide & seek champion	Unlock all the eggs. Owning this achievement makes eggs drop more frequently in future playthroughs.	169

Shadow Achievement

Icon	Name	Description	ID
File:LastChanceToSeeAchievementIcon2.png	Last Chance to See	Burst the near-extinct shiny wrinkler. "You monster!"	262

Trivia

• In the game's code, next to the code that tells the wrinklers to return 110% of their withered cookies is the comment "cookie dough does weird things inside wrinkler digestive tracts".
• The "Moistburster" achievement is a reference to the Alien Franchise's Chestburster.
• Prior to the v1.0453 update, Wrinklers disappeared when you closed the Cookie Clicker window or exited the browser.
• The Wrinkler may be a reference to the Mosquito Larvae, or the Wriggler.

Bugs

• Clicking on a Golden (or Wrath) Cookie, Reindeer, or Bunny while it is on top of a Wrinkler will also count as clicking on that Wrinkler.
• Clicking with the mouse on the exact frame when a Wrinkler appears will damage the Wrinkler once; it does not matter where you clicked.
• When a Reindeer is near a Golden Cookie, the Cookie disappears but is still clickable. The Golden Cookie reappears when the Reindeer has moved a bit further.
• When you pop a Wrinkler and then use the resurrect abomination spell and then refresh the page too fast the mana you used is still gone and the Wrinkler doesn't appear. This bug still occurs if you save before you refresh

Interactive Objects
	Big Cookie			Golden Cookie		Wrath Cookie
Wrinkler		Reindeer		Santa	Krumblor		Shiny wrinkler
Category:Interactive Objects