Cookie Clicker Legacy Strategy: An Army of Grandmas

I don’t think anyone can deny the awesome power of a homemade cookie. There’s so many delicious varieties you can make; Chocolate Chip, Sugar, Snickerdoodle, Oatmeal Raisin—

Or perhaps you’re more adventurous and try to make the cookies that you can buy from the store like homemade Oreos, or Fudge Stripe cookies– because who doesn’t want more of those?

But to most people the ultimate homemade cookie is a cookie made by your own grandma. There are many times I’ve been stepping into my grandma’s house and been greeted with that wholesome smell. A buttery-sugar goodness that is truly captivating.

Today, the game we are going to cover is Cookie Clicker. It aims to solve that stroke of nostalgia you might have.

It combines the fun of a simulator with the ideal of being a confectionery maker. Willy Wonka anyone?

Build your own army of Grandmas and cookie Factories so you can reign supreme over the cookie making industry! Besides, who doesn’t want to be the next Nestle Tollhouse or Pepperidge Farm?

Cookie Clicker is a mix of actively playing the game and passively letting the game rack up points while you do other things.

Some of the most important things we are going to cover in this article include increasing your Cookies per Second, and utilizing Upgrades in the best way to Ascend faster. Finally we’ll talk about when is the best time to Ascend using the Legacy button.

Player Strategy

The great thing about this game is there is no one right way to play this game. It’s more of a how quick do you want your run through to be? How quickly do you want to Ascend? If you’re fine waiting a little longer, feel free to play through at a casual pace or leave the computer running while you do other things.

However if you plan on running through the game quickly and racking up Prestige Points, you’re going to need to do a little planning ahead. Focus on laying down the foundation so that you can spend your cookies wisely.

Increasing your Cookies per Second

There are a few main ways to boost your Cookies per Second. The main way is to use Upgrades, but some Achievements also give you an additional boost. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on Upgrades.

Many times just by playing through the natural progression of the game you will gain multiple Achievements. Think of Upgrades as the active way to boost and the Achievements as a passive bonus.

The next way to boost your cookie income is to invest in real estate and payroll. Buying up Clicker fingers is an easy way to get the ball rolling but it’s better to save up for Grandmas if you can.

Once you have a 15 of a type of building, it creates a chance for the Grandma you buy to be a special one. For example, if you have 15 farms, a Farmer Grandma might spawn that adds to the efficiency of the Farm Buildings.

Some people prefer to just buy up Grandmas and Clickers and totally forgo Farms. This article elaborates on the math if you’re interested. In my humble opinion, the Mines are the best bang for your chocolate chip.

Once you have a sturdy foundation of Grandmas and Clickers, investing in a few Mines and a couple Factories is a no brainer.

The Mines are only a little more expensive than Farms and will give you 47 Cookies per Second to start. Then to max out the potential of our base rate of Cookies per Second, I buy a few Factories and then at least one Bank.

The beauty in this strategy is that one of the Mines’s Max Cookies per Second factors is based on how many Grandmas you have. Then Factories and Banks build off of each other creating a synergistic approach to building up your empire.

However if you are still set on buying Farms, there are a few ways to make a synergistic strategy with them.

Choosing Upgrades

When it comes to Cookie Clicker, one of the most powerful benefits to the game is saving your cookies to purchase Upgrades.

Buy Upgrades as soon as they become available. Prioritize recurring Upgrades that boost your game for the long term. Use leftover chips to build your forces through Clickers, Grandmas, and Farms or Mines.

Even though it’s called Cookie Clicker Legacy, we want to reduce the amount of clicking we actually have to do. Besides it’s way more effective to have an army of Grandmas cooking than using our mouse until we get carpal tunnel.

A few good upgrades for starters include:

• Forwards from Grandma which is only 1000 cookies and having one Grandma bought. This makes your Grandmas twice as efficient.
• Ambidextrous is after you own 10 cursors and for a measly 10,000 cookies. It makes clicking and the Clickers twice as efficient.
• Cheap Hoes can be bought after you have at least one farm and 11,000 cookies. Like the others it doubles production. Not bad for an entry level upgrade.

If you do opt for Mines later on, I would have your Grandmas, Clickers, and Farms built up to a steady production before upgrading your Mines.

Look at the cost versus the benefit provided by the Upgrade. Although it seems to be the best to just buy the most expensive Upgrade, in some cases it might be better to buy multiple of the small ones to give you more gain.

Then use that gain to buy the more expensive ones. It’s like building a snowman. You want to build a solid foundation before you roll that snowball bigger. Plus you want the base to be big enough to support the rest of your operations.

Keep in mind every time you Upgrade it costs a little more each time. A good rule of thumb when buying Upgrades is to think of it as a rule of three.

For example, buy three levels worth of Clicker upgrades first (if they are available).

Once you’ve done three upgrades for Clickers, then buy three for the Grandmas and so on. Make sure you switch between buying Upgrades and also increasing your forces.

Three works out well because the cost for the Upgrades hasn’t gotten too high that you can’t afford it, and it boosts it enough that you should regain your cookies fairly fast after buying these boosts.

Achievements

As you play through the game, you will start gaining Achievements. There are various Achievements that will be gained by simply playing the game. Your first goal should be to get seven Achievements to unlock the Bingo Center/Research Facility. Unfortunately you will need 1 quadrillion cookies to buy it. Think of it as laying the groundwork. Buying this now will help benefit you once you unlock the Persistent Memory in the Legacy screen. (More on that in a minute.)

Next aim for thirteen Achievements to unlock Kitten Helpers. Once you’ve unlocked this upgrade, you will now gain 4% milk for every Achievement. This is important because as your milk production increases, so does your Cookies per Second percentage.

According to this article, this is the example they give:

Kitten helpers boost the CpS by 10% of the Milk amount. So with a Milk level of 150%, Kitten helpers will boost CpS by 1 + 0.1 × 1.5 = 1.15 = 115%.

So you can see how quickly this boost can stack with your other means of production. Keep building off of these patterns until you can reach one trillion cookies which is the earliest you can Ascend.

When should I ascend in Cookie Clicker?

The accepted knowledge is that once you hit 200 Prestige levels this is the best first time to Ascend.

Every Prestige level adds 1% to your total cookies per second. So as you might have already done the math, Ascending at level 200 gives you a whopping 200% increase for your next game!

The next best level if you can hold out is to wait until 400 levels. Either one of these options will net you an excessive amount of Heavenly Chips which are essential to additional Upgrades.

This is why it’s crucial to hold out as long as you can before Ascending as you want to have the most Heavenly Chips to spend on the best Upgrades.

Best Heavenly Upgrades

Permanent Upgrade Slot

For only 100 Heavenly Chips, you can pick one of your best upgrades to keep through every play though. Just imagine having an end game upgrade at the beginning of a brand new game. The potential is endless! However since the next Permanent Upgrade Slots are significantly steeper in price you should take some time choosing an early game beneficial boost.

Some great choices include Trillion Fingers, Double-thick glasses, and Genetically-modified cookies.

Persistent Memory

This is arguably one of the best upgrades to get your hands on. For 500 Heavenly Chips you get to research upgrades that much faster. This is where the Bingo Center comes into play. Using these two upgrades in tandem makes an Upgrade that would usually take 30 minutes to learn only take 3 minutes.

That’s a massive bump if you want to get through as many runs of the game as possible. (Make sure the game is running at 30fps for best results.)

Another school of thought claims that you should aim for a Golden Cookie Upgrade in that slot. Such as Lucky day, Serendipity or Get Lucky.

One thing holds true, whatever Permanent Upgrade you choose, make sure its a good one. Pick an Upgrade that will benefit the overall game in the long term. Just choosing the most expensive Upgrade isn’t a surefire ticket to a great run.

Twin Gates of Transcendence

This upgrade plays well with a different playstyle. If you’re the kind of person who’d rather just let the game run on it’s own, and spend your time elsewhere, this upgrade is a stepping stone in that direction. For the first hour, the game will make cookies at the rate of 5% of your regular Cookies per Second rate and up to 1 hour after the game is closed the rate drops to 0.5%.

However if you keep stacking these Angel tree upgrades, it will soon stack to a point where it’s almost better to be away from the keyboard. Going for the Angel branch increases the Cookies per Second percentage per hour but purchasing the Demons increases the hour amount. Great choices include Angels, and Kitten Angels, or Belphegor, and Abaddon.

Becoming the Cookie Master

What is the best way to win Cookie Clicker Legacy? There is no specific way to win this game. The challenge to this game is merely pushing your limits and seeing how fast each consecutive run can be. Take your time building up your Clickers, Grandmas, and Mines before buying too many Upgrades. All the Upgrades in the world won’t matter if you don’t have anyone on payroll!

Focus on building up Achievements so you can unlock the Research Center and Kitten Helpers. The boosts these add-ons give you will have you miles ahead of the average player. After Ascending use your Heavenly Chips to buy up Golden Cookie Upgrades or other bonuses that benefit the early game play through.