So you wanna get into Cookie Run: Kingdom, eh? Devsisters’ mobile-gacha-management sim-idle-RPG may be sugary sweet on the surface, but it gets complex quickly. There’s perhaps too much to keep track of even with a beefy tutorial, so here are some Cookie Run: Kingdom tips to get your kingdom started and keep it flourishing.
Cookie Run: Kingdom Tips
1. You Really Shouldn’t Play That Much
Hey, remember Animal Crossing: New Horizons? Remember how it’s all anyone was talking about for a few months, then they rapidly began to burn out from playing it several hours a day? Yeah, don’t do that with CRK.
Part of why I like CRK so much is that it’s a mobile gacha game with a battle pass that still (mostly) feels like a normal mobile game. I play it in the morning while I’m still waking up, on my lunch break, and before I go to bed — and not much more. I’d say I don’t exceed two hours a day unless there’s something special going on. It’s designed to be played consistently, little by little. You’re supposed to check in every few hours and then turn it off again. Don’t try to fight against that and make it into something it isn’t, even if the game seems to be pushing you that way. Let the timers run out by themselves. Turn the notifications off. Relax.
2. New Players Can Ignore Most Events
For a new player, the Events tab is chock full of limited-time offerings that they mostly can’t participate in. The New Update section, in particular, involves a lot of dailies you either don’t have access to or won’t be able to do consistently enough to make a dent. You can ignore them unless you see that “!” ping, in which case, go ahead and claim your goods. Gift Month is a free daily check-in reward you should do whenever you can, as your first week will always reward you with a full Epic rarity cookie. Achievement Events are prizes for finishing tasks you’ll be doing naturally, so again, don’t worry about them unless you get a completion ping.
3. ABP (Always Be Producing)
Production is a cornerstone of CRK — as it is with any management sim — but CRK’s status as an idle game makes it all the more important. Keep production going as much as you can! However, you won’t need a calculator or spreadsheet or anything. The only times I’d consider figuring out the most efficient way to produce is for consistent periods of offline time, like overnight or when working. Personally, I’ll just do some quick math that roughly adds up to eight hours and leave it. Even if it’s not quite accurate, it’s always better to overproduce or go overtime than under, as you can cancel production at any time with no penalty.
4. Hire Your Third Sugar Gnome Immediately
Once you unlock building, go ahead and buy another Sugar Gnome Hut. Free players are locked at three, so it’s only 800 gems to hit maximum right away. This will allow you to simultaneously build more buildings, clear more forest, and so on. This becomes super helpful later on when individual build projects can take days or even weeks.
5. Don’t Pull on Banner
New characters are added to CRK every few months. In the one to two months after a character is added, their “banner”— a special gacha where you have greatly increased chances to pull that specific cookie (or their soulstones for upgrades) — is available. But there’s a tradeoff: While your chances are higher for a particular cookie, your chances of pulling any other Epic+ cookies go down.
New players should start amassing Epic cookies as soon as possible. They also probably shouldn’t worry about the new hotness until they have a decently sized roster. Until you have 10 Epic+ cookies, I recommend using the “Cookies” gacha instead of any “Featured Cookie” banner. After completing World 1, you’ll have well over 5,000 Gems. Once you’ve hired your third Sugar Gnome, treat yourself to a couple of 10-Pulls.
6. Replace Strawberry Cookie ASAP
Strawberry Cookie is one of the worst cookies in the game. Sorry, Miss Berry. She doesn’t do much damage because she’s a Defense cookie. Since she’s a Common cookie, she doesn’t have a great defense. She also has no utility or healing, so replace her with any Charge or Defense cookie as soon as you can. There’s a good chance you’ll pull Knight or Princess Cookie, who are both good options.
7. Use Custard Cookie III
Custard Cookie III is not the best healer in CRK, but he is the most efficient. With only five characters, the Healing role is the least populated. One is the Ancient rarity Pure Vanilla Cookie (good luck getting him early) and another is the Common Angel Cookie (who, quite frankly, sucks).
This leaves you with three cookies to reasonably choose from — two are Epic cookies you have to pull or grind for, while you’ll get Custard Cookie III for free. He’s also a Rare cookie, so you’ll pull him much more often than his Epic+ counterparts, and promote him to 5-Star pretty quickly. If that wasn’t a sweet enough deal for you, he’s also a darn good healer. He’s a baby version of Pure Vanilla, with an extremely low cooldown heal + shield combo that can even be used outside of battle. He was my only source of healing until 11-27 and helped my PVP team hit Master 2 for three seasons in a row. Invest in my son.
8. All Cookies Are Always Available, and You Don’t Have To Pull Them
So, the soulstone thing. You can pull cookies outright through the gacha and immediately add them to your roster. However, you can also pull “soulstones,” which are, apparently, a piece of a cookie’s soul. Let’s not think about that too hard. If you get 20 soulstones, you get the cookie. This makes getting Ancient and Legendary cookies much more reasonable, and can even shore up some bad luck when it comes to Epics.
In fact, Epic and lower soulstones can be farmed daily in Dark Mode, which you unlock after completing World 3. I’d recommend choosing just one Epic cookie to grind Dark Mode for, but note that these do rotate every few months. The Kingdom Arena Medal Shop also has a guaranteed Ancient cookie soulstone once every three days, which you should buy as often as you can.
9. Don’t Be Afraid To Level Low-Tier Cookies
At the time of writing this article, there are 69 (nice) cookies in the game. While many are generally viable, most fall off once you near the endgame. Early on, you’ll have a limited amount of cookies. You may be extremely unlucky and all those gems you spend will only pull stinkies. That’s okay. Early worlds are very forgiving and mostly require consistent leveling on your part, as opposed to high-tier cookies or team coordination. You should level whomever you have, prioritizing them by highest rarity, or just whomever you most like. It may seem like a waste of resources, but you’ll need a bunch of cookies leveled up in order to upgrade your kingdom. Either way, those levels will help you.
10. Levels Are Everything
…and not just because of what I said a second ago. There are a lot of progression systems in CRK, but regular ol’ cookie levels make the biggest difference. Skill levels, promotions, and Toppings upgrades are important, but these percentage-based buffs end up being pretty granular in the early and mid-game. Levels provide some pretty hefty stat boosts — that power increase is even more noticeable when you’re first starting out. Even in Kingdom Arena, you’ll flat-out crush most teams just by having a few levels on them. When in doubt, chill out and grind for a few days, level your cookies, and come back swingin’.
11. A Four-Sentence Toppings Guide
There are 10 different types of Toppings, each in three different rarities: XS, S, and M. (M is the highest rarity; there are no L or XL Toppings.)
Of those 30 Topping combinations, only three matter — M rarity Solid Almonds (DMG Resist), Searing Raspberries (ATK), and Swift Chocolates (Cooldown). Regardless of rarity, break down the rest and don’t bother upgrading them. No ifs, no buts, no coconuts — they’re all either straight-up bad or used only in niche builds.
12. Automatic Is Easier, but Manual Is Faster and More Efficient
Playing on Automatic is a nice, easy, and hands-free experience. However, Manual is much better for timing and reactions. It allows you to exceed what your cookies are technically capable of, so it’s great for moving through Story Mode. On the other hand, Automatic is perfect for levels you’ve long since cleared and is actually mandatory in some game modes. Keep this in mind when building your team since cookies with long cooldowns and wind-up animations can have a hard time on Automatic.
13. Buy Landmarks
Landmarks are more than just decoration — each of these special buildings gives you something, whether that’s roster-wide stat increases or little gifts every now and again. You won’t unlock most of them until Kingdom Level 5, but it’s good to keep them in mind.
The best Cookie Run landmarks to start you off are:
- Tick Tock Clock Tower (speeds up production)
- Dreaming Jelly Lion Statue (increases ATK for all cookies)
- Raspberry Chateau & Vanilla Sanitorium (produce a random Rarity once a day)
- Dark Lord’s Castle (increases DMG Resist for all cookies)
Those last three landmarks come at a hefty price of 5,000 Gems each, so I wouldn’t sweat getting them any time soon. Pick up the Tick Tock Clock Tower for 50,000 gold as quickly as you can, followed by the Lion Statue at 2,400 Gems. Still expensive but much more reasonable, especially for how strong an ATK increase is.
14. Don’t Underestimate the Tree of Wishes
The Tree of Wishes is an oft-overlooked section of the Kingdom. Your cookies wish for random items, and you’re rewarded with gold and kingdom exp for fulfilling them. More importantly, completing the Tree of Wishes’ daily rewards grants you Rarities, which — as the name implies — can be pretty difficult to come by. They’re vital to progression and are eventually required to upgrade literally everything. Being able to rack them up early and consistently farm them is huge, and the Tree of Wishes lets you do that! Even if you can’t do 45 wishes every day, try to make time on Friday and Saturday (U.S. time zones), when rewards from the Tree of Wishes are quintupled.
15. Don’t Upgrade Your Goods Buildings Until You Absolutely Have To
Construction buildings fall into two categories: Goods and Materials. Materials are… well, raw materials, like wood and sugar; they only cost gold to create. Goods, on the other hand, require Materials (and sometimes other Goods) to be made. They’re much more complex, and almost every Goods Building upgrade will unlock a new Good you can produce. That sounds great, but higher-level Goods take a long time and a lot more resources to produce.
For example, the lowest level Smithy Good takes 30 seconds to make. The highest level Smithy Good takes six hours. You can technically just not make them, but remember that the Tree of Wishes and Bear Jelly Train ask you for random items. If you upgrade your Goods Buildings too rapidly, they’ll start asking for extremely expensive ones, forcing you to either use all those resources or simply hope for good rolls.
In order to farm efficiently, you want them to ask for relatively low-level items. The best way to do that is to make high-level items impossible to select. So don’t upgrade your Goods Buildings until you’ve hit a wall you really need to get past.
