No Golden Cookies

[Southdown]

I've got like 1hr30min in this game(first time player). And I haven't seen any gold cookies. Do I need to ascend to unlock them?

[Goldenkitten]

Without upgrades golden cookies are pretty infrequent at first. One won't even show up until you're fifteen minutes into the run and then will appear randomly every five to fifteen minutes. You can greatly decrease this with upgrades but at an hour-and-a-half you should have seen a few assuming you've been purely active and haven't background idle'd at all.

Do you have "Fancy Graphics" turned on? I've seen quite a few people say (myself included) that all the movement and effects of fancy graphics makes it hard to spot them and a lot of people who are in the late game just turn fancy graphics and any other graphical modifiers (like big cookie shake) off not just to minimize CPU/memory usage but to make it super obvious when a golden cookie (especially if Easter is active), wrath cookie, wrinkler or other objects is on screen. That would be my first recommendation before assuming anything is wrong.

[Sunwave]

There is one every 8 minutes (or 7-9 minutes). If you didn't see them, you missed them yourself. Without any upgrades, they disappear pretty quickly so you have to pay attention ALL the time.

I noticed then when I did it on aside screen or even 50/50 on the same screen, I won't notice the cookies either when I'm just casually reading a page or watching a vod. They REALLY aren't that noticeable if you don't pay attention.