‘Pokemon Go’: How to Maximize Stardust

(Niantic)

(Niantic)

Ever since the Pokemon Go Buddy system has been implemented, players have discovered they have an even greater need for stardust. Now that you can earn candies for rarer and tougher-to-find Pokemon just by walking them, you have more chances for evolving these Pokemon too. This means you’ll be wanting to power up your Pokemon, which requires stardust. So what is the best way to get more stardust and use your current amount of stardust wisely?

Here’s what you need to know.

You can get stardust from catching Pokemon (100 stardust per catch), hatching eggs (up to 2,000 stardust for a 10km egg), and taking and holding a gym. But even with these options, since you can’t buy stardust, it’s still a limited commodity in the game.

One thing you’ll want to do is maximize your use of stardust. If you’re still newer to Pokemon Go, you might want to hold off on using your stardust right away until you reach a higher level, such as 30, and you’re catching stronger Pokemon in the wild who will make better gym contenders. But if you catch or hatch a Pokemon in the meantime that’s strong, by all means use stardust to power it up. Redditor Bovronius suggests waiting until you have a Pokemon with high IV and a great moveset. At that point, feel free to power it up.

Remember: even though you can’t buy stardust outright, you can indirectly buy stardust by buying items from Niantic that will help you earn more stardust. If you really need more stardust, you might have to invest a little in Pokemon Go to make the collection happen a little faster. By using incense and lures, for example, you can increase the Pokemon that you catch and thus increase the stardust you get. And by buying incubators, you can hatch eggs more frequently, thus increasing your stardust too.

On Reddit, user intirb did some back-of-the-hand calculations to figure out approximately how much stardust you could earn per pokecoin based on which items you bought. According to his calculations, a single incense costs 80 pokecoins and will net you about 1 Pokemon per 200 meters. If you walk 2.5 kilometers in half an hour, you may end with 1200 stardust total. This adds up to about 15 stardust per pokecoin using incense.

If you buy a lure for 100 coins, you’ll get about five to six Pokemon per lure, which ends up being about six stardust per pokecoin, he calculated. However, you can get a better per-pokecoin-price if you get a group of friends who split the price of a lure.

If you buy an incubator and hatch only 10 km eggs, you’ll be getting up to 2,000 stardust per egg. But 5 km eggs and 2 km eggs are much more common. Exactly how much stardust you’ll get per a three-use incubator can be tough to calculate, because it partially depends on just what eggs have on hand and what hatches from your eggs. However, players on Reddit really support buying as many incubators as you can for maximum stardust. Redditor JadioGCity wrote: “I am level 30, and my top 12 pokemon are all maxed out on stardust. I attribute every bit of it to buying incubators.”