Pokemon Go: How to earn Stardust in 2021

Pokemon Go has two major currencies, and one of them is Stardust. It’s very important to players, but how do you get more stardust in Pokemon Go?

Stardust is used a handful of things, but its primary usage is for powering up Pokemon with extra CP and unlocking a new charged move slot.

Unfortunately, such uses tend to guzzle Stardust by the thousands, and it’s not so easy to build up hundreds of thousands of Stardust to support your strongest Pokemons ever-growing addiction to it.

So with all that in mind, I’m going to go over what you can do to increase the amount of Stardust you earn.

With a little luck, we might even find enough Stardust to stop that angry Mewtwo of yours ending the planet because it’s missing the daily dose of star-catnip.

How to get more Stardust in Pokemon Go

You are most likely already familiar with the most basic method of getting more Stardust, which is to say, capturing a wild Pokemon – granting you 100 Stardust a pop.

That isn’t terrible, but over the long term it just simply doesn’t add up fast enough to fuel the Stardust requirements of numerous strong Pokemon levelling up.

So what can we do to get MORE STARDUST?

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Capturing Pokemon during Weather Boost

If you’re not familiar with weather boosts, each type of weather in Pokemon Go makes a few types of Pokemon stronger when encountered during that weather.

Note that weather-boosted Pokemon are highlighted by a blue circle whirling around them to make them easier to notice.

Now, Capturing Pokemon during a weather boost is one obvious way to help matters, though it does help in more ways than you might have realized.

First of all, and a way that many people don’t realize – weather boosted Pokemon tend to be found at higher CP’s and with higher stat values, and thus are stronger when caught.

This doesn’t necessarily give you more Stardust to spend, but it does mean spending less Stardust on that Pokemon as you need less levels for it to be strong.

To follow on from that, as you may well already be aware, capturing a basic unevolved Pokemon with an active weather boost will increase the natural Stardust earned from 100 to 125.

But this bonus isn’t actually +25, it’s +25% – and this matters due to our next topic.

Capturing already evolved Pokemon

A basic level Pokemon such as Caterpie will give 100 Stardust when captured, or 125 if you have an active weather boost effect on it.

But if instead of Caterpie, you caught say, a Pokemon such as Metapod, which has already evolved once, you’d instead be getting 300 Stardust base for capturing it.

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And what does that matter for? Well aside from being bonus Stardust, that’s also 300 modified by that 25% from earlier, giving you an +75 extra due to weather boost.

And if we instead found Butterfree rather than Metapod, we’d be talking about 500 Stardust base value. Which is then further increased by a weather boost value of +125 additional Stardust.

Now, that helps a little bit. But are there any other Pokemon to look out for to capture during Weather boosts? Yes, actually.

Pokemon with high capture reward Stardust

While unevolved Pokemon typically grant 100 Stardust, and any evolved Pokemon tend to gain +200 per evolution undergone, some Pokemon simply have higher Stardust reward values right away.

To simplify things, I’ve compiled a list here of Pokemon who have higher than average Stardust reward values and included how much capture Stardust they grant next to them below.

• Paras – 500
• Parasect – 700
• Meowth – 500
• Persian – 700
• Meowth (Alolan) – 750
• Persian (Alolan) – 950
• Shellder – 1000
• Cloyster – 1200
• Staryu – 750
• Starmine – 950
• Delibird – 500
• Shroomish – 500
• Breloom – 700
• Sableye – 750
• Chimecho – 1000
• Combee – 750
• Vespiquen – 950
• Audino – 2100
• Trubbish – 750
• Garbodor – 950
• Foongus – 500
• Amoonguss – 700

READ MORE: Pokemon: Weird Pokemon Evolutions and Methods

And again, try to bear in mind these are all base values of capture reward Stardust.

That means all of those can get a +25% modifier if you capture them during a weather boost.

So with all of that said, if you see some of these Pokemon spawning frequently near you, make sure to capture plenty of them to top up your Stardust.

Bonus Stardust items and events

Outside of these basic ways of gathering Stardust, we have a few more ways to multiply the amount gained in a similar manner to how weather boost does it.

First of all, we have Star pieces. These helpful little items increase Stardust gained by 50% for 30 minutes when consumed, though they’re in limited supply for free to play players, and so should only be used when you’re sure you’ll get good value from them.

Following on from that, Pokemon Go hosts events with extreme frequency. Many events will modify the amount of Stardust gained by players in general, for specific Pokemon, or specific types, and in various other ways.

A list of previous Stardust modifying events can be found here, on the PokemonGo wiki.

Even some regular events such as Spotlight hours sometimes have a bonus Stardust modifier – so make sure to stay up to date with what’s coming up next on Pokemon Go, with our coverage right here on The Click.

READ MORE: Pokemon Go: Monthly Spotlight Hours

Are there any other activities that give Stardust?

There are also plenty of other miscellaneous ways to gather lump sums of Stardust as a one-off reward.

For example, simply feeding a Pokemon defending a Gym from the same team as you a berry will grant 30 Stardust, and can be repeated 10 times, which is an excellent way to get rid of unwanted berries.

Daily bonus – First Catch

The first catch of the day gives a daily bonus of extra Stardust that shouldn’t be skipped over – even if you just log in for that one capture, it’s builds up a lot of reward Stardust per week.

Hatching Eggs

Hatching Eggs will also give you a one-off Stardust boost, and while it’s pseudo random, the amount awarded is randomly picked from within a range dependant on the egg that was hatched.

• 2-km eggs give 400 to 800 Stardust
• 5-km eggs give 800 to 1600 Stardust
• 7-km eggs give 800 to 1600 Stardust
• 10-km eggs give 1600-3200 Stardust
• and finally, 12-km eggs give 3200-6400 Stardust

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Adventure Sync

While on the topic of walking for stardust, the total distance walked in a week is also tracked for rewards at the end of each weekly game cycle – though it is difficult to find precise Stardust values on this on sources like the Wiki.

Regardless, there are 3 standard tiers of adventure sync rewards;

• 5km walked a week
• 25km walked a week
• 50km walked a week

While these distances do reward raw items such as Pokeballs and berries, they do also give a lump sum of Stardust at the start of the reward as well. Additionally, Reddit user /u/Teringglaaijer informed me that an additional Stardust reward is available at 100km walked in a single week.

Winning Battles

Winning battles will also reward the player with additional Stardust, dependant on who they defeat.

• Raid battles will grant 1000 Stardust on a victory
• Participating in the GO Battle league can award the Player with Stardust for victories
• For Team Go Rocket Battles
  • Grunts will award 500 Stardust
  • Leaders will grant 1000 Stardust
  • Beating Giovanni during his rare appearances will give a one-off 5000 Stardust

Opening gifts from friends

While this one is a smaller source than many of the others present here, opening gifts from friends can provide another regular stream of Stardust, and doing so even gives you various other items as well – having a good Pokemon Go friends list can make a world of difference to the game experience.

That’s about everything is to know about how to farm up more Stardust in Pokemon Go – Good luck Trainers, you’ll need it.