Pokemon Go Guide: When to Use Stardust to Power Up your Pokemon

Pokemon Go has been out for a while now, so you might have a decent stable of powerful Pokemon. You also might have a massive war chest of Stardust, if not then check out this guide on how to get more of the precious Pokemon empowering material. Done? Good, so now that you have all the Stardust you could ever want or need (but not really), you might be asking yourself when to use Stardust in Pokemon Go. We’ll help you out…

So the important thing to remember with Stardust is that you can’t buy the stuff. Getting more of it, as the above guide points out, can be pretty tough and grindy. So the key to understanding when to use Stardust in Pokemon Go is to figure out which Pokemon are worth the investment.

Even if you have 100,000, 200,000 or more Stardust stocked up, it will go fast once you start powering up your higher CP Pokemon (see here for when to evolve or power up, and here for what CP is in Pokemon Go). Once you have a higher CP Pokemon, you might think that now is the time to use your Stardust, but you’d be wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.

You see, your Pokemon’s max CP will continue to grow as you level up. A Pokemon that seems high level early in the game will become garbage later on. And if you start investing Stardust in it, you might find that you feel cheated a bit. Up to level 30 your Pokemon will continue to grow and become more powerful, at least the ones you catch will. Personally, unless you are looking to hit gyms and hit them hard, I would recommend holding all of your Stardust until you are at least at level 20 or above.

Once you are ready, you still have some work to do. If you really want that perfect Gyarados then you will need to check their IVs. What are those and how do you find them? Check out this guide. Once you find a Pokemon with high CP, high IV ratings, and you are already at a high level yourself you should be ready to use your Stardust in Pokemon Go.

Just keep in mind that with each level you go up, your Pokemon’s max CP will raise by two power ups. This means that even your maxed out CP Pokemon will still cost you some Stardust, if you start investing in them too early. Still, you’ve got the Stardust, so you might as well use it at some point. Don’t wait forever, just wait long enough that you won’t end up transferring a Pokemon that you put thousands of Stardust into.