Stardust
Why are people saying that stardust is getting harder to obtain after the gym rework? What is this "stardust drought" that people are talking about?
I don't see any difference. In fact, stardust is now a bit easier to get, at least for me.
Answers
People are advancing in level, some care a lot about IVs and don't evolve enough high level wild pokemon, people don't care about walking eggs anymore-->even less stardust and less encounters with varied wild pokemon. Also, very few pokemon species matter anymore--power them up or get left behind by those that had stardust saved and/or those that have more time and energy to collect sufficient stardust
I'll have what you're smoking.
Nevertheless, to answer your magnificent question... Previously, we get stardust from defending a gym same as coins. Now, we get nothing. All other stardust sources remains the same e.g. grinding, egg hatches. So now enlighten me... How is it easier for you? Probably you're just catching more... Hatching more...
For people who were holding 10 gyms a day, they were getting an extra 5000 stardust every day, or if they were really dedicated, every 21 hours, so 35-40k extra stardust every week just for pressing the "collect now" button.
Although you can feed berries to defending Pokemon to gain some extra stardust, it's far more time consuming and costs more resources than before.
I'm guessing some of those that controlled 10+ gyms were just getting their daily streak, collecting the defender bonus and that's it, so losing out on that source of stardust was more significant than people who control less gyms and as a result don't rely on defender bonus.
Dude, all I ever read from you is "in my areas gyms flip so fast blah blah blah I can't hold gyms long enough". You're in Singapore right? It ain't the only place in the world that has high gym activities during the old days. I know people in my city and other large cities in high gym activity areas that were hard core gymmers (10,000-50,000 gym battles won) that collected 5000 and 100 a day. Also teaming up with a crew and bubblestrat was crucial in highly competitive areas. The best crew to win a territory was to be the most relentless until other teams gave up by wearing them down. That was fun. Maybe you didn't play hard enough in your area. What's your battles won amount? If you're in Singapore and you don't have at least 7000+ battles won then yeah you didn't play enough.
The main reason is you no longer get stardust from gyms. 10 gyms gave me 5,000 stardust a day. On top of that, hatching eggs is no longer as important, for a couple of reasons. People like myself no longer spend money because I refuse to give in to their obvious "pay to win" strategy. Those coins I would have spent on incubators go to extra raid passes.
Oh and the 50 coin max (down from 100) hurts free players because in addition to having less coins, they have to decide between incubators or raid passes.
Basically, for me to make up the stardust I lost from gyms, I would need to be hatching MORE eggs, but I I hatch less. I went from running 3-4 incubators at all times, to running 1.
If stardust is easier for you now, you must not have been very active in gyms before the rework. Instead of 5000 dust and 100 coins a day, I'm getting 50 coins and no dust. That's 50 coins fewer a day, and almost all of the coins I do earn are going towards raid passes instead of stardust-generating incubators (the usefulness of which has shrunk considerably for me since I'm no longer in as much need of hatches as I used to be, due in part to captured raid bosses and a practically full pokedex). Time I used to spend just catching is taken up by traveling to raids, and bag space priorities have shifted from pokeballs to pots, rare candies and gold berries.
Add in the need to suddenly power up a bevy of strong attackers rather than rely on easily disposed of captured high-CP, low-IV fodder to compete in the new meta, and dust reserves have shrunk considerably.
Your style of play may vary, but for higher level players keeping busy with raid after raid, dust is scarce and, to be honest, a few weeks of quieter raid activity will be kind of welcomed.
Pretty sure his gym scene was different than yours or mine--an hour knocking down and rebuilding a gym was beneficial to me for a week plus (then a month). Then any persistence toward those gyms (along with less and less active players) made collecting shockingly easy. I'll guess his gym collecting got tougher and tougher--the "haves" there had maxed out pokemons which were increasingly difficult to beat
I doubt you have gold gyms then, I have 5 golds within a mile, all in the same direction. In that sense, it is easier to always have balls in bag for me. I just have too many projects going that need stardust--1 more Dragonite, 2 TTs, and quality legendaries. Me having 4 great IV Dragonites (if they become bosses) lets me not focus on organizing raids and use these easier balls I now have.
I personally am not experiencing that much of a dust drought. Gyms turned over extremely frequently in my area. So, I only lost out on 500-1000 dust per day. I can make up some of that from the higher dust for evolved forms. Incubators and raid passes aren't in competition for me, I just spend more real money. However, I can definitely empathize with free to play players. If you're not willing to buy dust in the form of incubators, there is a drought.
On the demand side, each change in raid bosses encourages players to use dust, TM s and evolves to quickly form an effect counter to this week's hot boss. Oh and then you want to power up your raid trophies. So, even though my dust collection rate is roughly unchanged, I've dug a deep hole in my reserves.
1- Not getting 5k dust every day (I held more than 10 gyms every day for about 4-5 months)
2- Not getting 50 coins every day (was 100, now max is 50) and having another useful item to buy (Raid passes) means no more extra incubators. I use to have 4 extra incubators every week, now only one.
That's definitely over 50k dust less every week!
We also figured out being level 39+ means absolutely nothing anymore, so that isn't a motivator to grind. I instantly throw away 99.5% of what I do catch. I do think they will frequently increase stardust through events to remain relevant/buzzy to American kids (once school starts and it gets darker earlier)
