"Quick summary on dust earned from berry feeding [analysis]"

#PokemonGO: TLDR: Under new system: 80k dust over 73 days (since relaunch). Expected dust under old system: 146k. Biggest Limitation to earning more dust: Scarcity of berries. Biggest plus: 8 Dratini and 5-6 Larvitar candy in the last 10 daysBackground: The gym rework, which launched on June 22, 2017 brought about some major changes in the Pokemon Go gym system. Among the most controversial changes that came with the rework was the replacement of stardust as a defender bonus. This aspect of the defender bonus was replaced with the berry feeding system which allows you to increase your Pokemon's motivation and earn 20 stardust per berry fed.In the old system, I averaged 4 gyms per day defended and claimed my bonus roughly every 24 hours. It's been 73 days since the gym reworked launched, so I wanted to do a quick comparison on the differences between the systems and tally up what I have earned from the new system.The Numbers:How many berries have I fed? As of this morning, I have fed 3,675 berries.This is an average of 50 berries per day resulting in 68,000 stardust from regular rewards and roughly 12,000 from 6 days of double dust rewards (POGO Fest Global Rewards) totaling 80k dust. Roughly just under 1,100 stardust per day.By comparison, my average of 4 gyms would have resulted in 2 thousand dust per day or 146 thousand over the span of 73 under the assumption that I could keep my 4 gym average per day.The difference is roughly 66 thousand dust over the span of the new gym system.Scarce BerriesOne thing that I should note is that on most days, the only resource that I run out of is berries. Numerous times a week, I do a resource run SOLEY to get berries and every day for the last 2 months I have ran out of berries. I am going to be tracking my berry feeding daily to determine if the amount of berries I feed is increasing, but, the fact remains that every day, I start with zero berries. Currently scarce berries are the main limiting factor to earning more stardust per day.Candy makes you dandy:Over the last 10 days I have attempted to exploit the candy reward for berry feeding and am very pleased with the results. I have been placing my dragonite into gyms and have earned roughly 8 candy and about 5-6 larvitar candy from feeding other 'Mon. Since both of these Pokemon are 5k buddy distance candy earners, I have earned 40km of value in Dratini candy and 30km of value in Larvitar candy from berry feeding. If we take pure buddy walking distance and the speed cap, this means that berry feeding has saved me about 6.5 hours of walking time total. However, since I don't generally walk at 6.5 miles/hour, it's likely a lot more.Coins:My girlfriend and I have both personally benefited from the new system from the perspective of coin earning. She was averaging roughly 2 gyms per day, netting 20 coins and I was netting 40 coins. Since the relaunch we have been able to both earn 50 coins about 5/7 days a week.Conclusions:I was actually really pleased to see how much dust I had earned and not too disappointed when comparing it to the old system. Although the new system likely results in a net decrease in dust, the time savings of candy earnings and the increase in net coins for my household feels like a net gain in terms of overall value from gym defending. I am going to further this analysis by tracking my daily berry feeding activities over the next 10 days while documenting how many Dratini candy I earn solely from berry feeding. If you have any suggestions on what factors I should also track related to berry feeding please feel free to share your thoughts. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2vWDFY8