"The Race For Stardust: How We Earned 2 Million Dust During The Equinox Event, While Still Working Day Jobs."

#PokemonGO: At endgame, stardust is the limiting factor for most progress. Therefore, when the equinox event was announced, our goal was to collect as much as possible to prepare for future endeavors like the The Battle Of Coolidge. We all work day jobs (I worked 72 hours the week of the event) so we had to make the most out of this event otherwise if we didn't take advantage of it now it would mean months of farming later. To make this grind a bit more interesting, we organized a small contest among the Boston Mystic players: The Race To One Million Stardust. Well the race was over fast because the first person reached 1 million four days into the event, so we moved the goalposts to 2 million.Pokecoins: First off, this was done using super incubators (i.e. spending pokecoins). Some of us earned it the hard way holding gyms, but I take this game too seriously so I bought from the store. If you aren't willing to spend money on this game or carefully plan out how you spend your hard earned pokecoins, that's cool, but these strategies would never work for you.Location: We needed to select a specific area to farm rather than just wander aimlessly around Boston. Specifically, we needed a place with a high density of pokestops, a few gyms, and free from vehicular traffic: the Boston Public Gardens. Pokestops are vital for replenishing your pokeball supply, farming berries, and also for placing lures to increase the number of pokemon spawn to catch. The goal is for your go plus to be constantly buzzing and catching. Therefore, you can spend more of your time watching for tier 2 or 3 evolutions or deleting the massive numbers of pokemon and items you are constantly picking up.Walking Strategy: Yes, there is a strategy for walking. You thought you mastered this skill at age 2? Think again. We chose a loop size that was large enough that it wouldn't outpace the game data updating our location. We traveled as a group and walked at a very brisk pace, not quite at the 7 mph limit though, more like 4-5 mph. One person was the designated scout, and that person would walk about 30 yards ahead of the group and alert us to any tier 2 or 3 spawns. This was so the main group could stop using go plus to switch over and manual catch tier 2 or 3 pokemon (curve great/ultra ball), since these guys were worth 3-5 times as much stardust.Gyms: Gym control was vital as these provided a dumping ground for the massive numbers of razz berries we were constantly accumulating. There are 4 gyms within the public gardens and we conducted drive-by staggered attacks on each one whenever it was not mystic. This meant that part of our group would begin an attack and then continue walking, making it through one cycle of takedowns long after they were out of range of the gym, whereas a second part of the group would begin an attack shortly thereafter in the second wave and also immediately resume walking away from the gym. This was so we wouldn't have to stop and battle the gym, wasting valuable time we could have spent walking. By the time we came back around to the same gym it would be either nearly dead or open for placing pokemon. Throughout the event, I estimate that the public gardens remained majority mystic nearly the entire time. Even though this is a high traffic area for pogo players in Boston, a gym is very hard to take down if there are ten people walking by every 10 minutes dumping 40 berries on every pokemon inside. We occasionally had players from other teams travel with us, and when that happened we would leave a gym undefended so they could convert it to have a place to dump berries.Go Plus: One of our top 3 finishers said that if you are awake, you should be using your go plus. This tool was vital to our success both from catching pokemon as well as recording distance while saving phone battery.Results: Ultimately, our highest total was nearly 2.2 million. She runs marathons in her spare time and therefore had a much higher walking capacity than the rest of us weaklings. Together, we farmed over 20 million stardust. Personally, I was working a lot during the event, so I had to squeeze all my farming into the weekends. On the Sunday before the event ended, I woke up early and farmed out 400,000 dust in one day. It was a big commitment, but it beats doing the same thing over the course of two to three months, which is what it would have taken me to get 2 million without the incubators and dust bonus. I personally enjoyed it, since it reminded me of the early launch days of pokemon go, when hundreds of players would be out in force and interacting around the popular landmarks in Boston.To answer a frequently asked question: I bought one max pack of coins at the start of the event for $100. Didn't get through it all, and spent some of that on bag space. I would estimate $75 spent. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2hWhi3K