Why do higher CP Pokemon cost less stardust to power up?
I have two Pidgeys. One is CP 303 and costs 2500 stardust to power up, and the other is CP 336 and costs 2200 stardust.
Why does the one with higher CP cost less?
Best Answer
Following its predecessors, Pokemon Go has hidden stats for each Pokemon called Individual Values or IVs for short. For Pokemon Go, these stats are Attack, Defense, and Stamina.
You cannot readily know these stats from the game; however there are now calculators that, with a bit of science, can tell you how good or bad your Pokemon is. The idea here is to find a Pokemon with perfect stats to evolve, rather than evolving the Pokemon with a higher CP. It will produce an overall better Pokemon, but not by a large margin at its final stage:
For example, the base attributes of a Charizard are 212, 182, 156. This would be the "worst" charizard available where all IV's are zero. With max IV's, a Charizard would have 227, 197, 171. Each of these Atk, Def and Stam values for Charizard are only 7-10% better.
(Excerpt from the calculator linked above)
You are seeing different dust requirements due to the Pokemon's hidden level, where a higher level requires more dust and candies to level up further. A Pokemon with better IVs will naturally have a higher CP at a given level, and the difference is much more drastic for un-evolved Pokemon with low base stats.
CP is calculated based on a formula:
CP = (Base Atk + Atk IV) * (Base Def + Def IV)^0.5 * (Base Stam + Stam IV)^0.5 * Lvl(CPScalar)^2 / 10
(Formula from the calculator linked above)
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Does it cost more stardust to power up evolved Pokémon?
When powering up you also need to consider the diminishing returns of using precious stardust on increasing your Pokemon's level. As the level goes up, the more stardust it costs to increase it but for less reward.Does it take less stardust to power up after evolving?
This is basically because the more evolved Pokemon has a higher potential for its upper-limit on Combat Power. So the reason it costs less after you evolved it is because you are further from filling that bar completely. As you get closer to the upper-limit on Combat Power, the Stardust and candy costs go up.Does it cost less stardust to power up Shadow Pokémon?
Shadow bonus applies to all Gym, Raid and Trainer Battles. The attack bonus can be stacked with weather bonus. The cost of Power Up and the second Charged Attack requires less Stardust and Candy.Is it cheaper to power up a Pokémon before you evolve it?
Pokemon GO: Why evolving first is preferred In the long run, it costs less Stardust to evolve and then strategically power up Pokemon that are used in battles often. At times, players will power up a Pokemon significantly only to evolve them and find that they're not used all that often.Watch This BEFORE You POWER UP YOUR POKÉMON - BEST STARDUST SAVING STRATEGY | POKEMON GO
More answers regarding why do higher CP Pokemon cost less stardust to power up?
Answer 2
There seems to be some sort of randomization in CP for each unique pokemon. So you're likely looking at one especially weak and one especially strong pokemon of the same species.
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Emre Can Acer, Rodolfo Quirós, Saya Kimura, Andrea Piacquadio