Power-up advisor

Is this Stardust better spent here or somewhere else?

Costs come out of the Game Master's own POKEMON_UPGRADE_SETTINGS template; what the power-up buys comes out of the raid simulator, run at every rung of the ladder against the boss you pick. The number that decides it is rarely the percentage — it is whether the lobby drops a trainer.

PokemonFrom levelTo levelLucky?Judged againstTierIVsShadow?WeatherFriendship

Worth it — 8.5% faster against Mewtwo

150,000 Stardust and 182 Candy for 8.5% off the fight and 8.6% more DPS, i.e. 17,711 Stardust per 1% faster. It still needs 3 trainers either way. Stopping at level 38 gets within 1% of the same result for 112,000 Stardust — 38,000 less.

Mewtwo · Psycho Cut + Shadow Ball

psychic

Best moveset against Mewtwo, held fixed across the ladder so a moveset change cannot masquerade as a power-up gain.

Stardust: 150,000
Candy: 182
Power-ups: 20
Time to win: 12:31 → 11:28

Every rung, priced

Scroll sideways for DPS and faints.

Cost and result of powering Mewtwo from level 30 to level 40
Level	Stardust so far	Candy so far	Time to win	Faster by	DPS	Trainers	Faints
30now	0	0	12:31	0.0%	21.2	3	6.0
31	10,000	8	12:27	+0.5%	21.3	3	6.0
32	22,000	20	12:20	+1.6%	21.5	3	6.0
33	34,000	32	12:12	+2.6%	21.7	3	6.0
34	48,000	48	12:00	+4.2%	22.0	3	6.0
35	62,000	64	11:50	+5.6%	22.3	3	6.0
36	78,000	84	11:44	+6.3%	22.5	3	6.0
37	94,000	104	11:39	+6.9%	22.6	3	6.0
38good enough	112,000	128	11:31	+8.0%	22.9	3	6.0
39	130,000	152	11:29	+8.3%	23.0	3	6.0
40	150,000	182	11:28	+8.5%	23.0	3	6.0

What else that Stardust buys

15 second charged moves at the usual 10,000 Stardust — check whether this one wants one.
A Lucky trade version of the same Pokemon would cost 75,000 Stardust instead — 75,000 saved.
It does not drop a trainer off this lobby, so it is a comfort upgrade rather than a necessary one.

Before you spend

Check the breakpoints — stopping one half-level short of one wastes the whole step.
Compare its Shadow and Mega forms — a Shadow you already own is often worth more than ten levels on the normal one.
See where it ranks against the whole counter list for Mewtwo.

How this is worked out

Stardust, Candy and XL Candy come from the PokeMiners Game Master template POKEMON_UPGRADE_SETTINGS (read 2026-09-08), transcribed into src/lib/tools/powerup-costs.ts with the indexing rule spelled out; upgradesPerLevel is 2, so a whole level costs its entry twice, and Candy is replaced by XL Candy from level 40 (xlCandyMinPokemonLevel). The Lucky discount is LUCKY_POKEMON_SETTINGS.powerUpStardustDiscountPercent. Every battle figure is a 12-run Monte Carlo of the shipped raid simulator against this boss's full standard moveset, so it is the same measurement the counters page prints — including its ~2% per-attacker disagreement with pokebattler.com, which is why differences under about 2.5% are called marginal rather than real.