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How to get Sandygast and Palossand in Pokémon Go

How to catch the Sand Heap and Sand Castle Pokémon.

Sandygast and Palossand, its evolution, are two Gen 7 Pokémon who debuted in Pokémon Go during the Season of Hidden Gems.

Released as part of the Water Festival: Beach Week event in June 2023 in Pokémon Go, these Ghost and Ground-types are two Pokémon you wouldn’t want to meet on the beach. Unless you want to watch Palossand drag small Pokémon inside its body and slowly drain their life energy…

Below you’ll learn how to get Sandygast and evolve it into Palossand in Pokémon Go, along with the Sandygast counters and weaknesses if you want to battle it in raids.

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How to get Sandygast in Pokémon Go

Sandygast and Palossand, its evolution, made their debut into Pokémon on Tuesday 6th June 2023 at the beginning of the Water Festival: Beach Week event.

Here’s how you can find Sandygast during the Water Festival: Beach Week:

Sandygast.

When it comes to catching Sandygast, we recommend defeating it in raids. This is because, as a one-star raid boss, any Pokémon Go player with a strong enough team should be able to defeat it singlehanded. All you need to do is ensure your team targets Sandygast’s weaknesses and, to help you out, we’ve listed some Sandygast counters further along.

We make this recommendation due to how it may be hard for you to find the field research task which will reward you with a Sandygast encounter. Since the field research task each PokéStop gives you rotates daily, it can be quite hard to find a specific task - even if you found it at a PokéStop one day, there’s no guarantee it will be available from there the next day. Sandygast can also only be obtained through an event-exclusive field research task, not one of the seasonal tasks.

If you do want to go the field research task route, then it’s a good idea to see if you can find a local Pokémon Go group as someone there might have already found the PokéStop you need to visit.

We highly recommend catching at least one Sandygast during the Water Festival: Beach week event, because, at the time of writing, we don’t know what its spawn rate will be once the event ends. There’s a chance that, like other recently released Pokémon, it will be hard to find it after the event ends, so it’s worth adding to your Pokédex when you have the chance.

How to evolve Sandygast into Palossand in Pokémon Go

You need to collect 50 Sandygast Candy to evolve Sandygast into Palossand in Pokémon Go.

Since you can only catch Sandygast by defeating it in raids or completing specific field research tasks, we highly recommend using Pinap Berries whenever you attempt to catch it. This will ensure your efforts are not wasted by granting you that lovely double catch candy bonus.

The other ways you can collect Sandygast candy is by using Rare Candy, though we do recommend saving this precious resource for a rarer Pokémon, or by setting Sandygast as your buddy Pokémon, so you can passively earn candy while out exploring the world with Pokémon Go.

Sandygast counters and weaknesses in Pokémon Go

Here are the Sandygast counters and weaknesses to help you defeat it in Pokémon Go raids:

  • Sandygast type - Ghost and Ground-types
  • Sandygast is weak against - Dark, Ghost, Grass, Ice and Water-types
  • Sandygast counters - For Dark-types, Weavile, Hydreigon, Yveltal and Guzzlord. For Ghost-types, Origin-form Giratina and Chandelure. For Grass-types, Venusaur, Tangrowth, Chesnaught and Kartana. For Ice-types, Glaceon, Mamoswine, Avalugg and Galarian Darmanitan. For Water-types, Feraligatr, Swampert, Kyogre and Samurott.
  • Other Sandygast notes - When selecting your Sandygast counters, we recommend avoiding Ghost-types, because, while Sandygast is weak to Ghost attacks, the fact that its a Ghost-type itself means that it also has a natural advantage against these Pokémon.

Sandygast CP in Pokémon Go

Below you’ll find the CP ranges for Sandygast in Pokémon when it comes to battling it and then catching it in raids, along with its max CP level:

  • Raid Boss CP for Sandygast - 3813 CP
  • Sandygast max CP at Level 40 - 1394 CP
  • Normal CP range for catching Sandygast - 655 to 705 CP
  • Weather boosted CP (Sunny or Fog) for catching Sandygast - 819 to 881 CP

The Max Out Season is here. The new global event, Wild Area, is nearly here and In the Wild is our lead-up event, which includes the global release of Toxel. You can now catch Dynamax Pokémon through Max Battles. First, however, you need to visit Power Spots to collect Max Particles and complete the To the Max! quest. Don't forget to try out Routes, Gift Exchange and Party Play while you're hunting down rare Pokémon, fighting in the Go Battle League or competing in PokéStop Showcases.


Sandygast moveset in Pokémon Go

When it comes to Sandygast’s moveset in Pokémon Go, we recommend Mud Shot (Fast) and Shadow Ball (Ghost) as this moveset allows you to utilise both of Sandygast’s types.

Palossand - Sandygast's evolution.

Here’s the full moveset for Sandygast in Pokémon Go:

Possible Fast Moves:

  • Astonish (Ghost)
  • Mud Shot (Ground)

Possible Charged Moves:

  • Earth Power (Ground)
  • Sand Tomb (Ground)
  • Shadow Ball (Ghost)

Good luck catching Sandygast in Pokémon Go!

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