Stardust is the main meta currency in Shape of Dreams that lets players upgrade their characters outside their runs in the Rapids. By getting Stardust, players will be able to unlock new Constellation Stars to make their characters stronger, and later on, this resource can be spent to purchase Memories and Essences even before a run begins.
Players will naturally earn Stardust as they play Shape of Dreams, but if you want to get as much as possible within a short amount of time, there are a few ways to do so. This guide covers three different Stardust farming strategies, including one that will work even for newer players.
Shape of Dreams - Official Launch Trailer
Check out the official launch trailer for Shape of Dreams, a fast-paced roguelite action game developed by Lizard Smoothie.
Beginner Stardust Farm in Shape of Dreams
If you've just started playing the game, then one way you can efficiently farm for Stardust is to use Mist and rush the first boss over and over again. You can do this with any character, but among the ones new players start out with, Mist tends to be the fastest and most consistent in terms of overall performance.
Beat the boss, grab the Stardust drops, then quit to the main menu. Stardust is credited as soon as you pick it up, so you don't have to worry about dying or resetting runs.
The reason why Mist is so good is because of her passive, Astrid's Masterpiece - En Garde. This causes her first three attacks against an enemy to deal more damage and generate a Barrier for her. To make the most out of this, use the following skills and Constellation Stars:
- Fleche (Skill): Dash toward a target, dealing damage and hitting them immediately after with a basic attack. This temporarily increases Mist's movement speed, and if the target dies to Fleche, Mist heals and reduces Fleche's cooldown by a percentage.
- Parry (Skill): Parry the first incoming instance of damage from the front within 0.6s of activating the skill, then launch a counterattack that hits up to five enemies. Targets that are hit by Parry's counterattack are stunned, take damage, and have Astrid's Masterwork's cooldown timer on them reset.
- Astrid's Smithing (Red Constellation Star): Increases Attack Damage by up to 12.
- Aggressive Stance (Red Constellation Star): Increases Attack Damage by up to 8.
- Burning Bloodlust (Red Constellation Star): Increases Attack Damage by up to 16 until the end of the second world.
- Charged Saber (Parry Augment): After parrying an attack, you gain a Barrier equal to 100% of the damage parried, and your next attack is a critical strike.
It may take a while before you can unlock all the skills needed to make this method as fast as possible, but as long as you're using Mist, you'll be able to unlock all of these while you're trying to farm Stardust.
If you don't want to use Mist, then do make sure to use either Burning Bloodlust or Awakened Magic to get a significant AD or AP boost in the beginning of the run. Which one of these you'll take depends on what build you want to use on which character. Mages like Yubar and Bismuth benefit more from AP than AD.
If you're strong or fast enough, you can reach and beat the first boss in 2-3 minutes, and if you're on Deep Sleep difficulty, you should get 18 Stardust per run, resulting in 360-540 Stardust per hour.
The Fireball Method
This one relies a lot on luck and the Deja Vu feature, which unlocks after you reach a cumulative 50 ranks across all Travelers in Shape of Dreams. The Deja Vu feature lets players purchase Memories and Essences before a run using Stardust. This may sound counterproductive, but the investment is worth it.
Before anything else, this method involves looping, making this a fairly time-consuming method.
This works on any character. The important thing is that you get the Essence of the Vortex. When equipped on any Memory, this Essence launches fireballs toward nearby enemies. The higher the Essence's quality, the faster it will shoot. You can equip the Beginner's Luck Constellation Star from the Imaginary Constellation to immediately start with a 130% Essence of the Vortex on your character.
You'll immediately be able to do tons of damage to normal mobs with Essence of the Vortex and your starting skills. As the run progresses, look for the following Essences:
- .Essence of Lethality: Increases the damage you deal to targets with at least 70% health.
- Essence of Adventure: Every time you enter a new room, a random Essence equipped to the Memory with Essence of Adventure is upgraded, and you gain Gold.
Equip Adventure by itself into a Memory slot, then before you enter a new room, slot-in Vortex into the same Memory that Adventure is in. By doing this, Essence of the Vortex will scale for as long as you want. Meanwhile, Lethality will increase Vortex's damage to healthy targets, letting you one-shot them with the Vortex fireballs or with a quick follow-up using your own abilities.
The Black Market Imagination Star will let you refresh merchant inventories.
The Bismuth Long Run Method
Bismuth is extremely powerful with the right setup, and by using her, you can go on long runs that can rack you tons of Stardust. For this method, you will need:
- Rank 15 Bismuth
- Enlightenment (Unique Bismuth Destruction Star)
- Umbral Edge (Memory)
- High Attack Speed
- High Ability Power
This Bismuth build is all about stacking as much Attack Speed as possible. She works well with Attack Speed because of her Prismatic Visions passive, which gives her an initial Attack Speed bump and makes her deal bonus magic damage with her basic attack. Unlike other characters in Shape of Dreams, Bismuth cannot use her basic attacks directly..
Spend all of your Dream Dust and upgrades on Prismatic Visions, and you'll eventually make Bismuth so powerful that you can just run through rooms recklessly.
Umbral Edge gives you bonus critical strike chance and Dark damage on your attacks. With how quickly Bismuth is going to attack with this setup, Umbral Edge is going to be the perfect support Memory. You can use whatever Memories you prefer for the rest of her slots, though anything that would make Bismuth's attacks stronger or faster is ideal.
For this build, you'll want to keep looping for as long as you can. Just keep repeating worlds until you decide that you've had enough Stardust for one run. Just run into a red circle or hope that something survives your damage for long enough. Otherwise, beat the final boss or just quit back to the main menu.
Shape of Dreams
- Released
- September 11, 2025
