Stalcraft Artifact Optimizer

Searches artifact combinations for your armor and container and ranks them by how long you survive a weapon you choose, or by movement speed, while keeping infection within limits and meeting your requirements.

How the Artifact Optimizer works

The optimizer searches artifact combinations for your container and ranks them by the goal you choose: staying alive longest against a weapon you specify, or moving fastest. It returns up to 10 builds that respect every limit and requirement. It is a search over the site's model of the game, not a lookup of known meta builds.

What the search does

Your choices in the five setup steps define the problem. 1. Equipment & Container Setup: the armor (+15), the container's slots, effectiveness and inner protection, and the plate. 2. Target Combat Simulation: the incoming weapon, ammunition, distance, hit distribution and bleeding. 3. Healing, Buffs & Explosives: stats from consumables and grenades. 4. Artifact Selection & Pool: which artifacts may be used, and at what rarity. 5. Optimization Criteria & Requirements: the goal and the requirements.

Small searches: every combination

When the pool and slot count allow only a few thousand combinations, every combination is evaluated. The result is then the best build under the site's model and your settings.

Large searches: genetic search with local improvement

Otherwise the optimizer evolves a population of candidate builds over many generations. It combines and mutates them, then improves promising ones by swapping single artifacts. Several searches run in parallel in your browser and their results are merged. The random choices are seeded, so the same settings give the same results.

The genetic search checks only a fraction of all combinations, so it does not guarantee the best possible build. It usually finds very strong builds, but a stronger one can exist even when results look stable. If a result matters, run it again with different requirements or a narrower pool, and compare it in the Build Calculator.

Optimization goals

Survival

Maximizes your Time To Kill: how long the incoming weapon from step 2 needs to kill you. When two builds survive equally long, effective HP, healing and speed break the tie. A build whose healing outpaces the incoming damage is shown as ∞ and ranks first. In High Precision Mode builds are ranked first by how many shots it takes to kill you, then by the averaged TTK.

Speed

Maximizes Combined Speed (movement speed + sprint speed). Time To Kill and effective HP only break ties between equally fast builds. Stamina is not part of the score. Infection limits and your requirements still apply, so add a TTK or EHP requirement if a fast build must also survive.

Time To Kill in the optimizer

time for the configured weapon to take you from full health to 0, with your healing applied throughout

The weapon is taken at +15 with the selected ammunition and its damage at the chosen distance. Damage is reduced by your bullet resistance (after the weapon's armor penetration), vitality, the selected plate and elemental protections. Your periodic healing and in-combat regeneration, and burning and bleeding (when bleeding is enabled), apply while you take damage. Results above 600 s are shown as >600 s. This is the time you survive. The TTK Calculator measures the opposite direction: your weapon against a target.

Effective HP

100 × (1 + bullet resistance ÷ 100) × (1 + vitality ÷ 100)

The same definition as the Build Calculator. A "Reaction to" stat counts as vitality only if the configured weapon or ammunition deals that damage type.

Limits and requirements

Infection limits (always on)

Radiation, thermal, biological and psy accumulation must each stay at or below 10 after the container's inner protection, and frost at or below 0. Inner protection removes its percentage of the artifacts' positive accumulation; frost is not reduced. Accumulation your selected grenades add is allowed on top. Builds over a limit are never shown. Values are in the game's units. The frost total includes the natural removal of -20, so the items can add up to 20, the frost threshold the game shows on containers.

Stat Requirements

A minimum or maximum for any stat, including derived values such as Time To Kill, Effective HP, Effective Stability, Combined Speed and healing. While searching, the optimizer may pass through builds that miss a requirement, because that helps it reach good regions. The results only include builds that meet every requirement. If none do, the page says so and suggests loosening them.

Artifact Requirements

A minimum and maximum count for a specific artifact. A required artifact is added to the pool even if it would not otherwise help the goal. Every returned build respects both counts.

Search settings and what they cost

Calculation Speed & Accuracy

Fast Mode (Averaged) (default) models incoming damage as an average rate, which is quick and suits high rate-of-fire weapons. High Precision Mode steps through the fight shot by shot. Each shot deals its average damage across the hit distribution, the plate wears down and bleeding builds up step by step. It is not a random simulation. It changes the combat model, not the size of the search, and it is slower per build. The page recommends it for weapons at 240 rounds per minute or slower, where single shots decide the outcome.

Build Variety

Balanced (default) only keeps a build if its artifact set differs from every better build by more than 40% (Jaccard distance), so the 10 results are distinct alternatives. Focused only removes exact duplicates, so you see the strongest builds even if they differ by one artifact. Focused is recommended with a small inventory.

Global Pool

Uses every enabled artifact that can affect your goal, a requirement or an infection. All of them use the Global Artifact Rarity Roll (%) (175% by default) unless you set a rarity for one artifact. Artifacts are assumed at +15 with their first three additional stats. Any artifact can be used more than once, except that each Rubik configuration is used at most once.

My Inventory

Uses only the artifacts you add, each with its own rarity roll and amount (the most copies a build may use). Levels are assumed to be +15. Use it to search for the strongest builds you can make from what you own.

Fine-Tune Quality (Down-Rolling)

Experimental and off by default. When a strong combination breaks an infection limit at the chosen rarity, the optimizer works out lower rolls within each artifact's current rarity tier that bring it back under the limit, then rechecks your requirements. Such builds can be hard to reproduce in game, and the search takes longer.

Multi-Container Mode

Searches several containers at once and compares their best builds. Each container uses its own slots, effectiveness and inner protection.

How artifact stats are calculated

Beneficial stats = maximum value × rarity ÷ 100 × (1 + 0.3 × level ÷ 15) × container effectiveness, the same formula as the Build Calculator. Downsides do not grow with rarity like upsides: within each rarity tier they rise from their smallest to their largest value. Container effectiveness does not change downsides or reductions of infection.

Reading the results

The first build is the highest-ranked build found for your goal. Use the build navigation and Reset to Best to step through the others, ranked from the highest.
Each build shows its artifact combination, survival stats (Time To Kill, Effective HP, Potential Healing and Actual Healing) and speed. Each optimized stat lists its sources.
Lower-ranked builds can be almost as good and may be easier to assemble, use artifacts you already own, or keep more of a secondary stat. That is why Balanced variety shows distinct alternatives.
An artifact marked Optimized uses a down-rolled quality from Fine-Tune Quality (Down-Rolling), not the global roll.
Show in Build Calculator opens the build there so you can change single pieces and see the full stat breakdown.

When to change the settings

No builds found: loosen or remove a requirement, widen the pool, or choose a container with more inner protection.
Results are all similar: switch Build Variety to Balanced, or add an artifact requirement to explore a different family of builds.
Slow, hard-hitting incoming weapons (sniper rifles, shotguns): use High Precision Mode, because whether you survive one more shot matters more than the averaged rate.
A fast build that dies too quickly: add a Time To Kill or Effective HP minimum in Speed mode.

Assumptions and limitations

Artifacts, armor and the incoming weapon are assumed at +15. In Global Pool every artifact uses the same rarity unless you set one per artifact.
Survival is measured against one weapon profile at one distance and hit distribution. A build tuned against one weapon may rank differently against another.
Combat is modelled with averaged or expected damage, not random hits. Reloads, recoil, aim, movement and healing items used during a fight are not modelled.
The genetic search is heuristic. It is seeded and repeatable, but it does not guarantee the best possible build.
Speed mode scores movement and sprint speed only. Stamina, carry weight and speed caps are not scored.
Results depend on the site's current artifact data and its model of the game, which can lag behind a game update.

Stalcraft Artifact Optimizer

1. Equipment & Container Setup

2. Target Combat Simulation

3. Healing, Buffs & Explosives

Healing & Recovery

Consumable Buffs

Grenades

4. Artifact Selection & Pool

Biochemical

Electrophysical

Gravity

Other

Thermal

5. Optimization Criteria & Requirements