Frequently Asked Questions

STALCRAFT Meta is an independent fan project with tools for STALCRAFT: an artifact optimizer, a build calculator, a TTK calculator, a recoil visualizer, a sensitivity converter, a weapon DPS table, community tier lists and an item wiki. Each tool page explains how it calculates its results.

Item stats come from the site's snapshots of EXBO's public game-data repository; character and price data use the EXBO API. Site administrators can also adjust some artifact and weapon values (for example, to fill in values the snapshot lacks), and the tools then use the adjusted values. The tools calculate with the mechanics this site models, and each tool page lists its assumptions and limitations. A game update or a mechanic the site does not model can make results differ from the game until the data and the tools are updated. The footer shows when the game-data snapshot was last synced from EXBO.

No. STALCRAFT Meta is not affiliated with, maintained, authorized, endorsed or sponsored by EXBO. It is a fan-made project.

Yes. When you sign in with your EXBO account you can save up to 20 builds to your account. You can also share a build as a link, which needs no account.

When the pool and slot count allow only a few thousand combinations, it checks every combination. Larger searches use a seeded genetic search with local improvement, which checks only part of all combinations: its results are strong candidates, not a guaranteed best build. Builds are ranked by your goal: Survival ranks by how long the incoming weapon needs to kill you, and Speed by movement + sprint speed, with Time To Kill and Effective HP as tie-breakers. Infection limits and your requirements are constraints: only builds that meet them are shown.

Build Variety controls which of the up to 10 results are kept. Balanced keeps a build only if its artifact set differs from every better build by more than 40% (Jaccard distance), so you see distinct alternatives. Focused only removes exact duplicates, so you see the strongest builds even if they differ by one artifact.

The optimizer uses whatever scores best for your goal under your settings. To steer it, disable the artifact in the pool, add a requirement such as a minimum movement speed, or switch to My Inventory to search only the artifacts you own.

Fast Mode (Averaged) models incoming damage as an average rate, which is quick and suits automatic weapons. High Precision Mode steps through the fight shot by shot, with the plate wearing down and bleeding building up per shot. It is deterministic, not a random simulation, and is recommended for weapons at 240 RPM or below, such as snipers and shotguns.

Effective HP (EHP) is the amount of bullet damage, before armor penetration, that a build can take. It is calculated as 100 × (1 + bullet resistance ÷ 100) × (1 + vitality ÷ 100). For example, 100 bullet resistance and 10% vitality give 220 EHP. It is the calculator's model and does not include other damage types or plates.

Potential healing = periodic healing × (1 + healing effectiveness ÷ 100) + (2.5 + regeneration) × 20%. Healing effectiveness multiplies periodic healing only; regeneration counts at 20% because the calculator assumes you are in combat. The Healing value shown is this total after the burning, bleeding, toxic and frost levels your own build causes, minus grenade damage over time.

Beneficial stats = maximum value × rarity ÷ 100 × (1 + 0.3 × level ÷ 15) × container effectiveness, so rarity and level scale them linearly and +15 adds 30%. Container effectiveness does not scale reductions of radiation, thermal, biological, psy or frost accumulation. Downsides are not scaled by level or effectiveness: within each rarity tier (starting at 101, 116, 131, 146 and 161%) a downside rises from its smallest value at the first roll of the tier to its largest at the top. Additional stats unlock one per five levels (+5, +10, +15); the Rubik has one more.

Inner protection is a container stat. When your artifacts' combined radiation, thermal, biological or psy accumulation is positive, the container removes its inner-protection percentage of it: with 50% inner protection, +4 radiation from artifacts becomes +2. Frost accumulation is not reduced.

For each weapon, target and distance the calculator runs thousands of simulated fights (5,000 to 50,000). In each fight every shot is randomly assigned to head, body, limbs or a miss according to your hit distribution, and damage falloff, armor, plates, healing every 50 ms and the selected bleeding mode are applied. The random numbers are seeded, so the same setup gives the same result.

It is the share of simulated runs that did not end in a kill within one magazine. It counts runs where the target was still alive after 30 seconds or 500 shots, and runs that killed but needed more shots than the magazine holds. Reloads are not simulated, so the second kind still counts towards AVG TTK. The results table shows the two kinds separately under the percentage.

Yes. Modules and weapon traits that change damage are applied shot by shot, for example damage based on the target's missing health, bonuses on the first or last five rounds of a magazine, hit-zone multipliers and plate damage. Select the module and its roll in the weapon configuration.

Runs that never killed the target are left out. The remaining kill times are sorted, the slowest 5% of them are discarded, and the rest are averaged. Only the slow tail is removed: this is not a symmetric trim of good and bad luck, so AVG TTK is slightly lower than a plain average of all kills.

Each point on the graph is where the aim point has drifted to by that shot, the sum of all earlier recoil kicks, converted to metres at the selected distance. Every recoil value comes from the weapon's own game statistics: vertical and horizontal recoil, the first-shot multiplier, recoil buildup and the shot it starts after. Only a weapon whose data predates those statistics uses values the site maintains. It is a model of uncorrected aim drift, not a recording of an in-game spray, and it does not predict bullet impacts.

Show Spread draws a circle around each point with radius = distance × tan(spread angle). It is an overlay: spread is not sampled into the points, and the points do not move when it is turned on or off. Crouching and prone use the weapon's stance multipliers; movement is not modelled.

It reads vertical and horizontal recoil, recoil buildup, spread, hip-fire spread and magazine capacity from attachments, adds their percentages together and applies them once. Stabilization is added up and shown on the weapon card, but the recoil calculation does not use it. Other effects, such as aim speed or movement speed, do not change the graph.