Unfortunately, it’s no longer possible to straight up look at a vault these days and know what the best option to take, nor what the best option for crafting is. The game has become too complex, and there’s too much information for the average player to realistically know. Even sims aren’t the perfect choice as they cover a too narrow range of damage profiles and timers. However, the following is what I’ve found as a good compromise, and seems to work for me. I am not saying it will be perfect, but it’s likely far better than just a regular “drop it in and see what it recommends” sim might provide.

The Works

You’ll need a premium subscription for this to work. If you can bum it off of someone else, that’s great, but otherwise you’ll have to fork over the 10 smackaroos to get the full iteration count. You could also just run it locally, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.

So, here’s what I recommend.

First thing is to set the Minimum Set Bonus. You’ll want to put this at 4 set, of course, to make sure the sim always makes sure you have that.

Next is to account for how many total crests you’ll have that week to play with for upgrades. You should set it to the actual, real amount you will end at after capping. In this example, on my alt, I’ll have 135, so I set it accordingly. Notice that you need to have the “Show All” option ticked to make certain you can see everything.

Next, make sure to hit the “Upgrade Selected to Max Affordable”, and if you’re crafting, also change the “Spark of Fortunes” to however many you’ll have that week. In my case, it’ll be 1, so I’ll do that. You don’t need to alter the “Enchanted Gilded Undermine Crest” amount if you have enough to craft and upgrade things. Here’s what mine ends up being after adjusting all fields:

I also adjusted my Catalyst charges to account for that as well, in case shifting around the tier pieces was better.

Now, on to crafting items.

You’ll see a search bar just below this, that looks like this:

In here, just type the name of the pieces you’re considering crafting. Generally, you just want to pick as many off-pieces you know are viable. For me, right now, I need Belt/Head/Chest/Feet/Ring/Neck/Back or Off-hand. That might put me over the iteration amount, however, so I’ll probably just cull it down by not doing an Off-Hand. Make sure to also set the Item Level to 675, or whatever the highest you’ll be able to craft will be.

This is what it looks like for a leather player:

And as I need rings and necks, I’ll need to search for those and add them too. Remember you only need to just click on each item once to add it. There’s little in the way of haptic feedback for doing this, so make sure you don’t accidentally click multiple times.

Now, we’ll need to scroll through all the pieces and adjust them accordingly. Again, you should have hit “Upgrade Selected to Max Affordable” at the Item Currency panel. For anything that needs it, there’s a little plus sign you can click on to Copy and Modify. You can click on this to add embellishments or sockets. It looks like this:

Now, as I mentioned, you may hit the iteration cap doing a “Giga Sim”, so to speak. In this case, I’m well over it before I even hit the max amount. So, in this case, you’ll have to make an educated decision based on what drops early in the raid/what you may be able to get, or based on a simpler sim to see what is straight up not as big of an upgrade.

Here, I know some of the factors already, so I decide to cull a Cloak craft and remove some Great Vault items from my sim.

I also cull any items I don’t think will be as big of upgrades from doing past sims. You may need to run multiple versions of these kinds of sims to figure out what the real choice will be!

If possible, you should use “Replace Existing gems/enchants” if your iteration count can handle it. You have the option of waiting until the “end” to figure this part out, but again, if you want the most accurate result, you’ll have to run multiple sims!.

Lastly, change your actual Simulation Options accordingly. Most people just do a Patchwerk 5 Minute sim, although this is obviously NOT how most fights are. Again…RUN MULTIPLE SIMS.

Use the Nightly build if you want the most accurate results as well, and then let it fly. After that, you now know enough to fiddle with this to get everything the way you want. Hope this helped!