Open Workbench → Crafting Simulator, or bind a hotkey to open it as a window over the game. Paste a copied item — or pick a bare base and an item level — and start applying currency. Nothing you do here touches your stash, your account or anything else. It is a sandbox.
Simulate the item you are hovering
The quickest way in is the Simulate Hovered Item hotkey. Hover an item in Path of Exile 2, press it, and ePOE copies the item and opens the desktop app on the Crafting Simulator with that item already loaded.
It is unbound by default. To bind it, open Overlays → Hotkeys, find Simulate Hovered Item under Tool windows, press the combination you want and then Save changes. Turn on Advanced Mod Descriptions in the game's options first, so tiers come across with the copy.
The point is the question you cannot otherwise answer without paying for the answer: *if I take this base and hit it with forty Exalted Orbs, what does it actually look like?*
What it simulates
The rules. Prefix and suffix caps (a Magic item holds one of each, a Rare three of each), modifier group exclusivity (never two "maximum Life" prefixes), and item-level gating (a tier that needs item level 82 does not appear on an item level 74 base). All three come from the modifier pool ePOE already ships — the same file the Item Database reads. On top of those, the game's own directions: an item holds only one Desecrated modifier, a corrupted item accepts only a Vaal Infuser or an Architect's Orb, a mirrored item cannot be modified at all, and the quality and socket caps depend on the item — which classes take an augment socket, how many an Artificer's Orb can open, and how far a Vaal Infuser pushes quality past 20%.
What a base refuses to roll. Every wand and staff carries tags saying which elements' spell modifiers it cannot have — that is what makes a Bone Wand a physical wand and a Withered Wand a chaos one. Those modifiers are never offered. The reading covers the damage and spell-skill-level families; whether the game also withholds the matching *ailment* modifiers is not in the shipped data, so the item card names the base's exclusions and leaves you to judge.
The currency. Transmutation, Augmentation, Regal, Alchemy, Exalted, Chaos, Annulment, Divine, Vaal, Fracturing, Artificer's, Orb of Chance, the bones, the quality currencies, and the Greater and Perfect variants where PoE2 has them. Each one is greyed out when it cannot apply, with the reason: *"Exalted Orb — no open affix slot, the item is full."*
Greater and Perfect orbs use the game's real minimum modifier level — the values in the client's own table (Greater Exalted, Regal and Chaos 35, Perfect 50; Greater Transmutation and Augmentation 44, Perfect 70). A modifier group with no tier at or above that level is simply out of reach for that orb.
Catalysts. Breach catalysts go on rings and amulets, and the Refined ones on jewels. Each adds quality that raises the values of one type of modifier — life, attack, defences and so on — instead of the item's base stats, and the affected lines are marked *Raised by N% catalyst quality* on the card. A different catalyst keeps the quality already there and only changes what it scales.
Runes and soul cores. Items with augment sockets list Runes and soul cores you can socket, each showing the effect it has in *this* item's slot — a rune says one thing in a weapon and another in armour. One socketable per empty socket; search the list by name or effect. The Aldur runes' "transforms Cold and Lightning modifiers into Fire" rewrite is applied to the item's modifiers. Sockets an imported item arrived with count as empty, because the copied text shows a rune's effect but not which rune made it.
Live item stats. The Item stats block on the card recomputes as you craft: armour, evasion, energy shield and block for armour; physical, fire, cold, lightning and chaos damage, attack speed, critical hit chance and DPS for weapons — with quality, catalysts and runes included.
Essences, with a preview. Every shipped essence, filtered to the ones that cover your item's slot, each showing the exact modifier and tier it would force onto *this* item before you spend it. Lesser, normal and Greater essences take a Magic item to Rare. Perfect and Corrupted essences work on a Rare by removing a modifier and adding theirs.
Omens, where the rule is deterministic. Sinistral and Dextral steering (prefix only / suffix only), Greater Exaltation and Greater Annulment's two modifiers, Whittling's lowest-level removal, the Alchemy side caps, Omen of Chance's "will not destroy", Omen of the Ancients' guaranteed unique — drawn from the whole item class, as its text says, not just from your base — Omen of Corruption's "always results in change", and the five Desecration omens described below. Hold one in the omen slot and the next currency it steers consumes it. An omen that makes a craft impossible rather than merely different greys the button and says so: Sinistral Crystallisation frees a prefix, so it cannot serve an essence that needs a free suffix. Omens ePOE cannot simulate are not offered at all rather than offered and ignored.
Desecration. A bone adds one modifier from the base's Well of Souls pool — a different file from the one every other currency reads, and the same one the Well of Souls page computes its odds from. Which bone depends on the slot: Jawbones for weapons and quivers, Ribs for armour, Collarbones for rings, amulets and belts, a Cranium for jewels and a Vertebra for waystones. The simulator only offers you the bones that fit the item in front of you, so a ring shows Collarbones and never Jawbones. Each of the first three comes in Gnawed, Preserved and Ancient; Cranium and Vertebrae only come Preserved. The tier is the level window, and both rules come from the data: a Gnawed bone only works on an item below level 65, and an Ancient one only produces modifiers of level 40 and up. Because every Well of Souls modifier on a piece of gear needs level 65, those two together mean a Gnawed bone can never produce one at all — it rolls an ordinary modifier, and the button says so before you press it. A bone needs a Rare item. Five omens steer them: Sinistral and Dextral Necromancy pick the side, and Omen of the Liege, of the Sovereign and of the Blackblooded each guarantee one of the dataset's three modifier families (Amanamu, Ulaman, Kurgal) on a weapon or a piece of jewellery, exactly as their text restricts them — held over anything else, the omen is refused rather than silently spent. Omen of Light is filed under Desecration but steers an Orb of Annulment — it removes only a desecrated modifier, and is greyed when the item carries none.
A seed. Every roll comes from one seeded generator whose position is shown. Same item, same seed, same buttons — same result, every time. Undo rewinds the generator along with the item, so redoing a step repeats it exactly instead of handing you a second lottery ticket.
The bill. A running count of everything spent, priced against the market cache. Anything the cache has no price for is counted and flagged rather than treated as free, so the total is always a floor.
What it does not simulate
Real odds. This is the important one. The bundled modifier pool says which modifiers and tiers *can* roll on a base; it does not carry PoE2's real spawn weights. Inside the eligible set every tier here is equally likely, and in the game they are emphatically not — low tiers roll far more often than high ones. Treat an outcome here as a plausible result, never as a representative one, and never as odds. The Well of Souls page will at least put a number on a specific desecrated modifier and cost the attempts, but it reads the same weightless pool, so that number is a share of the eligible set rather than a measured chance.
Vaal Orb outcome weights, and the Orb of Chance rate. The Vaal Orb's outcomes match the game — it corrupts and then does nothing, grants a corrupted enchantment, or on an item that takes sockets opens one past the normal cap — but the real odds are not published, so the three are equally likely here. The enchantment itself is recorded as a note rather than invented as a modifier. The Orb of Chance either makes a unique or destroys the base, and nothing says how often, so it is only simulated when the outcome is certain — under an Omen of the Ancients — and refused with that reason otherwise.
The Well of Souls reveal step. A real desecration marks the item, and the Well of Souls then offers you three modifiers to keep one of. The simulator takes the draw instead of offering it — which flatters a bone, because in game you get a choice — and that is also why two Desecration omens are not modelled: Omen of Abyssal Echoes rerolls an offer nobody was shown, and Omen of Putrefaction's "up to 6 Unrevealed modifiers" needs unrevealed modifiers to exist first. The Well of Souls pool has no real spawn weights either — every weight in the shipped file is 1 or 0 — so which modifier a bone lands is uniform here for the same reason every other roll is.
Waystones, fluxes and Divine sanctification. None of these are modelled — fluxes ship by name only, with no effect text. The omens that steer them say so instead of quietly doing nothing.
Implicits and enchants. Lines marked (implicit), (rune) or (enchant) in the copied text are kept as fixed lines — shown under *Implicits, runes and enchantments (kept)* and counted in the item stats — but currency never changes them. Anything the simulator could not place is listed under the import box rather than silently dropped.
Using it well
Decide the goal before you start clicking. "Make it better" is not a goal and the simulator cannot grade it. "Get a tier-1 life prefix while keeping both resistances" is, and the run either got there or it did not.
Check the real price first. The cost panel tells you what a run spent. It cannot tell you what the finished item sells for. Price the target on the Market page, compare the two numbers, and accept the answer — often the answer is "buy one instead", and that maths is the difference between crafting and donating.
Use the what-if picker before the orbs. Placing a modifier by hand costs nothing and is never counted as spend. If tier-2 life in the open prefix would not actually be enough for your build, you have just learned that for free rather than after forty Exalted Orbs.
Fill empty slots before rerolling filled ones. Adding to an empty slot is additive and cheap. Replacing an existing modifier is expensive and can go backwards. The slot pips on the item card show which you are doing.
Write the seed down. If a run produced something worth talking about — or worth asking someone else about — the seed plus the item is the whole recipe. Anyone with the same base can replay it exactly.