Because CREST uses only the lowest-energy conformer from a cycle as the starting point for the MTD in the next cycle, it becomes rare for CREST to find a conformer that is significantly lower in energy than the starting conformer before terminating. In some cases, better conformers are found in the MD step, but this is both unreliable and incredibly inefficient, since the MTD is then wasted, and MD is slow to explore conformers.