For all its gorgeous visuals, wonderful art direction, and incredible soundtrack, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also delivers on the gameplay front. Combat is excellent, and the sheer number of build options, tactics, and more is pretty impressive. But how do you go about prioritizing stats? When should you dodge instead of parry? Check out our 15 tips and tricks for all this and more before the game’s launch on April 24th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Let’s start with the most essential…
Decide on Your Party
Your party will slowly expand throughout the story, opening up more combat options (including a reserve team). However, think twice before immediately spending upgrade materials and Lumina Points for every character. Decide on a core party first and prioritize their growth. Anyone who’s not active gains less experience, though, so keep that in mind if the reserve team has to make a last stand.
Solo Leveling
Having trouble with some bosses? Send only Maelle, equip Last Stand Critical, and watch her work. Virtuose Stance is the key. It’s probably the strongest damage buff in the game that’s also the easiest to maintain. Best of all, it applies to counters, which won’t reset her stance, thus allowing you to pile on the damage.
Other Last Stand Pictos become available, which grant buffs like Powerful (more damage), Rush (higher speed) and Shell (less damage taken), further buffing her potency. The downside? You have to excel at parrying. Dodging is fine for survival purposes, but parrying is a must. Going solo also won’t help in situations with guaranteed banishment, like when fighting a Bourgeon, but your reserve team can still step in and finish the job if necessary.
Chromatic Nevrons
Just when you’ve got a handle on fighting regular versions, Chromatic Nevrons join the mix. They’re optional, and you don’t have to fight them, but the rewards can be well worth it. Solo Maelle can work in several instances, but you should otherwise prepare to deal with much higher health pools and damage output. Also, despite mirroring regular versions of enemies, they have new attack patterns, so beware.
Elemental Affinities
Each enemy has a different elemental affinity and can either resist your damage, making it less effective or outright absorb it, thus healing. The solution is to try and have different skills that don’t rely on that element as a backup of sorts. Alternatively, opt for weapons that deal physical damage instead of elemental. You’ll miss out on the added damage from exploiting an elemental weakness, though.
Dodging (and When to Dodge)
From the outset, parrying just seems infinitely more useful than dodging. Why dodge an attack when you can parry to obtain one Action Point and potentially counter for big damage? It’s because dodging is easier, and given the unpredictability of some enemy attack patterns, it can be safer to dodge than risk failing a parry. Dodging is also useful when facing an enemy of a similar element to your weapon and can
Getting More Damage
There’s a point in the story – no spoilers on where or when – where optional challenges and some Chromatic Nevrons are a little too tanky and damage seemingly maxes out at 9,999. And it’s not because of your skills, level or weapons – just the ceiling on your damage. The best advice is to progress further into the story and then try tackling them again. Who knows – you could very well break through.
Free Weapon and Pictos Level-Ups
Weapon upgrades become more plentiful in the late game, thus granting much more freedom for customizing builds. However, they can also be levelled up for free by purchasing a higher-level duplicate from vendors (which also applies to Pictos). Higher-level versions also seemingly drop from some monsters, though this is seemingly random. Nevertheless, it’s something to keep an eye out for.
AP Feast
Savor all those precious Action Points gained from parrying because they’re your only means of getting more, at least in the early hours. With that in mind, equip any Pictos and Lumina that can provide more AP. Dodger is a must since it grants AP from dodging, and there are also options for earning AP from consuming Marks and even before starting a battle. Better skills require more AP, so a surplus is always ideal.
Learning Efficiency
Equip as many different Pictos across your characters as they’re obtained. Every four battles, its ability is learned and can be assigned as passive Lumina (provided you have the points). The kicker is that they can be assigned to anyone, so the more options learned and available at any given moment, the better.
Camping and Bonding
You’ll often return to camp after major story beats, conversing with allies, upgrading weapons and writing in Gustave’s journal. However, you’ll eventually unlock the ability to spend time with allies, both party members and Esquie and build bonds. Ensure that you’re doing this from the world map throughout the game – simply press down on the D-Pad – and spend time as much as possible, because higher bond levels unlock new Gradient Attacks. You’ll even discover a new traversal option with Esquie.
Look for Lost Gestrals
Sometimes, taking out Chromatic Nevrons can open a path to Lost Gestrals. Speak to them, and they’ll return to camp, which also provides some rewards. If you find enough Lost Gestrals, you can even gain the ability to destroy the blueish-black rocks adorning the continent and gain even more upgrade materials.
Which Stats to Prioritize
Weapons scale off two stats – consider one the primary and the other secondary. However, since you may not nail down your weapon of choice early on, it’s advised to put points into areas that you feel are best depending on the character (like more Speed for Maelle or Luck for Lune). In the late game when using fully upgraded weapons, dump all your points into those two stats, and then look at other places to compensate, usually Luck for critical hit chance.
Pictos Stats and Their Importance
Once you’ve mastered enough Lumina, you can opt to equip whatever Pictos are available for the sake of stats. In the mid to late game, they can offer some pretty significant buffs to critical hit chance, HP, Defense, and Speed, allowing you to compensate for some stat choices. Alternatively, give your solo Maelle a little over 13,000 HP. The choice is yours.
Parry Tells
With the sheer variety of enemies, it can be challenging to anticipate and parry (or dodge) their attacks. There are some notable tells, like camera shifts, game speed changes (like a slight pause before the attack) and even sound cues (enemies roaring or distortion effects) that indicate the right timing. Pay attention, listen closely and, above all else, hope for the best.
Do NOT Spam Parry and/or Dodge
Those who played Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will doubtless remember spamming the block button to parry attacks. Do NOT mash the parry button in Clair Obscur. I cannot emphasize this enough. The reason is recovery frames after a failed parry, which prevent you from immediately executing another.
And, of course, if you mash it in a panic, you’ll fail the next parry, leading to the next attack landing. Instead, stay calm and anticipate attacks for successful parries. This also applies to dodging (or failing a parry and then trying to dodge), so think twice before spamming.
