Expedition 33: Best builds

Filip Melzacki, guides author.

In Act 1, one of the optimal strategies is based on setting enemies on fire. All team members have skills that go well with setting enemies on fire. Gustave's From Fire skill allows him to heal by attacking ignited enemies. At this point in the game, attacking ignited enemies with Swift Stride is the only way for Maelle to enter the Virtuose Stance, which drastically increases the damage she inflicts. Immolation is also the key to the powerful Lune combo, which is especially useful during boss fights: Immolation, Thermal Transfer, Thunderfall, Rockslide results in a large amount of AP and Stains that drastically enhance the last attack in this sequence.

In the later stages of the game, setting enemies on fire allows Lune to gain access to two better combos: Wildfire, Thermal Transfer, Lightning Dance inflicts gigantic damage, and Electrify, Crustal Crush results in a powerful Break. The key weapon in this strategy is Lune's Lighterim: it takes after Agility and Defense and reduces the cost of Fire skills. Fortunately, this weapon is quite common. Maelle's Blurerum is equally useful and common; it's based on Luck and Agility and inflicts Fire damage through critical hits.

Maciej Bogusz, translator.

Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 allows you to experiment with selected builds. The player receives particular freedom in that regard in Act 3. After defeating one of the main bosses (in Act 2), we receive a Picto, which allows us to deal more than 9999 damage. Learning this Picto and later using it as lumina (its cost is 5 lumina points) turned out to be crucial in endgame, as it allowed me to fight optional enemies who proved to be the most challenging ones.

My build was based on utilizing Lune's area and supportive skills. These were: Wildfire and Healing Light. I chose the remaining four skills depending on what my enemy was susceptible to, although most often they were: Ice Lance, Lightning Dance, Hell, and Rockslide. When having Lune on the team, it is also important to remember to collect Stains, which, if used correctly, can significantly increase the damage dealt.

The next character who permanently joined my team was Maelle. The youngest member of the expedition deals 200% damage in the Virtuose Stance. In this case, my build idea was mainly based on using the Virtuose Stance and strong skills that deal high damage: Percee, Gustave’s Homage and Gommage. The key skill in my build was Swift Stride, which allowed me to easily enter a Virtuose Stance if my target was on fire.

The third member of my team was Verso, whom I equipped with skills allowing for quick Breaks: Phantom Stars and Striker. When playing as Verso, remember to deal as many blows as possible in a given turn to increase his Perfection Rank, which will allow for dealing more damage and more optimal use of certain skills.

As for the Pictos, I used those that provided me with bonuses for perfect parrying. It was particularly important to gain two action points (AP) for having performed a good parry, as it allowed me to use powerful abilities and their related synergies at every stage of an encounter.

Michal "Czarny Wilk" Grygorcewicz, head of the sales department.

In his pursuit of optimization, the wolf dug too deep in the dumps and awakened an ancient evil.

In Yellow Harvest, one of the optional locations of the first act, we can find two seemingly useless Pictos. The first one is Auto Death, which, as the name suggests, causes the character equipped with it or trained with its lumina to die at the beginning of the battle. The second, Death Bomb, deals massive damage to all enemies when the character equipped with it dies.

You have probably already guessed what I'm getting at? Yes - the combination of these two perks creates a truly deadly mix, which allows you to win fights without lifting a finger. Moreover, we can multiply the effect by applying the set to other characters - each subsequent one means even more damage. With this method, we can extremely speed up the grind or break through regular enemies... although it's worth knowing that this solution comes with some drawbacks.

Firstly, if the enemies have shields at the start, they will absorb the damage and instead of an immediate victory, we will have an immediate defeat or start the fight with a significantly weakened party (depending on how many bombs we have equipped).

Secondly, this works averagely against bosses, for analogous reasons - if the bomb barrage is too weak to kill enemies in the first round, then we start drastically weakened.

And thirdly, characters who die in battle receive less experience, so if we want to level up quickly with this build, we must leave at least one character with standard Pictos/luminas and not an instakill build - then this one character will efficiently gain experience, while the rest will progress much slower.

Despite the flaws, I highly recommend this build, especially if you want to quickly gain a handful of levels or just need a break from constant QTEs.