You’re bombarded with complex systems and confusing jargon straightaway in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, from chroma and lumina, to gommages, pictos, and Nevrons. It’s certainly a lot to take in, and that’s before you even get to the nitty gritty of RPG mechanics, one of the most anxiety-inducing of which is attributes. You’ll want the best attributes on each character so they’re always fighting at their best.
Similar to soulslike games, each time you level up, you can spend points on attributes that boost a variety of stats, while also increasing your damage through weapon scaling. This makes picking the right attributes at any given moment a lot more confusing than it needs to be. Below, I’ll go over the attributes that I recommend for each character so you’re not wasting recoats to reset them.
Best Expedition 33 attributes for each character
Generally, there’s no single best attribute to invest your points in, largely because each weapon scales on different attributes, but also each character has a distinct playstyle that is largely unaffected by them. With that being said, vitality is always a safe bet since it increases your maximum health, letting you survive more hits between rests.
The most important thing to consider when spending your attribute points is your weapon scaling. Next to each stat, you’ll see a letter grade indicating how much damage you’ll gain from increasing that stat. For example, while the might stat increases all damage, you could have a weapon that scales with vitality, meaning you’ll also improve your attack damage by upgrading this attribute as well.
While you can pick a weapon purely for its scaling, it’s also worth noting its element, since enemies have specific elemental weaknesses.
You can respec your attribute points using a recoat in the upgrade screen, right where you spend them. Recoats are fairly rare, largely earned from bosses, puzzles, and extortionate merchants, though you can also find them through exploration.
These are the attributes and stats you should focus on improving for each character:
Gustave
Many of Gustave’s skills hit multiple times, such as From Fire, Lumiere Assault, and Strike Storm. Because of this, luck is incredibly beneficial. Luck boosts critical hit chance, so this maximises the damage Gustave can deal with a single skill. Of course, Might is also strong since it simply increases all damage dealt.
Lune
As is made clear from her explosive introduction, Lune is the spellcaster of the party, but she’s also a healer. Her utility makes it a priority to keep her in the fight, so I recommend focusing on defense, as well as regularly dumping stats into vitality like you’ll do with most characters.
With a heavy emphasis on setting up combos, agility is also a good option. If you have Maelle in your party, then you probably won’t want Lune stealing the first action in combat, but sneaking in ahead of the enemy to apply a stain that you can quickly follow up on in your next turn works wonders. In typical turn-based combat fashion, it’s all about exploiting the action economy.
Maelle
Maelle’s stance-based combat style makes her a versatile fighter, though she’s primarily a single-target DPS. She benefits greatly from agility and luck to increase her overall damage output. Having tons of agility lets Maelle go first in combat, applying weakness or even taking an enemy off the board straightaway. Similar to Gustave, several of Maelle’s skills attack multiple times, too, like Sword Ballet or Rain of Fire, so increasing her critical hit chance through luck can lead to fantastic burst damage. Later on, her Percee is one of the best damage-dealing skills in the game, so you’ll want to ensure that crits if possible.
Sciel
With a deck of cards and a badass scythe, Sciel is another strong damage dealer for your party. As you’ve likely guessed by now, luck is a priority for Sciel, with most of her skills hitting multiple times. However, might is also worth heavily investing in, even more so later on, since weapons like Charnon already give you plenty of critical hit chance during Twilight mode.
Verso
Since Verso’s playstyle heavily relies on dodging or parrying attacks, you don’t really need to worry about investing points in defense. If you’re struggling to pull off these defensive moves, then Verso isn’t the best character for you anyhow. With that being said, Verso also has a few skills that sacrifice his health or debuff him in other ways, so vitality is a good choice to soften the blow.
Playing into Verso’s role as an offensive support, agility is also worth investing in. Letting him get in early to use skills like Powerful to buff allies gives your team a head start. A nuking skill like Speed Burst also uses Verso’s speed to improve its damage, so it’s not all selfless.
Monoco
Monoco breaks the rules quite considerably, being the only character that doesn’t learn new attacks simply from spending skill points in an ability tree. Instead, he pinches powers from Nevrons you’ve killed by stealing their feet. Because of this, the attributes you’ll want to invest in can change quite a lot throughout your playthrough, though luck and might are generally safe stats to spend your points on.