Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

[coarse scarab]

||i was distraught. i was already upset that she didn’t let him at least say smth to alicia only for them to reveal he did the same to her. the quiet acceptance…||

how were we tagging party members again

i forgor

[pallid gull]

in order of recruitment so it would be p3 and p5 respectively

for these 2

[coarse scarab]

right

p6 spoiler @wheat tulip

[pallid gull]

||i think what really messed me up about this conversation is that the way alicia went was technically a suicide and maelle saying "it's what she wanted" and verso replying with "you don't know that, i could've talked her out of it" really got me so upset because he deserved the chance to at least try. even if her mind was set on it, he deserved at least a goodbye if not an attempt at stopping her||

[coarse scarab]

||yea it felt pretty insensitive on maelle’s part because he did in fact know alicia better. and she ripped that final connection, family member he had to the world. just because they’re mirror versions doesn’t mean they’re exactly the same person. also her fully knowing how it feels and trying to stop her own father from ripping away the only thing left of her verso, i expected better of her ||

||and verso even said it, she knows how it feels to lose a brother twice||

[pallid gull]

||i think the blow was definitely softened by finding out that verso outright let the most important person in her life (at the time) die just to accomplish his plan. circumstances were different but he had the power to intervene and maybe things would've been different||

||what's also wild is that despite having such a strong relationship they're nowhere near as close as they were to the counterparts that they Did consider siblings so i think about the disconnect they feel knowing that the other is so similar to the person they considered family||

[wheat tulip]

Gonna fight some people

[wheat tulip]

So well written

[coarse scarab]

||yea i think that’s very much the point and why they both don’t really have the room to accuse the other because it’ll be like the pot calling the kettle black||

[wheat tulip]

||so toxic yet i understand ||

[coarse scarab]

||goes to show how even if you have an exact replica, the bond can’t be replicated one to one. it’s a tale of grief and a constant reiteration that once someone has been lost, they’re gone. same thing w noco’s storyline too||

||this game hits me especially hard especially since i understand the grief, having experienced it myself. and i think those who were forced to grieve someone close to them will be able to relate heavily. there are people who’ve gone through the story and not understand the full extent of the circumstances or the emotions and i don’t fault them for it obviously but it’s really a different experience having gone through it ||

find myself at many points just nodding and going yeapppp that’s how it feels alright. love how the devs have been able to convey the emotion so well. it’s not easy to do

game good

[wheat tulip]

Im always so impressed at how the bodies feels so human

[pallid gull]

camp, p4 ||sciel being asked about what happens if there's nothing after death and her just saying that at least she'll be dead like the ones she loves so at least she'll be with them in death like okay lemme throw up that hits||

[wheat tulip]

||sciel last two dialogues hits so hard wtf between the fact that she said that and that she tried S word and lost her baby like that?? Okay wtf writer || massive spoiler camp

[languid gyro]

Squeezing in a tiny bit of the game before I have to eat breakfast and pack

[Right after Act 2] ||This conversation is more or less confirming the suspicions I'd been having for the latter part of Act 2 (probably the biggest hint was Alicia's whole "those who know not, that they are not" sequence but there've been other hints), but man it's still a lot to wrap your head around, especially what this means for all of the journey up till now||

||"in other Canvases" is really interesting to me though 👀 I wonder if we'll end up getting to explore those or if it's setup for potential future games||

||although...I feel like it'd be weird going into a new game with the player already knowing/suspecting they're in a Canvas world, so maybe that wouldn't work as well||

Also these are just self-notes to make sure I'm remembering the names/relations right, not really commentary of any kind (but do NOT interact if you haven't cleared Act 2), but we have:

• ||Alicia - OG Maelle (yes I know it's a bit more nuanced than that)||
• ||Verso - Alicia's sister (also "real" Verso already dead outside the Canvas?)||
• ||Clea - Alicia's and Verso's older sister (well, Alicia's older sister anyways, no clue if she's older than Verso)||
• ||Renoir - father of the siblings||
• ||Aline (Paintress) - mother of the siblings||

||Okay cool, we're also getting an explanation of Clea/Renoir being responsible for the gommage/countdown and what that actually is||

||So interesting that she can literally "repaint" her throat to be able to speak in there||

||Will probably take me a bit to figure out exactly how I feel about this revelation and the resulting shift||

||Ah, I see 🥲 yeah that makes sense||

||Also can I say, wow, whatever reservations I had about the "romance" as it existed, it feels even weirder now knowing what I know about Verso and the world 💀 ||

||Here we are||

[BG3] ||If I had a nickel for every lifechanging western RPG where Jennifer English is the secret MC whose hair turns white as the story transitions into its 3rd Act...||

||Also, I will say, I still stand by my original statement of Painted Power from a game balance standpoint but I do actually think that narratively it's neat that once we realize the Truth of this world, we're able to access essentially godlike power within it||

||Ah, the infamous Stendhal||

||But also holy shit??||

||Like look at this bullshit just from Act 2 luminas||

||And you're telling me they're removing the damage cap and giving me a skill that scales off burn at the same time?||

||Granted, maybe it isn't worth it since, as I understand it, Stendhal can take out bosses in a single turn, whereas it took me like 3 turns to stack all those burns, so it ramps up much slower, but still||

||Also I'm sure there's some narrative reason I get the rest of the party back later but oof at only having Verso and Maelle rn 🥲 ||

||Gotta put the game down for now and eat breakfast though||

[wheat tulip]

|| we are gonna see 1000 burn in your next screen i guess lmao||

[wheat tulip]

||you still need a set up for stendhal so probably 2 turns||

[wheat tulip]

Enjoy your breakfast!

[languid gyro]

||Eh, you say that but a) on-death luminas exist (can start the battle with allies dying and buffing you/debuffing enemies/and granting you access to solo lumina buffs in the process and b) I've been "spoiled" (again, don't generally mind if it's for gameplay/mechanics and not story/characters) on luminas that allow for extra turns, so I'm pretty sure one-turn setups do exist||

||Also, most of the time I'm fast enough that my whole team gets 2-3 turns before the enemy anyways, so even if it takes 2 turns to setup I can do the setup and kill before the enemy gets a turn lmao||

||I will probably not be going explicitly for those types of one-shot strats though, in part because while I enjoy optimizing, I also very much detest strategies that purposefully kill off allies (or even bring them to low health) so I'll probably avoid those even if it means gimping my potential a bit||

[wheat tulip]

||oh right gkrkfkf since it takes 2 places in the order i counts it as 2 turns sorry||

[wheat tulip]

||me neither i hate thoses so i get one picto about it im like 🙄||

[languid gyro]

||like yeah I could pop the Verso skill that drops him to 1 HP immediately, buff him up with the low-HP luminas, and then just Berserk Slash, but also no thank you lmao||

||even if I'm never actually at risk of my characters dying to low HP setups in other games because the low HP setups are capable of ending fights in a single turn, it just feels wrong to me and I don't like it||

[wheat tulip]

Understandable

[languid gyro]

||Thinking a lot about how a lot of the textures in the world, and especially in the sky, felt like they were painted and I initially chalked that up to aesthetic choice/style, but no it's just literally a painted world lmao||

[languid gyro]

||The way I'm starting to think about other media I've seen/played with similar revelations as the post-Act 2 Canvas revelation of E33 but I can't name any of them because the mere fact that I can draw narrative comparisons with those media is a big spoiler for those other media 😭 ||

||And the fact that every time I encounter this kind of plot twist, my brain always shortcircuits a bit trying to reprocess how I feel about the media with this new drastic shift in perspective, and then I shelve it away with an "I'll come back to this later", and then I don't, and then the next time I experience media with a similar plot twist, history repeats||

Why am I like this

[pallid gull]

||it's a lot to process, it's okay 😭||

[hasty halo]

||time for me to continue. And focus on grinding as well as getting Pictos maxed so I can use them as Luminas||

Also swapping one party member out for another for my current team so I can get them some levels

Lol

[languid gyro]

I feel guilty for not doing that poor ||Sciel|| has just been collecting dust for a while 😭

It's even funnier/dumber because I think replacing a member of my current team with her would actually be stronger/more optimized, but I've for the time being just decided to run with my 3 favorite members (||Lune, Maelle, and Verso||) instead of worrying too much about minmaxing

[hasty halo]

What's crazy amphy. is the same can be said for me. ||Sciel|| has also been collecting dust 😭

Also My main 3 ||have been Verso Maelle and Monoco||

[keen thunder]

I know I’m taking like a million years to progress the game, been busy (still around getting to the end of Act 2) but I’m laughing at the fact that || they put a recap dungeon in the game. I was like “huh I feel like I’m in spring meadows, am I in a recap episode” and sure enough Flying Waters pops up ||

[hasty halo]

Love when an enemy goes to do a turn and then just dies to burn damage 😂😂😂

"This enemy's turn has started" dies to burn stacks

[languid gyro]

Taking a million years to progress the game
You're at the exact spot that Reaver is right now and where I had only just finished last night; you're fine lmao

In fact it's neat that so many of us are all at almost the exact same place right now

You'll probably pass me up by weekend's end too since I have to stop playing for a few days

[green escarp]

Yeah only the truly mad have beaten the game essentially twice at this point.

...what? I'm allowed to make fun of myself

[hasty halo]

I'm so paranoid now 😂

Anytime I see a flag near an open field i'm like "Fight's about to break out isn't it" 😂🤣

[keen thunder]

Tbf I reached a big story point and then goofed off for four hours to earlier areas then decided okay time to do story

I think I’m just feeling it cause my coworkers have finished the game 2 weeks ago and can’t talk to me about it LOL

As much as I don’t like the old school style of benched characters not getting the same exp, I’ve been rotating and leveling my everyone evenly. When I see one character get a level above everyone else I just bench them. Kinda nice cause it makes me experiment and rethink how to play some characters

Then at the same time it’s hard to move away from certain busted setups

[hasty halo]

Yeah. Right now I have one character in my party that I switched out for another that I wasn't using

Just so I could get them up to speed

[wheat tulip]

I might be overleveled now tho i think

I wanted to check all the different areas unlocked rn but ||already lvl 80 😭||

[hasty halo]

Can't get the song from last night out of my head

[languid gyro]

That’s sorta the issue with me; I tend to have my characters set up to synergize with each other in specific ways, and I also have each of them speedtuned to specific breakpoints for more efficient turns

Which means swapping characters isn’t as simple as just slotting one in for another, it requires me completely redoing picto/lumina setups for everyone

[languid gyro]

Yeah RPGs like this are always a struggle of balancing whether you want to:

• a) experience the optional content but trivialize the main story by doing so, or
• b) skipping most of the content to stay on-level with the story

It’s why I really appreciated XC2’s inn system because you could do sidequests, and the sidequest exp would be “banked” in a separate reservoir that you could choose to access at any point but were never forced to, so you could do extra content without taking in any of the exp, the best of both worlds

[wheat tulip]

||Honestly even with that ill probably struggle for the next main story boss 😭||

[wheat tulip]

Oh interesting

[languid gyro]

Tbh RPGs like this should have an optional toggle in the menu that allows enemies to scale with the content you’ve done

[keen thunder]

I do painstakingly swap luminas and pictos around but to a certain point where I’m like “ehh good enough” we really do need loadouts

[keen thunder]

Seriously I love that option in XCDE too where you can choose to keep your level capped

[languid gyro]

Oh my god yes loadouts would be a lifesaver

My problem is I am unable to settle for “eh good enough” so I just spend a painstaking amount of time all the time on stuff like this lol

[green escarp]

I think they mentioned loadouts is something they're considering for future QoL updates

I don't remember where I read it though

Of course you could always just get so much lumina that you just equip everything and have the buff pop-ups lag your turns because of how many there are xD

[hasty halo]

Out of the damage I've dealt. ||My highest damage 30,153 for this one fight lmao||

Even tho my total damage dealt was 289,307 lol

[languid gyro]

I do wish the end of battle screen showed your highest damaging attack, rather than highest single instance of damage (so like if I did a 5-hit move that did 100k damage each, it’d show as 500k total)

I also wish the end screen would show a damage distribution for each character

Like if the team did 100k damage total, I’d want to know that Character 1 did 50k of that, Character 2 did 30k, and Character 3 did 20k, for example

It’d help a lot with figuring out how well my builds are working

[hasty halo]

I need to get more resplendent catalysts

[hasty halo]

Love how I almost got an optional boss down before it decided to stun me while it was super low HP 💀

It was like one or 2 hits away from death

Gonna challenge it again and this time hopefully not get stunned as much

Annnd did it

[languid gyro]

So for those of you past Act 2: ||did you end up deciding to mostly prioritize following the story, or did you still go around to explore and fight all the optional bosses/areas even if they were stronger than the actual final boss, rather than waiting till postgame?||

I'm still feeling indecisive about what to do

[hasty halo]

||I'm exploring right now. And trying to get my weapons/Pictos/Luminas upgraded||

[wheat tulip]

Same!

||i have 3 weapons lvl 33||

[keen thunder]

Looks like they partnered with IGN for official merch https://vxtwitter.com/ign/status/1923099291947499698?s=46

IGN (@IGN)

The IGN Store is the ONLY place to get Clair Obscur: @Expedition33 official merch!

Get yours today: https://store.ign.com/pages/official-clair-obscur-expedition-33-merchandise?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social_video&utm_campaign=exp33 https://t.co/zGbuD3FYFy

▶ Play video

vxTwitter / fixvx · May 15, 2025, 7:32 PM

[green escarp]

||Did all the side stuff first on my end||

[green escarp]

Only those Post Act 2 can read this⚠️ ||Also I will say this Amphy, for the section of the game you're at: while I won't elaborate, a lot of the side stuff, including things involving your companions, are stuff I felt are stuff that should have been main story. To me, especially after unlocking the ability to fly, is that the game almost expects you to go off and explore and do sidestuff. I kinda wish the game barred you from going back to Lumiere until you did a certain amount of other stuff. ||

||Reminds me a little bit of Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom. Yes, you can go straight to Ganon, but you miss a whole lot of game doing so.|| ⚠️

[languid gyro]

||That’s sort of the impression I got too; I’ve just been worried about also getting too strong from doing side content first, even without trying to go for a minmaxed teamcomp||

||I say, like I’m not heading to Sprog first chance I get, now that I have Painted Power lmao||

||I know Cheater’s amazing, but it’s not even for that; I just need the runback for the one boss I left alone during Act 2, for pride/challenge reasons||

[coarse scarab]

||i felt the same way too about a lot of the side stuff. it feels integral to understanding so much more about the motivations of certain characters and furthers their bonds||

optional area but post act 2 spoilers. music gets me so good this piece after doing this quest makes me so emotions

[hasty halo]

I saw some good big damage numbers today that had me like "WOOOOAH" lol

[coarse scarab]

optional area quest spoiler. ||ENDING ITALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL||

[languid gyro]

[End of Act 2] ||can’t play the game myself while at the con, but I’ve been going back and watching some streamers also going through the game and damn Renoir’s moveset looks cool as hell?? Feel a little bad that I saw virtually none of it 💀 ||

||And the fact he can straight up delete a member of the party for the battle, so that they can’t even be revived?? Insane stuff||

||Also I fear I will have this song stuck in my head till the end of days, or at least for the whole weekend till I get back||

[pallid gull]

this is super random but p3 and also later act 2 stuff ||i knew stendhal was a writer but what i didn't know is that apparently i've read one of his works??? now im just confused because i should remember something but i do not what the fuck... like i was like "this man sounds familiar" and then i researched and realized that i read the red and the black but i remember so very little despite knowing what's it about||

||unsurprisingly also about class struggle lmao||

the way this is technically not a spoiler either why did i spoiler it... i think it's cause my brain is trying to brew some analysis out of this so i prematurely saw it as a spoiler lmao

[languid gyro]

||Also wow rewatching these cutscenes with Renoir, the Curator, and the Paintress at the end of Act 2 with the added context I now have from the “Epilogue”…||

||This broken family, man…||

[pallid gull]

||i feel so bad for all of them ||

[green escarp]

There's one character I really wanna talk about in the late game but I think only Rain has gotten to the side stuff that gives them so much more context so far ||and he promptly got his ass beat by her because she's one of the hardest bosses in the game lmao||

But even if I were to do so, I would need to be at home and sit down to really dive into why I find them such a fascinating character. Alas, I am at work taking advantage of a brief lull

So for now I will just rotate said character in my head. As well as their music because its so good

Ah but said character also has context for another thing that I don't think anyone in here aside from myself has even gotten to in endgame too

[languid gyro]

Btw does anyone here have specific damage multiplier information for character skills? Namely ||I want to know at how many burn stacks does Burning Canvas overtake Stendhal||

[green escarp]

I don't have numbers for you but I know from personal use that it takes a lot for that skill to even come close.

Even post nerf its still absurd.

[languid gyro]

Oof, good to know I guess

If nothing else ||Painted Power should make it easier for me to better evaluate skills’ relative strengths (though I’d need to remember to also take off Roulette probably lmao); it was much iffier when everything was just doing multiples of 9999||

[green escarp]

Aside from luminas, I know weapons can make a difference though, because some have different effects for burn you can build around for Maelle.

On that note, I forget the name and I'm not at home to check but she gets a sword that increases burn damage and her basic attack actually spreads it to other enemies. It's fun lol

[languid gyro]

[End of Act 2] ||YOOOOOO THE PAINTRESS SUMMONS A GIANT BRUSH IN HER SECOND PHASE?? That’s honestly so cool, and goes with the palette she was already holding for her first||

[FFXIV EW] [E33 Act 2] ||I still really, really love the Endwalker-esque fight in midair on top of Esquie too; I wonder if that was meant as an homage even or if they just both had a similar creative vision for this part||

[green escarp]

||I know I keep gushing about it but the music in that phase has lived rent free in my head since the original cast reveal trailer for the game||

[languid gyro]

Oh yeah I guess I can actually look at trailers now without worry of spoilers (probably??) (I’d be extremely surprised if they spoiled anything beyond Act 2)

[languid gyro]

||Still just thinking about this, and the use of a Brush and Palette as a makeshift Sword and Shield is just so peak||

||I’m sorry “The Paintress rips reality apart”?? These attacks are insane||

||Also, like, I understand why, in the context of the game’s universe and narrative as a whole, but pretty crazy that the reality-warping omnipotent goddess is not, in fact, the final boss||

||Though in fairness the final boss is probably also a reality-warping deity lmao (at least to the perspective of beings within the Canvas) (with current most likely candidate being real Renoir, but I could also see Clea in some form or other); granted the story could also take a ton of new twists between where I am and the end||

[languid gyro]

[Right after Act 2] ||Monoco is the family dog?? I really should have explored the manor a bit instead of heading straight to the atelier 😭 I sorta metagamed and figured there’d be no items to pick up since we’re flashback Alicia instead of any of our party, but I didn’t think about just random stuff we’d be able to interact with for flavor text whoops||

||And also Clea was yelling at me to hurry up so I felt rushed 😭 ||

Also the way I’m only just now learning that ||Clea is voiced by Lae’zel’s VA, which is fun given Maelle/Alicia is voiced by SH||

[pallid gull]

||omg that's why krez asked me if i explored 😭 i also rushed immediately to clea but i should've looked around. explains why their happiness manager is also a puppy named monoco sobbing||

[languid gyro]

||It’s me actually I’m Verso’s dog||

||Okay I think I missed this the first time around, but on rewatching the epilogue scene, my understanding is that Clea is the one responsible for the Nevrons? Or at the very least for their ability to keep the painted populations’ chroma from escaping upon death, which gradually weakens Aline since she isn’t getting that chroma back||

||Which also means painted Renoir (from the beach) killing Expeditioners was actually indirectly helping them?? Because if he kills them, rather than the Nevrons, then the chroma doesn’t get locked in (I remember this from Lune’s convo with Gustave at the White Jar nevron in meadows), so Aline’s power doesn’t wane as quickly||

||Well, not that I think helping them was the goal so much as just preventing them from killing Aline tbf, though that does still indirectly help them also bc killing Aline expedites the Gommage she was mostly holding back||

Anyways, to sum up and make sure I understand correctly (this is an open invitation to correct anything I misunderstood if you’ve reached or exceeded this part of the game): ||The Dessendre family is one of Painters. Of that family, a fire took the life of the son, Verso, and severely damaged the youngest daughter, Alicia. In grief, the mother, Aline, took to escaping to an old Canvas painted by Verso (who created the world as a whole along with Esquie, the Gestrals, and the Grandis). In doing so, she also painted the city of Lumiere and populated it, along with painted copies of Renoir and Alicia (but not Verso? From the Paintress battle dialogue she referred to him as a “trick”, so I assume Renoir painted him instead) (also I imagine there’s a painted Clea but I don’t believe I’ve met her yet). Real Renoir does not see this form of grieving as healthy, so he too dives into the Canvas to erase her work (Gommaging the citizens) and pull her out. Clea agrees with Renoir and helps him by painting in the Nevrons to kill expeditioners, seal their chroma, and gradually weaken Aline. At this point, Alicia enters the Canvas herself to intervene, and in the process loses her memories/powers and is reborn as Maelle. Cue game start.||

Did I miss or misunderstand anything?

[pallid gull]

i think you got it right

i'll have to revisit some things ||i forgot a lot of stuff because i was so overwhelmed by so many emotions ||

[languid gyro]

Also going through it now thinking about ||Painted Renoir, and how he was painted to hold love and loyalty for his family, but his family was splintered into opposing sides (with his “real” self opposing the one who painted him) and the way he viewed the painted copy family as just as real as the “real” family and just aaaaaaaaa||

||His last words before dying to Curator/Real Renoir being “I love them too.” 😭 ||

[pallid gull]

||devastated the whole thing is just devastating and i feel for all of them||

||verso continues to fuck me up the most i think, specifically painted verso because there's something so tragic about never being able to be the person they (your family) want you to be, no matter how much you try, how alike you are, how much they love you, it's never going to be enough and that just makes me explode ||

[languid gyro]

Just like me fr

||And that’s before I started questioning gender stuff, which they’re still unaware of and, frankly, may die unaware of||

||But yes I feel so many things for Verso and I just want to hold him 😭 ||

[pallid gull]

i feel this one deeply, sending you lots of hugs and love

[wheat tulip]

||https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdrBaCMm/ || spoiler after act 2 i guess?

[languid gyro]

[After Act 2] ||so I get why we’re tagging the way we did, but also since we can’t say stuff like “After Act 2 Area 3” I end up having no clue if any given spoiler is safe for me or not 😭 ||

||Granted, I’m only at the beginning so essentially anything beyond the “Epilogue” I’d need to avoid||

||But even then idk how to ask y’all to differentiate between “Epilogue” spoilers, without putting the word “epilogue” as the tag, from the Act 3 content that comes after||

[wheat tulip]

Same dw idk where to set this one either

||its 3d models of the characters being silly buggy||

[hasty halo]

I love this game so much

It is crazy to me how Sandfall Interactive's studio is an ACTUAL MANOR

[wheat tulip]

European shit ngl lmao

[wheat tulip]

||https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdrAgt7d/ ||Act 2 spoiler

[wheat tulip]

Oh btw reminds me || the bread on the back of the baguette outfit isnt a baguette its a tradition|| act 1 spoiler outfit

[vivid peak]

I started watching lorie’s first vod and ||”she’s 33??? On her deathbed confirmed” 💀 ||

But also exactly my reaction too lmao

[wheat tulip]

||she didnt know how right she was ||

[vivid peak]

Slowly making my way through act one still and I’m just getting immersed in it so I don’t have much to say here but my god this game is so beautiful and every other superlative I can’t think of right now

[vivid peak]

Act one early ||I did want to mention I was delighted to find the Lorien gestral and also the dog sitting in fire gestral||

[coarse scarab]

i have finished the game

so many thoughts and emotions i'll have to sit on this for awhile

also i ended up being a little too strong for the endgame bosses lol kinda upset by that. i was super underlevelled and did a couple side stuff only to end up being too stronk. i delayed the fights as much as i can so i could experience the full movesets

[vivid peak]

Congrats on finishing

[hasty halo]

Sooooo

I managed to get to a reasonable level before deciding to stop earlier today lol

[pallid gull]

https://fixupx.com/alex_moukala/status/1923445275042910368

Alex Moukala (@alex_moukala)

Expedition 33 is funky
︀︀@lorien_testard

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▶ Play video

FixupX · May 16, 2025, 6:27 PM

[green escarp]

When you're ready to yap I'm here! I very much want to hear my friends' takes on this game's finale

[coarse scarab]

oh my GOD thats a sexy bass

guitar nerd in me rose up like dracula

[coarse scarab]

definitely! i'll need to take awhile to really digest everything and maybe complete more side stuff that i've heard builds upon the main story

[green escarp]

Yeah there's definitely a lot of context for things via the side stuff, which is why I feel like a lot of it should have been mandatory before the game lets you actually finish the story

But oh well

[pallid gull]

i'm so hesitant on what to do that i haven't opened the game in like 4 days lmao i've already done so much grinding i'm kinda scared that the last boss will be trivialized but i also would like to get more context on what's going on, i already know that side stuff and late endgame ||i'm gonna be fighting clea in the endless tower cause i got spoiled via the outfit LOL and i'm assuming i'm gonna get some more context there|| but also i feel like i should finish idk hate this baka life

[green escarp]

If it makes you feel better ||you actually don't fight Clea in endless tower so there's no spoiler there||

[pallid gull]

||wait so i got spoiled on the main story then? that's just worse ||

[green escarp]

||also no||

[pallid gull]

oh okay

[green escarp]

points vaguely at the world * side stuff! and that's all I'll say further on that particular subject lol

[pallid gull]

maybe i finish later today idk idk how to go about it

[green escarp]

Hop on ||Esquie|| and let whimsy decide!

[pallid gull]

i think im still stuck in optional area ||frozen hearts|| because i'm trying to get outfits for everyone lmao

[green escarp]

Also Aiden, the only reason I'm not figuratively 'ing you about looking up stuff that can potentially spoil you is because that puts you in a position to better protect Lorie during her playthrough. But you're on thin ice mister!

Ok but, I dunno what to do with myself now because I've done 2 playthroughs of this game already.
I wonder if NG++ is a thing? Or does it only scale once and now I'm basically immortal (unless I just don't pay attention in combat at all) with all my crazy lumina-powered party members. Even so I've gotten 100% achievements and I think I have pretty much all the pictos, though I say that and keep finding ones I've missed so who knows. I know there's some cosmetic stuff I don't have because ||some of them you can only get once a playthrough for one character||. Hmm...

Do I go through the whole game a third time? Likely, but probably not for a little bit.

Maybe I finally start catching upon other games (aside from the ones I've been logging into briefly for dailies/weeklies) but its hard when E33 just takes up so much space in my head, lol

I really hope this goes down as a generation defining masterpiece because to me it absolutely is

[vivid peak]

I know it’s taken me a while but.. Act 2 title card

[wheat tulip]

Oh? You are in act 2?

[vivid peak]

||why is this game never ending depression||

[wheat tulip]

||because its fun to be depressed!!(im joking)||

||and french are known to give dépression 😭||

[vivid peak]

||yeah, just now but the cut scene is done I’m just taking a breath||

[wheat tulip]

Omg

||did you had to try multiple time the boss?||

[vivid peak]

||i’m sad||

[vivid peak]

||the lamp thing?||

[wheat tulip]

Yup

[vivid peak]

No, ||I managed it but Gustav was dead (LMAO)||

||it was like that foreshadowing TikTok meme||

[wheat tulip]

Congrats !!

[wheat tulip]

||help!!||

[vivid peak]

||but my reward is Ben Starr ||

[vivid peak]

Is lorie near the end?

[green escarp]

Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft

No

Lmao

[pallid gull]

i was looking for cute outfits

[green escarp]

THIN. ICE.

[languid gyro]

Congrats! And I’m sorry!

[green escarp]

Congratusorry, one might say!

Also @vivid peak though lately it isn't even Lorie's fault because her power keeps blipping during streams this week

[pallid gull]

https://tenor.com/view/animoji-emoji-dog-dog-emoji-iphone-gif-16637264337685940967

[green escarp]

She's still in act 1

[vivid peak]

I haven’t joined or watched any besides the prologue one I had on this morning so I have no idea

[languid gyro]

Tbh this sorta just sounds like the typical endgame experience: you either skip all the side content or you explore and end up trivializing the end of the game and there’s not really much in between 🥲

[vivid peak]

Real and true

[green escarp]

Yeah its ok lol. She did the prologue way back, then stopped to finish Xenoblade X and only recently picked E33 back up

[languid gyro]

Also though, congrats on finishing!!

[vivid peak]

I can’t get over how well directed the cut scenes in this are

I’m sure there is plenty more ahead to impress me

[pallid gull]

also end of act 1 ||thank gawd they have a pre-rendered cutscene for the death, imagine doing all that while in the sakapatate outfit ||

[vivid peak]

Screaming

[languid gyro]

||Death of a Mime 🥖 ||

[green escarp]

||you mean like Lorie absolutely would have done?||

[vivid peak]

||and if they played that accordion track ||

[pallid gull]

||in her defense she changed it 🙂‍↕️ but also i was kinda sad he died in his real outfit because i had him the stylish suit... he could've slayed||

[green escarp]

The way I was trying to find a "the best is yet to come" gif to respond to this but half the results were of the orange turd in chief. I hate this timeline

[vivid peak]

Why

[green escarp]

because this country sucks and even when trying to find something fun completely unrelated to that fucker he still finds a way to infest it

sorry that honestly just made me really angry I need a sec

[vivid peak]

The horrors persist I understand

[vivid peak]

Wait so Lorie has finished act 1?

[pallid gull]

nope

[vivid peak]

Oh you mean ||when he died on your playthrough?||

[pallid gull]

yeah!

[vivid peak]

But also same Aiden lol

||when do I get to play dress up with verso now || rhetorical obv

Kind of obsessed with his ||rogue from xmen white streak||

[pallid gull]

||he's so hot i need him so bad||

https://tenor.com/view/speechless-smoking-man-old-man-smoking-old-guy-smoking-old-man-cigarette-gif-16836230630449212567

[vivid peak]

||i just met him and im already photoshopping our future children||

[green escarp]

You know I just realized 2 of Aiden's most used gifs invlove someone smoking

[pallid gull]

it be like that lately

[vivid peak]

Sorry if I’m dumb but is this someone famous

[pallid gull]

no, no idea who it is

well maybe he is famous LMAO

idk

i stole it because whenever people were talking about jayvik porn they would use this gif to express their lust and i felt it in my soul so now i use it sometimes too

but i feel like it's expressive enough to also portray frustration

[green escarp]

I come bearing knowledge!
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/old-man-with-cigarette-gif

[vivid peak]

I wish someone would talk to me about jayvik porn

[pallid gull]

jonjon

[vivid peak]

Still thinking about Lorie’s porn solar battery

[pallid gull]

oh it's literally just a man smoking on youtube 😭

good for him

[green escarp]

God that was an unreal 5 minutes for me lmao (reffering to the porn solar battery)

I was like "no one is reacting to this, what did I miss what is happeniiiiiiiiiiiiiing"

[vivid peak]

So he’s only famous in our hearts

I want to go back and see what others’ thoughts feelings and otherwise were now that I’ve done act one but I feel like that’s too hard to look up

[pallid gull]

i found mine lmao

[vivid peak]

Thank you Aiden

Oh.

[pallid gull]

don't read too far though

did you get spoiled???

cause i think i got further than you since you stopped after it

[vivid peak]

No I didn’t

I don’t think

Shadow also linked his reaction to you right after lol

[green escarp]

Oh you saw already lmao

yeeeeeah

[vivid peak]

||yeah I figured he’s gone gone when I saw the verso weapons but also it fits with the for those who come after mantra ||

||even though technically he came before… but you know what I mean
Also yeah this crazy lore drop I haven’t digested yet||

[green escarp]

I think only Kupo picked up on this at the time but ||another hint is you will notice that Gustave's weapons had no passive effects but now they do with Verso||

[pallid gull]

||i was not digesting anything bc i was so busy having a mental breakdown and also ben starr but it was like yippee through tears||

[coarse scarab]

me the entire time ngl

[vivid peak]

https://tenor.com/view/the-show-must-go-on-crying-dance-gif-15287522

[coarse scarab]

jeanjean how are you again

[vivid peak]

||don’t know how I felt about the game simultaneously making me depressed and horny||

I contain multitudes I guess

[pallid gull]

||going through "want him so bad" and "FUUUUUCK GUSTAVE IS GONE AAAAAAA"||

[vivid peak]

What am I talking about I play lads

[vivid peak]

I’m good mirblobbu how are you

[coarse scarab]

waity

i meant where are you at

LMAO

my brain is no worky

[vivid peak]

Oh so you don’t care how I am

[coarse scarab]

i am okay jonblobbu

[coarse scarab]

calm down pisces

[pallid gull]

but he's a pisces

[coarse scarab]

wait what sign did we think you were again

right

[pallid gull]

that sounds more like the typical pisces manipulation

[vivid peak]

I take it back I was good

Well not really I just went through all that lol

[pallid gull]

sorry for clocking you jonjon, this would not be happening if i knew your big 3

[coarse scarab]

it make sense why he likes caleb now

he loves the drama

https://tenor.com/view/caleb-cat-explode-caleb-cat-caleb-love-and-deepspace-mahiru-cat-caleb-meowmeow-gif-18060500228410967190

[vivid peak]

I actually do… a bit
Maybe

[green escarp]

resets the "Communussy Using Star Signs To Throw Hands" counter

[pallid gull]

me too

[vivid peak]

Well yes one look at dulci and we can all tell

[coarse scarab]

remembering when i was the first to go through the caleb myths and had a meltdown to aiden in dms

[pallid gull]

now why are you clocking me??

[green escarp]

https://tenor.com/view/damn-shookt-shocked-gif-5580082

CRYING

[coarse scarab]

@worn oriole

[vivid peak]

To answer this, just the very start of act two

[pallid gull]

dulci do not get spoiled

[coarse scarab]

congratudolonces

[vivid peak]

||lol I muttered mfer when he made a hole in our boy||

[wheat tulip]

||just a way to say bonjour in french dw!||

[green escarp]

[Act 1 (as in all of it pretty much)] Gotta give the game credit for making ||the sound of a cane hitting the ground horrifying||

[green escarp]

LEAVE

[wheat tulip]

||No leaving only holing ||

[vivid peak]

||yeah I was like is that actually for mobility or the drama||

[wheat tulip]

||Such a ptsd moment now 😭||

[wheat tulip]

Why not both

[pallid gull]

p5 ||https://bsky.app/profile/doriandotexe.bsky.social/post/3lp55ghmog222 ||

Dorian 🔜 MCM London G24 (@doriandotexe.bsky.social)

Verso 🌹
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

[ #art #expedition33]

Likes

189

Bluesky · May 14, 2025, 1:51 PM

[wheat tulip]

||want to smooch him so bad ||

||and reminder thats a french game everything is for the drama we are BORN for that||

[pallid gull]

all the french lit i've read already told me that

and i eat it up every time

[green escarp]

I feel like this game is the only time I see Rain being positive about his culture

Every other time he's throwing shade lmao

[vivid peak]

||Need to taste his baguette please monsieur||

[wheat tulip]

I love and hate my culture thats true but thats human nature to do so

[wheat tulip]

Oh reminds me || that baguette outfits its not a baguette in their back||

||its a different sort of bread||

[vivid peak]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_cringe

[wheat tulip]

Jonjon please??

[green escarp]

|| 🤓 ☝️ Um excuse me, the developers are French so if they say it's a baguette then it's a baguette||

[wheat tulip]

Its not !!

[pallid gull]

damn reading that first paragraph and being like nvm maybe i will Nawt see my culture as cringy ever again actually

[vivid peak]

It’s an Aussie term

[wheat tulip]

||its a tradition !!||

[wheat tulip]

Cultural cringe?

[vivid peak]

It’s normal here

[wheat tulip]

HELP

[vivid peak]

And it is definitely because of the British

[pallid gull]

tbf i feel like often i'm okay with me doing it and other romanians doing it but if it's someone that has nothing to do with it doing it im like

[green escarp]

||yes we know baguettes are traditonal ||

[pallid gull]

always at the scene of the crime

[coarse scarab]

we have heavy cultural cringe here too

[vivid peak]

Although in the 21st century it’s equally likely to be because of the US. A sort of cultural imperialism of modern times

[coarse scarab]

i also blame the brits

[pallid gull]

second one always at the scene of the crime

[vivid peak]

Lmao Aiden

[green escarp]

Kinda how I feel about Hispanic (specifically Dominican) culture lol.

Meanwhile I can't feel anything for my American one despite being born and raised here, because we don't have a culture, we stole everyone elses xD

[wheat tulip]

No its a different sort!!

[coarse scarab]

wdym shadow you don't resonate with the bald eagle

[wheat tulip]

Reminds me of the real sound of a bald eagle lmao

[vivid peak]

Have you seen the reverse weeb phenomenon lol

[green escarp]

We can't even do that right! Every soundbite you've ever heard associated with that bird is from another one because actual Bald Eagles don't sound 'MURICAN enough 😭

[pallid gull]

aren't they also quite tiny and ppl always make them seem super imposing

bald eagle im gonna get you out of there

[green escarp]

The way Rain already said it before I finished typing lmao

[vivid peak]

They’re just doing their best stop co-opting them for political gain

[coarse scarab]

free the birb!!

[green escarp]

They're beautiful birbs and I wish we appreciated them as they are

[pallid gull]

they are

maybe this game is really making me start my ouibo phase bc why am i looking up french philosophers

[green escarp]

The what? xD

[vivid peak]

Ouibo
Will always take me out

[wheat tulip]

I thought you did it a while back

You are the original ouibo for me aiden

[green escarp]

You should see the philosophical debates this game is spawning. Its incredible.

But actually don't yet because it involves ending spoilers

[wheat tulip]

Never heard of a person that obsessed with les misérables ngl 😭

[pallid gull]

i did yeah, but tbf i feel like romanians have had a ouibo phase like... nation wide ages ago LOL we used say monsieur and stuff. usually the elite because a lot of them would study in france then come back

[vivid peak]

There are Japanese people who are obsessed with America and its culture

[wheat tulip]

HUH

[pallid gull]

yeah, i plan on finishing then doing a lot of research on some themes and philosophers bc i have thoughts and plans but i'm very excited to delve more into this game once i'm done, beyond just playing it

[wheat tulip]

Ive heard of the japaneses being obsessed with western people in general ngl lmao

The bishonen type being in versailles and im like huh

[vivid peak]

They have the same fights about animation that you see westerner otakus have… it’s actually so funny

[green escarp]

That's just....infinitely depressing to read

[coarse scarab]

i've seen its insane

i bet its what it feels like when they see westerners fight over anime

[vivid peak]

I saw this one guy who is like a gun slinger and tbh it’s kind of cute

[worn oriole]

https://tenor.com/view/that-was-lot-robin-that-was-a-lot-youve-crossed-a-line-crossing-the-line-thats-too-much-gif-14867039455010289922

[wheat tulip]

Oh it was at the time where french was used at political language i see

[vivid peak]

https://fixupx.com/libertycappy/status/1917540686066548762?s=46&t=0QthA6jV191fFPVm9oCtvw

Declaration of Memes (@LibertyCappy)

Turns out there’s an entire sub-culture of Japanese reverse-weebs that love the American Wild West

**💬 2.6K 🔁 7.7K ❤️ 131.1K 👁️ 5.33M **

▶ Play video

FixupX · Apr 30, 2025, 11:25 AM

Like. Good for him he’s awesome

[wheat tulip]

Hi dulci lmao

[pallid gull]

pretty much, the elite at the time had their sights set on western europe which mostly meant france

[wheat tulip]

SCREAMING

[languid gyro]

What is all this I was reading chat and we were talking about [end of Act 1] ||how scrumptious Verso looked, which reminded me I needed to eat breakfast, so I went to go shower and brush my teeth|| and then I got back and we’ve got historical political discourse going on

(Which I love to see, keep at it, just working through the whiplash)

[wheat tulip]

You know its a good game when theres that ngl

[vivid peak]

I’m right here rain?

[wheat tulip]

You are the second one dw !

[pallid gull]

jonjon we can share

[wheat tulip]

Not the sharing!!

When dulci is here too oh my

[pallid gull]

now what does that have to do

the french really do love drama

[wheat tulip]

We love a good show

[vivid peak]

I laughed when Lorie said Franch on stream

[pallid gull]

she's so funny

[wheat tulip]

Still cant believe she said that!!

We are a sauce now

Probably why people says we dont exist!!

[vivid peak]

Lmao who says you don’t exist

[green escarp]

Spicy too, based on how much y'all love drama xD

[wheat tulip]

Yup thats why we cant handle spicu things we are already too hot (lol)

[wheat tulip]

A lot of people!!

[vivid peak]

Tbh knowing a bit of French kind of?? Spoiled me in this game ||like knowing what gommage meant||

[wheat tulip]

The story is spoiled for me since the beginning jonjon

[vivid peak]

Yeah lol

[wheat tulip]

Hearing lumière like

[vivid peak]

||I was like what do you mean are they going to be erased??||

[languid gyro]

I mean unless the French dub uses a different word, you’re just getting the same experience as a native

[wheat tulip]

||gommer also has an art theme btw so its like erasing paint too haha...|| jonjon dont dare read this one

[pallid gull]

||i didn't know what gommage meant but i was able to read the newspapers on the wall so i did get a bit of context, however tonally the somber attitude maelle and gustave had before meeting with sophie i was immediately like "we're cooked"||

[vivid peak]

Yeah it wasn’t a big deal because it’s forecast in other ways but watching other people stream it was a little different

Wait now I don’t know what I can unspoil

[pallid gull]

this is safe

[wheat tulip]

||the first joke about withering , the flower or sophie and im like i see||

||i was expecting to see une gomme erasing them so not pouf into flower petals||

[vivid peak]

Imagine

It’s funny because ||gomme is like one of those words you learn really early in a school setting and then never use again||

[wheat tulip]

Yup

I mean for non native

||We use it quite often since everyone knows someone going at school||

[pallid gull]

||it's so close to romanian, you call an eraser "gumă" but i guess when it's transformed like that into "gommage" it makes it hard to tell||

languages

[wheat tulip]

Yup

||we also has germanic influenced so thats why french is so different then others latin languages||

||probably should say latin transformed our language since they invaded us ||

[vivid peak]

End of act one ||when I found out his name was Renoir I was like Ohhhhhh like the painter of course||

[pallid gull]

i need to research

[green escarp]

^ me watching people experience things in this game

[wheat tulip]

||the ones interesting me the most are probably the Writers i still dont know anything about them and i dont even know if we will || after act 2 spoilers

[green escarp]

||That's either just worldbuilding or a setup for a future installment if they decide to make Clair Obscur a franchise||

[vivid peak]

||and now I’m like are we going to see other French impressionists degas manet cezanne lol||

[wheat tulip]

I guess yeah!

[languid gyro]

||Not done with the game but truthfully the vibe I got was that they were mentioned to add to the worldbuilding, but I don’t expect to interact directly with them really||

[pallid gull]

jonjon do not perceive ||im gonna freak the fuck out if they make another game with the writers because that's my shit ||

[wheat tulip]

Same

[wheat tulip]

Me too

[languid gyro]

||I’m actually not sure how a sequel would work?? I think there’s a huge tonal shift for players between going into a game and suddenly discovering it was a Canvas all along and going into a game already knowing||

[vivid peak]

Can I read any of this

[wheat tulip]

||it can adds so many things into the universe of this game if we have another one like wtf painters writers?? ||

[green escarp]

NO

[wheat tulip]

No

[pallid gull]

no sadly 😭

[vivid peak]

https://tenor.com/view/bird-box-the-netflix-sandra-gif-13157438

[languid gyro]

Absolutely not

[wheat tulip]

Im sorry jonjon 😭

[wheat tulip]

||but imagine this time we are in a book since its the writers pov||

[languid gyro]

||Can’t wait for the future installment in the Clair Obscur franchise, featuring: The Gamers||

[green escarp]

⚠️ ||Oh I agree, which is why I think if they go with making more games under the Clair Obscur name, they won't be directly connected to the canvas world of Expedition 33. The Writers already give us a potential new "universe" to explore and that's just what we can extrapolate at this point in time. Who knows what else they have planned or can come up with in the future|| ⚠️

[pallid gull]

here something you can read ||me when verso||

i had another one with a little bear guy spreading his legs to the camera but i cannot find it so i'll settle for the less suggestive one i guess

[wheat tulip]

AIDEN??

[vivid peak]

Putain de bordel de merde

[pallid gull]

[green escarp]

LIKE YOU SHOULD TALK

[wheat tulip]

LMAO

[vivid peak]

LMAO

[wheat tulip]

Of course i can

Shame? I dont know them

[green escarp]

https://tenor.com/view/hypocrisy-meter-full-hypocrite-gif-9164321

[pallid gull]

i love that i can understand all these words but somehow translating them in a coherent manner is so hard

[languid gyro]

Would not have made this connection if a relevant cosplayer didn’t just walk by me while I’m having this convo but [FFXIV SB/EW] [E33 P5] ||what is with me and depressed fruity little men with white streaks in their hair||

[green escarp]

but also I hope you're having fun at the convention Amphy! Anything that really stuck out to you so far?

[wheat tulip]

Fucking shit of fuck maybe lmao

[vivid peak]

When I was an exchange student I had a host brother who was really going through it, he would get into fights with his parents every night so I learned a lot of expressive French from him

[wheat tulip]

HELP

[languid gyro]

First day was almost entirely spent on the expo hall and artist alley, so I’ve been going around spending money and trying not to spend money and also spending money

[wheat tulip]

My mom love to rap insults in french thats something to hear

[languid gyro]

Gonna be a doing a Disco Elysium cosplay with a friend later today though! (With me as Kim and him as the MC)

[pallid gull]

https://tenor.com/view/orange-cat-gets-flung-and-explodes-orange-cat-funny-cat-meme-explodes-gif-10706110874965244466

i love that

[languid gyro]

No E33 merch/cosplays, which is to be expected with how new it is, but I did hold out a slight bit of hope

That said it is perhaps for the best

If a Lune walked by I’m obligated to propose on the spot and I’m not emotionally prepared for that kind of commitment yet

[vivid peak]

The first thing I heard him say was literally putain de merde mais ca me fait chier (to his dad)
And I was like umm… salut

Anyway he wasn’t a bad kid in retrospect just angry

And we eventually bonded over video games

[vivid peak]

Omg, I’d be so flustered

[wheat tulip]

Honestly we just dont hide when we are angry 😭

Above all in the family house

If theres tension you will see it right away

[wheat tulip]

||Eh lune is for sciel in my mind so im okay||

[languid gyro]

Honestly might be for the best; the culture I’m used to has us just bottling everything up and pretending we’re okay until we explode/collapse 🙃

[vivid peak]

Yeah same. Although my sister channeled her inner French during the teen years I guess

I haven’t progressed at all and I’m just listening to ost in the camp
I might stop for tonight

Actually rain as a native speaker I’m curious if you can understand what all the lyrics are

In ||lumiere I can sometimes make out what I think are the words but then I think I’m probably completely wrong lol||

[wheat tulip]

||some yes some no theres a mix of french and latin!||

[languid gyro]

I imagine some of the OST has spoilery, or at least heavily foreshadowy, lyrics if you understood the lyrics

Haven’t taken the time to analyze lyrics yet myself though, waiting till I beat the game

[wheat tulip]

Just hearing lumiere spoils || the name of the old man and others as well😭||

[vivid peak]

||Oh yeah i figured because it sounds like she says Lux something||

||also it sounds like she is singing something Eiffel? But not La tour Eiffel||

Wait

I just

||Is Gustave named after Eiffel||

[languid gyro]

Out of curiosity actually, does ‘Eiffel’ mean a specific word in French, or is the name of a person?

I never really thought about the tower’s etymology

[vivid peak]

It’s a name

I don’t know if it means anything though

The family adopted the name Eiffel as a reference to the Eifel mountains in the region from which they had come. Although the family always used the name Eiffel, Gustave's name was registered at birth as Bonickhausen dit Eiffel

The more you know

[green escarp]

WAIT

THE LAYERS THAT JUST ADDED TO E33 GUSTAVE

🤯

[languid gyro]

Oh that’s really cool

Makes sense too

[green escarp]

God damn I really don't remember the last time I played a game where every single thing has purpose behind it, from music to naming to themes and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[vivid peak]

I just had that epiphany too lol

I wonder if the other names have significance but I feel like I can’t discuss too much until I finish like everyone else

[languid gyro]

Now I wonder if there’s real world significance behind the other characters’ names too beyond ||Gustave and Renoir||; I feel like almost certainly yes

[languid gyro]

🤝

[green escarp]

Sandfall Interactive just deserves the world I think

[vivid peak]

In my mind La lune est dans Le ciel

[languid gyro]

I would actually hazard a guess that the intended meaning/reference for [end of Act 2] ||Alicia|| is probably not ||Alice in Wonderland||, but it fits surprisingly well given ||her foray into the Canvas and then getting reborn and having to navigate this “new” strange world as Maelle has a lot of thematic similarities with Alice’s fall into and journey through Wonderland||

[wheat tulip]

One of the reasons i love lusciel

[vivid peak]

Save me French yuri

[wheat tulip]

🙂‍↕️

[vivid peak]

||Verso is an interesting one. Because it’s the other side of the paper||

||considering he follows on from Gustave||

[vivid peak]

Wait lusciel sounds pretty too

[pallid gull]

||was hoping that it means he's a vers||

[vivid peak]

Trying to think of the ship name for ||me and verso||

[wheat tulip]

Still can be possible ngl

[green escarp]

||Verjon? Jonso? xD||

[vivid peak]

This is kind of random but I recently learned how you say ship (like a couple) in Chinese and it’s so interesting

嗑 (kè, to chew, gnaw, or crack something between the teeth)

[green escarp]

That just sounds painful

[vivid peak]

Lost in a state of shipping euphoria similar to getting high on drugs (嗑药 kè yào), fans apply the verb 嗑 to express their enthrallment

Language is so strange and fun

[wheat tulip]

[fringe walrus]

Fighting the demons today…. (not streaming on a day off bc I want to play more expedition 33)

[green escarp]

We love you more than your streams so don't you dare. You better be relaxing today

[wheat tulip]

||https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdrHYxAv/ || end of act 2 and outfit spoiler

[hoary nacelle]

Late (i think) Act 2 spoilers || i just got into the second renoir fight AND THIS MUSIC IS FUCKING AMAZING OMG FJDKJDJSKSJHDKSKA I love this game sm aaaaaaaaa ||

[fringe walrus]

I’m so close to doing it I’m just sitting around anyway thinking about it

[green escarp]

https://tenor.com/view/fight-it-resist-stay-strong-taken-a-hold-of-you-mr-frodo-gif-26956441

[fringe walrus]

Hahah what if I did a 24 hr stream

[green escarp]

You know you can't do those anymore. Don't mess up your health 😭

@pallid gull I need backup

[pallid gull]

[wheat tulip]

Oh hell no!!! Not that ! Its so tiring for streamers

[fringe walrus]

Everyone’s bullying me?????

[green escarp]

Sorry everyone here loves you!

[wheat tulip]

I mean maybe a littool stream would be nice but not a 24h !

Im sorry i love this game too much!!

[languid gyro]

Oh my god there were E33 cosplayers at the con, despite how new it is!!

My heroes tbh

[hoary nacelle]

I just read this cause I just got to this point in the game and it was very useful thank you 🙏 😭

I was confused about some things but ur explanation helped clear them up for me

[wheat tulip]

||Wtf so much damage|| ( after act 2 spoiler)

[hasty halo]

Alright I had my lunch. We Continue

[languid gyro]

OH I’m glad! I was just doing it to organize my own thoughts, but I’m happy others find it helpful too 😅

[wheat tulip]

||lvl 10 of the infinity tower got hands || after act 2 spoiler zone

IM FUCKED( after act 2 spoiler )

Oh nevermind i beat it

||IT WAS HARD || after act 2 spoiler

[wheat tulip]

||my hands are shaking and sweating HELP i dont even know if its a spoiler for act 3😭|| after finishing the game spoiler i think

||finished the eternal tower i guess😭||

[vivid peak]

Not me

[wheat tulip]

Wtf ( after act 2 zone and boss spoiler)

||i dont feel good vibe from that....|| after act 2 spoiler

||is this where the piss swords come from?||

[pallid gull]

the way i think u passed me rain so idk what to click

[wheat tulip]

Its an optional zone tbh aiden😭

||yep just died to the second phase of simon || i think only shadow and mira can read this one

||i dont even know if its because im too low level( lvl 92) or because im not skilled enough at parrying😭||

[green escarp]

||OH SHIT YOU FOUND SIMON||

||Welcome to the de facto hardest boss in the game. Learn to dodge/parry or die. Your level is high enough (99 is the cap) but it really comes down to your skill and/or your character builds at this point||

||Unless you have the Maelle cheese build where you can one shot every enemy in the game, you're going to have to learn how to dodge or parry his moveset. You're also going to have to make sure you've invested in all your characters because if you fight him legitimately (as in not using a one-shot build), at 30% he kills your first team and you have to finish the fight with your remaining characters. And yes, this is a mechanic that is unavoidable.||

||You beat the endless tower so I have confidence you can beat this fight. If you're struggling you can always look up build guides for weapons picto and lumina for characters. There should be plenty of guides on the Simon fight itself by now too||

These are strictly for Rain btw

[green escarp]

[Early Act 1 Spoilers] Sam Slade is playing Expedition 33 and I decided to say hi with a joke
||https://www.twitch.tv/itssamslade/clip/LuckyEphemeralChimpanzeeOSfrog-li2QXzW3h_K2FqPA||

Since she voices Anby in ZZZ I wanted to try a joke I came up with (and if anyone has made it before I swear I never saw it before) and I'm glad it made her laugh xD

Also to no ones surprise she loves the game so far

[vivid peak]

Depressing ass game

[green escarp]

||she had just gone through the beach massacre so yeah, lol||

[coarse scarab]

i think only aiden, rain and shadow can read this ||OH MY GOD. i'm watching a playthrough and remember how verso said he was the one who carried maelle away from the fight with alt renoir at the very beginning of the game?? i just noticed in the cutscene itself you can actually SEE him carry her out this is taking me out the way we wouldn't notice this at first glance because of how overwhelming the cinematic is and not knowing context but holy shit. the level of detail ||

[wheat tulip]

Thank you maybe ill try again one day

[wheat tulip]

Wait really ?!

[pallid gull]

yes

[coarse scarab]

https://tenor.com/view/caleb-cat-explode-caleb-cat-caleb-love-and-deepspace-mahiru-cat-caleb-meowmeow-gif-18060500228410967190

[pallid gull]

||i was watching lorie play and you can even see him watching them in flying waters||

[coarse scarab]

oh my god where

man

i love this game sm

[pallid gull]

||i think it's around the part where they enter the manor after her||

[coarse scarab]

||i'll have to look into this.||

question, late game optional boss has anyone fought ||simon||

[vivid peak]

Me today when I saw my best friend, you can guess what I was yapping about

[wheat tulip]

I did ...

[wheat tulip]

As you should !!

[coarse scarab]

did you win

i think i wanna give it a shot

[wheat tulip]

No. .

[coarse scarab]

||its okay i heard its the hardest boss in the game so||

[wheat tulip]

[wheat tulip]

I can believe that

[green escarp]

||He is, lol. That's what my post above to Rain was about||

[coarse scarab]

||my level 50 ass walking in there thinking i could beat him lol||

[green escarp]

||I think he's doable at 50 maybe? But I was like 70 something when I beat him on the first playthrough. By this point in the game your build and dodge/parry skill is more important than your actual level.||

||He's hard but I loved the Simon fight. I think you're someone who will absolutely appreciate why if you see his phase 2, Mira ||

[coarse scarab]

||i'll definitely circle back eventually! i have quite a few side content to finish up, i'm currently trying to get into clea's atelier in the flying manor ||

[wheat tulip]

Good luck!

[wheat tulip]

||Honestly yeah its more skill demanding than level i got my ass beat even tho my characters were lvl 93😭||

[wheat tulip]

||the way he does the same thing as renoir( exterminate and erase completly a character im like )|| after act 2 optional boss moves spoiler

[wheat tulip]

Oui mira oui

[vivid peak]

Why am I so bad at the parkour in this game

[wheat tulip]

Same dw jonjon 😭

[hasty halo]

I feel like I need to go and find more Pictos before even thinking about continuing lol

[languid gyro]

Tbf I don’t think the movement in this game is built for it lol

[hasty halo]

Yeeeeah. I kept messing up on one thing and I gave up lol

[fringe walrus]

Just saw a prominent Final Fantasy podcast try to spread a rumor this game uses genAI 😭

[hasty halo]

I feel like they are just mad at this game if they're doing that

[fringe walrus]

Yeah it felt very agenda-y bc they’re the same person getting upset about the success of the game in general

[hasty halo]

I haven't really seen anything that would look like it was done by AI in the game

[fringe walrus]

https://bsky.app/profile/finalfantasypod.bsky.social/post/3lph7t5cvqc2c

Everything is Final Fantasy (@finalfantasypod.bsky.social)

Wait… Clair Obscur Expedition 33 uses GenAI?

Didn’t see that in any of these reviews or thinkpieces.

Oof. May end up having to pass altogether now.

Bluesky · May 18, 2025, 2:01 PM

Some things are coming off very gaslighty to me

https://bsky.app/profile/centralscruty.bsky.social/post/3lphgk2g44s27

Nick (@centralscruty.bsky.social)

If you're trying to build a brand and have a gaming podcast, maybe don't publicly crash out, doubling down over a false narrative about AI with a very successful indie game.

Bluesky · May 18, 2025, 4:01 PM

[pallid gull]

there's more to this thread i just can't screenshot all of it

[fringe walrus]

RIGHT??

[pallid gull]

but what lmao

[fringe walrus]

It’s a hot fucking mess, like it literally feels agenda-y to me

[pallid gull]

also yes, i don't know the devs personally nor the way they worked on it but seeing as they discouraged people from buying from etsy sellers that use A/I art of their game, i don't think they would do something like this

[fringe walrus]

This account also has talked about expedition 33 in a real weird way when it comes to final fantasy

In the past so I just know this dude just does not like the success it’s getting so now he’s trying to push his agenda

[pallid gull]

im begging people to understand it's not a competition, why are we kpopifying everything damn

[fringe walrus]

And then he’s also saying he’s not going to play it “bc the fans are unhinged” girl what the fuck. You have a podcast for final fantasy and you’re saying the fans for a brand new IP are too much???

[pallid gull]

but also im gonna be so for real who cares if the fans are unhinged

like if that's the truth, live in your own bubble 😭

i don't want that to discourage me from experiencing art

arcane fans are some of the worst out there, i would still experience arcane for the first time 100 times more

[fringe walrus]

I don’t disagree that a toxic fanbase can ruin your enjoyment of something you really love ( 😬 ), but the way he’s explaining it is almost in a way to victimize. It’s one thing to not want to engage with fans bc you’re actively participating in those spaces and have no choice but he’s a podcast for final fantasy. Expedition 33 fans aren’t going to ruin what he does??

[pallid gull]

yeah, like i can understand that in the cc space

but i imagine off stream/when you're not working, it's possible to curate your own space in such a way where it's not a chore to your own enjoyment

but yeah, if dealing with those fandoms is technically your daily work, then it's different

sorry im multitasking idk if im making sense LMAO

im just over people sounding like kpop stans over everything pleas

[fringe walrus]

No no you’re totally fine!!!

[hasty halo]

I'm with the person in that 2nd bsky post though

Like. They have no right to crash out over how successful an indie game from a small studio is. and also claiming it uses AI without any proof is stupid too

[fringe walrus]

Yeah I just could not believe that I saw someone with a platform trying to push an agenda against this game. In a world where we already have so much bullshit misinformation, the fact that when ppl asked for valid proof was enough for them to start crashing out and say “sorry for sticking to my morals!!!” Like dude, you have no proof.

This was the guy who was trying to have a discussion with him and he got blocked:

https://bsky.app/profile/helexzura.bsky.social/post/3lphgdktwd22a

Angel 👻🎮 (@helexzura.bsky.social)

This is a weird way to talk about people and I have to admit I’m very creeped out.

Bluesky · May 18, 2025, 3:57 PM

[green escarp]

I'm gone for 2 hours and come back to this what the actual fuck

Get that jealous bitchass out of here

[vivid peak]

[hasty halo]

That podcast guy over there spreading slander about Ex33 using generative AI

God I hate people that get jealous lol

[vivid peak]

That’s so embarrassing for him

[hasty halo]

It really is

[wheat tulip]

I dont understand if he doesnt want to play nor interact with the e33 community why talk about it??

[hasty halo]

To stir the pot I guess

[wheat tulip]

Is his favorite ff, ff7?

[hasty halo]

Also calling other fans of the game minions is really harsh 💀

[wheat tulip]

No because i feel like its this energy rn

[wheat tulip]

Minions is so??? Wtf man

[fringe walrus]

LMAOOOOO

[wheat tulip]

Lmaoo

[hasty halo]

Lmaoooo

[vivid peak]

Do they think only final fantasy games can be good?

That is sad for them

I get loving a franchise. I can’t imagine only loving one though

[wheat tulip]

Felt jonjon

We can enjoy so many things why limiting it at one franchise??

[vivid peak]

Oh lol

https://bsky.app/profile/finalfantasypod.bsky.social/post/3locufir4tk2g

Everything is Final Fantasy (@finalfantasypod.bsky.social)

Fuck. OFFFFFF.

Bluesky · May 4, 2025, 3:00 AM

[rain widget]

help what is happening

[fringe walrus]

Yup…. They’ve been like this for weeks

That’s why as soon as I saw it I was like this guy is at it again

[vivid peak]

This is weird analysis to dwell on. I’m just going to go back to having an amazing experience playing the game

Umm. People will buy a final fantasy game just because it’s called final fantasy. No one has heard of this game until it was announced why are they doing this nonsense comparison LOL

[fringe walrus]

There are so many square Enix/FF people that are like this. If any other turn based makes waves, they get weird. The same thing happened when Metaphor came out and was getting a lot of praise

[fluid thistle]

My brain right now and seeing all this going on.

[fringe walrus]

Remembering when a FF7 guy kept saying metaphor was mid in comparison to rebirth and didn’t deserve the awards it was getting. They’re exhausting

[wheat tulip]

??? Wtf

How do they get so much energy to hate like that

[vivid peak]

This person talking about buying rebirth and then said this

At least in Australia, this game was a lot cheaper than rebirth… what is going on

[green escarp]

COUGHSTARWARSCOUGH

Oh sorry, those darn allergies of mine 🙃

[vivid peak]

Finally a normal opinion

[rain widget]

it's also telling when you compare that nasty energy to the devs kindly supporting other games that came out during the same time ex33 did ,, wild contrast tbh 😭

[vivid peak]

Final fantasy person saying the Clair obscur fandom is nasty and toxic am I in a prank show

[hasty halo]

Square is probably proud of Sandfall too

And people are just making it out like Square's jealous or something

If anyone's jealous it's that podcaster lmao

[green escarp]

People are just so insufferable. How damaged do you have to be to see a fucking video game doing well and your response is to feel threatened for your own personal favorite franchise.

That man should not be running a podcast, he should be attending therapy. Jesus Christ.

[rain widget]

it's so annoying..... leave us alone,, let us enjoy things

[hasty halo]

Soooo I was curious what the best weapon for Lune was and came across a reddit post and the top answer was "Her Feet"

💀💀💀

People on Reddit are weirdos I swear

[vivid peak]

I prefer this discourse

[green escarp]

Heeey its JSH! I follow him on YouTube

[wheat tulip]

Oh my

[green escarp]

@odd isle tea starts here lol

Don't worry there's no spoilers

[odd isle]

Oh

I remember Everything is Final Fantasy from twitter and they're fucking annoying, so Im not shocked it's them.

[hasty halo]

There is so much tea in here haha

[green escarp]

Them being a shitter explains a lot

[odd isle]

well I dunno if theyre still on twitter

but I remember they were annoying when I was still on twitter lol

[green escarp]

I'm assuming like many douchebag accounts, they're getting tired of cannibalizing each other on Twitter and going to Bluesky

[hasty halo]

Was about to say it seems they moved to Bluesky now lol

[odd isle]

I guess I gotta block him on bluesky now

also is it really a podcast if like 5 people listen? More like a sad discord server

[hasty halo]

A very sad attempt at a podcast

When the entirety of Bluesky is over that bs lmao

Idk what he thought was gonna happen lmao

"surely there's people on Bluesky that would agree with me!"

He really thinks people would agree with him

[hasty halo]

I need more resplendent chroma

[wheat tulip]

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdrbWHQ2/ what hes saying ( its Guillaume Broche speaking) is that the first intern speed run done was in 2 hours 14 minutes

[vivid peak]

Act two ||I just saw how close to the end of act one Lorie is on her last VOD ||

[pallid gull]

||the fact that her power went out... maybe it was divine intervention trying to save her||

[vivid peak]

||truly the universe conspired to be like child you aren’t ready for this||

Act two ||can I just say I love the map locations they made just so you can pick up OST tracks I don’t know why the fixed perspective thing is so cool||

[coarse scarab]

https://youtu.be/yj6JbgMdrZo?si=xwJ2Tm0MQR60FoQZ

helpppp

[wheat tulip]

Lmaoo

[wheat tulip]

||https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdr7QWJa/ || still stunned by this ( after act 2 area spoiler)

[green escarp]

@hoary nacelle I see you, lol

I'm literally listening to the OST on youtube as I type this lmao so you know, 🤝

[hoary nacelle]

the music is so good !!!

been listening to some stuff on yt too causei dont think its all on spotify

ive been listening to (late act 2 spoilers) || the boss theme during the second renoir fight a lot because it may be one of the best boss themes i have ever heard in my life ||

[wheat tulip]

Talking about this one || one of the lyrics says our love is dying , remains at the same time the woman voice saying dying and male voice saying remains , love details ||

[green escarp]

There's a theme that's one of the most hype boss themes I've ever listened to and I can't even talk about why yet because no one besides Rain has even seen where it's from 😭

[wheat tulip]

Wait which one kckfkf

||cleas?||

[green escarp]

....ok 2 themes

though that one for me is less hype and more || "" ||

[wheat tulip]

Oh then which one is it😭

[green escarp]

NOBODY ELSE CLICK THIS ||Simon Phase 2||

[wheat tulip]

Ooh yeah

||isnt it also une vie à t'aimer tho? Or maybe its another version ||

[green escarp]

||It has some of the same lyrics but it's a different song entirely||

[wheat tulip]

Oh

[green escarp]

||and if I understand correctly its a song more about Simon and Clea, whereas the other is about Renoir and Aline||

[wheat tulip]

||then is it une vie à peindre? I know i confused the two of them||

[green escarp]

||song's name is called "We Lost"||

[wheat tulip]

Oooh

[green escarp]

Again, different song lol

[wheat tulip]

I didnt listen to this one on my spotify thats why i guess

||glad we have songs about clea ngl i felt a little ?? Why shes always left out during the family songs but maybe thats because thats what she wanted||

Theory after act 2 spoiler

[languid gyro]

FINALLY continuing the game it feels like it's been so long since I've been able to play 😭

[green escarp]

||See that's one of the things I wanna talk about so badly because Clea's theme is present in so many pieces of music throughout the game! If you listen to her theme from her boss fight then go back to listen to other music like "Rain from the Ground" or "Serpenphare" you can hear her leitmotif!||

[languid gyro]

[After Act 2] ||Genuinely I feel for Real Renoir who clearly just wants his family to all be together, at home outside the Canvas, and it must be frustrating to have finally gotten his wife out from holing up in Verso's Canvas, only to now have his daughter refuse to leave it||

[wheat tulip]

Oh right you said it before!

[green escarp]

||Her theme is interwoven in several pieces of music, some more subtly than others but its there if you listen, and its GENIUS!||

[languid gyro]

||And then there's Verso himself, who seems sick of his own existence as a fake copy but is still unable to die because of Maelle 😭 ||

[wheat tulip]

||just listened to we lost the lyrics are the same as une vie à t'aimer in the refrain but the tempo and music are different ||

[languid gyro]

||I feel conflicted about continuing on, even, because as far as I can tell, now that "the Paintress has been defeated" and Aline has been kicked out from the Canvas, the pervading conflict seems to be that Renoir wants to erase the Canvas once and for all to prevent his wife (and now daughter) from continuing to dive back in and to face reality, while Maelle seems to want to protect it, which I also get and sympathize with; it's all just so messy||

[green escarp]

||ok but also go back and fight Simon so you can experience the song properly ||

[languid gyro]

||And though we're "supposed" to be on Maelle's side, I can't help but feel conflicted because a) she's adamant about keeping Verso's soul alive but at points that almost feels selfish and self-serving as much as it also stems from kindness and mourning, and also b) the way she referred to the inside of the Canvas as "home" (and Renoir's reaction) honestly gives his worries more credence, that she'll end up falling into the same trap as her mother and end up bewitched by the world of the Canvas, unable to leave, perpetuating the cycle||

[wheat tulip]

||theres something i dont get tho they are painters even clea said its not the first time they are going that long in a tableau so why they want to destroy it like they arent gonna paint others???||

[wheat tulip]

||please i just saw a tiktok saying theres a third phase i want to scream !! With what build can i beat that monster!!||

[languid gyro]

||My understanding is that this Canvas is special because it's the last remaining Canvas that Verso painted while he was alive, so Aline and Maelle/Alicia want to keep it alive in order to preserve Verso's work. Meanwhile Renoir and Clea want it destroyed because they believe that Aline and Maelle/Alicia won't be able to move on from Verso's death unless that happens (which, quite honestly from what we're shown so far, may not be incorrect)||

[green escarp]

||Oh if you wanna get really existential there's also the argument of if you consider everyone in the canvas world truly alive/sentient beings who deserve to continue their existence. I mean they themselves seem to think so since they're willing to fight for it. Do they deserve oblivion because of one family's grief who are essentially to them creator gods? 🙃 ||

[languid gyro]

||I sympathize very deeply with Alicia's and Clea's loss, and they're very clearly in a lot of pain, mourning, and emotional turmoil. It's completely understandable for them to grieve in this way. But Renoir and Clea call into question whether it's healthy for them to grieve in this way, and they fear that they're effectively losing their remaining family members to the Canvas. And in another reality, maybe it's okay to give them some extra time to grieve in this manner, but from what it sounds like, the Dessendre family is, right at this very moment, embroiled in conflict with other forces, so there's a greater sense of urgency for everyone to get back together and stand strong||

[wheat tulip]

||theres also the fight in the reality against the writers so i guess thats why they want them all out too||

[languid gyro]

||For sure! There are a lot of questions raised without clear, concrete answers. Clearly Renoir and Clea, at the very least, don't view the people within the Canvas as "real", and are more akin to elaborate NPCs, since they were only born out of their painting. But Maelle, having lived amongst them, does very much consider them real (and of course the painted Canvas people themselves, such as Lune and Sciel, think of themselves as "real"). It's a complicated existential situation for sure||

||In short, I understand and sympathize with both opposing sides here, which is a hallmark of good writing, even if it makes things difficult for me as the player||

[wheat tulip]

||if we need to do a choice oooh its gonna be baad||

[languid gyro]

Onto a non-story discussion in favor of gameplay (this is mostly for @green escarp but anyone can answer if they're this far in): ||Is there any point in keeping Sword Ballet on Maelle's bar, or does Stendhal, even post-nerf, just handily outperform it as a ST nuke in all circumstances now||

[After Act 2 camp] ||oof ouch owie||

[wheat tulip]

||I mean can you blame her lmao verso is ALWAYS lying||

[green escarp]

||Honestly, I stopped using Sword Ballet for that reason lol. Yeah Stendhal comes with a drawback, it self inflicts defenseless on Maelle. But that drawback is completely void (lol) if you have any sort of debuff prevention or buffing picto/lumina that can be applied to Maelle. i.e. the picto that sacrifices an AP point to prevent debuffs? Poof, no defenseless Maelle. Or put Shell on her, same thing||

[languid gyro]

||Thinking about how the Visages Axon [He Who Guards Truth With Lies] is canonically painted by Renoir in Verso's image 💀 ||

[wheat tulip]

||verso saying that was verso right? To himself and we were all like??? What are you on man||

[languid gyro]

||The drawback is null because I don't intend the opponent to still be alive after Stendhal lol (and also I'll probably have the lumina that increases her damage when debuffed)||

[green escarp]

||I mean, that too lmao||

[wheat tulip]

I really need to build my characters huh

[languid gyro]

||Granted, I'm not currently pursuing any of the hyper-optimized Maelle builds because I haven't slotted Sciel into my team (which also means my shiny damage numbers will be significantly lower than they'd be otherwise), but maybe a future boss will force me to change that lol (or I'll give in to the high of chasing big number)||

[green escarp]

At this point in the game? Yeah you do, even on story difficulty

character build is way more important than your actual level this far in

[languid gyro]

At all points, tbh

[green escarp]

Well yeah but on story especially you can get away with just winging it for awhile

[languid gyro]

My JRPG hot take is that anyone who thinks they lost a battle because they were "underleveled" is missing something about character building because character level is not, and never has been, a more impactful factor than build

I'll maybe change up my teamcomp later to be more optimized, but for the time being I'm pretty content just rolling through with my 3 faves

Though, hmm, now that ||the damage cap is gone, Free Aim Maelle is probably no longer one of her best builds, so I'll have to rework her Picto/Lumina setup completely||

||In fact...I'll probably also have to re-speedtune everyone if I do that, so that she goes 3rd instead of 2nd (or I just replace Verso with Sciel and keep turn order), decisions...||

[languid gyro]

|| 🎊 🎊 🎊 ||

[wheat tulip]

Lvl 93 and still being shit at this game!!

[wheat tulip]

||i still see a lot of free aim build on characters in endgame ngl ||

[green escarp]

Aside from looking up builds the only suggestion I'd have for you at this point is just to grind lumina until you can equip all the things you want and just brute force all the content lol

[wheat tulip]

Looking at ||my monoco having 114 crit rate || maybe i need to look at thoses

[languid gyro]

Generally my recommendation as far as crit goes in the midgame onwards is ||any % above 50% is wasted, since Critical Burn and Critical Vulnerability are such easy conditions to keep permanently applied, for a free 50% crit boost||

There are also other ways/builds to easily maintain 100% crit, ofc, but that's one of the simplest/most universal that I've come across so far

[wheat tulip]

I guess ill have to rebuild all of my characters 😭

Oh my bad my characters are || 91/91/91/86/85||

[languid gyro]

So uhhh just tried out ||Stendhal|| for the very first time against an Act 2 optional boss I skipped over and uhhhhhh:

||Nearly 9mil damage my very first time breaking the damage cap 👀 ||

And that's post-nerf too, goddamn

||Pre-nerf probably would've been something like 20mil or so||

[green escarp]

https://tenor.com/view/robert-downey-jr-tony-stark-iron-man-behold-explosion-gif-9319158

[wheat tulip]

Ah shit too much crit rate

Middle act 2 spoiler

[hasty halo]

God I wish I could ||get higher than 1mil damage|| xD

[green escarp]

Give it time xD

[hasty halo]

I also need to find the locations of more pictos/luminas

[languid gyro]

It'd certainly help but, for reference, the screenshot above was taken fresh out of Act 2, so I'd not gotten a single new picto/lumina beyond that ||meaning that 9mil damage was possible with Act 2 luminas just by removing the damage cap||

||It's also not an optimized setup, else I could probably do closer to 20ish mil damage if I were trying to minmax||

[hasty halo]

Also ||saw this guy get a weapon for Lune but it was level 33. And when I got it. It was like level 13 and it left me confused lol||

[pallid gull]

i miss playing i got scared of finishing so i paused it for days

[green escarp]

||New Game+||

[hasty halo]

Ohhhhh okay

[languid gyro]

[After Act 2 optional area] ||100 Lumina reward let's gooooooo 🤍 ||

[wheat tulip]

Do optional zone it helps

[wheat tulip]

||because you helped the white nevrons? Mine wanted to beat my ass😭||

Love grinding

After act 2 spoiler

[languid gyro]

||Ye from helping white nevrons||

[green escarp]

There are 2 kinds of people

[wheat tulip]

Yup...

[wheat tulip]

||he said something like you helped some... but you killed some too , im gonna throw hands||

[green escarp]

||there's only one you're allowed to kill and its the one in the cemetary that asks you too. the rest you have to leave alone after helping them||

[languid gyro]

||Sounds like the problem was you throwing hands to begin with 🥲 ||

[pallid gull]

||ohhh yeah, i met that guy, he was chill||

||i was wondering if there's any reward for being nice to them||

[wheat tulip]

FAUX

[wheat tulip]

I missed so many pictos

[wheat tulip]

||my burn damage of verso doing 5 millions || after act 2 spoiler

[green escarp]

https://tenor.com/view/toasty-mortalkombat-gif-20698988

[wheat tulip]

This one is done

[languid gyro]

[After Act 2] ||Honestly a little overwhelmed with how much exploration is opened up after unlocking Flight||

||lmaoooo goodbye Chromatic Abberation, no clue what your moveset looks like||

||almost feel bad; the boss design looked pretty cool||

[wheat tulip]

Oof

[languid gyro]

||also idk when I got this random weapon drop but 👀 seems incredible for burn stacking||

[wheat tulip]

||you are already doing more damage than me kfkfkfkf||

[wheat tulip]

Im using this one!

[languid gyro]

||It's so hard for me to part with Dualiso though 😭 ||

[wheat tulip]

||did you got the cheater picto?||

[languid gyro]

||Not yet but I know where to get it, just wanted to explore a bit with flight first||

[wheat tulip]

Oh i see!

[hasty halo]

||I parted with dualiso when I got some others for weapons||

[wheat tulip]

Only shadow can look at this i think || wtff verso burn build is so good but clea killing herself?? Wtff nawt the real verso soul saying that😭 ugh(i love them all... the act of Painting should be celebrated ...)||

[green escarp]

||Grats on getting one of the best Pictos. But also yeeeeah ||
||Painted Clea essentially got possessed by real Clea and forced to constantly create Nevrons. At the end of the fight she gets some of her free will back and uses it to....well you saw. 😭 ||

||Its so messed up||

[wheat tulip]

||im so shocked rn im speechless wtf thats horrible ||

||got more question tho is Simon the lover of the real cleo? Or painted one? Because if its the real one thats super weird, she doesnt think of the people in the tableau as real people...||

[languid gyro]

[Post Act 2 outfit] ||oh hell yeah||

[languid gyro]

||oh......he died in a single hit.......||

[wheat tulip]

Wtf

[green escarp]

||Painted Clea||

||Real Clea manipulates him tho, which you find out a little in Simon's journal. But you need to beat him to get that||

[wheat tulip]

||retrying it my maelle doesnt do that much damage its gonna be fun haha||

[green escarp]

I believe in you!

[wheat tulip]

Thank you😭

[languid gyro]

Just discovered the ||Endless Tower|| and am debating whether to go for it or come back later

||A lot of JRPGs have a sort of "Endless" tower climb challenge as postgame content, and this feels like something similar, in which case it might be better to leave it for after the final story boss||

||Esp if I get EXP with every floor, because I could easily see myself completely trivializing the final story area if I overlevel by climbing the tower here||

[Post Act 2 optional area] ||oh wow this area is pretty, but also a little terriying...a hauntingly beautiful aesthetic||

[wheat tulip]

Nope ||still cant do simon ||

||HOW MANY HP DOES HE HAVE IN SECOND PHASE WTF ||

Crashing out ||because of a man ||

[languid gyro]

||Really cool how the world gradually loses color as you pull the swords out||

||ooooh this is cool||

||Alas it ends like all the others||

[vivid peak]

I go to sleep and I hear the OST
I wake up and I hear the OST

All in my head of course

[languid gyro]

||the general set up for the area was really neat though||

[wheat tulip]

Which one?

[wheat tulip]

How do you do so much wtf

Do i do something wrong💀

[languid gyro]

||Maelle|| is simply too strong lol

[hasty halo]

I really need to build my characters to do more lol

[languid gyro]

Also tbh, I'm intentionally doing stuff other than what would maximize my damage, such as ||switching in Sciel for Fortune's Fury, or switching Verso's weapon to Sireso, or instead of using my current Lune heal battery setup, giving Maelle a bunch of the no-healing damage boosting luminas such as Confident Fighter or Inverted Affinity, or spending extra lumina colours to equip In Media Res + Shield Affinity, or use Last Chance to run a 1 HP Maelle nuke build with all the "low HP" activating luminas, or anything else like that||

||Basically, if my goal was purely to max out damage, I already have the tools to probably double or triple my current Maelle max damage, possibly even more; I just haven't felt the need yet and have been having fun just messing around with my current party/setup||

[green escarp]

Sam Slade just got to Act 2 (big spoilers for those not there yet) ||She's going through the 5 stages of grief for Gustave 😭 ||

[wheat tulip]

||https://fixupx.com/expedition33/status/1924477071905988778?t=nOECoqKuOLSEJELql0JwUQ&s=19 || act 2 spoiler

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (@expedition33)

Found some footage in a folder labelled "Verso"

**💬 162 🔁 1.5K ❤️ 13.7K 👁️ 607.5K **

▶ Play video

FixupX · May 19, 2025, 2:47 PM

[pallid gull]

i was wondering, this is for people that have finished ||when we say NG+ do we mean we can restart the game with everything we already have? or that we can continue playing even if we finished the game on the same save post-ending||

[green escarp]

||NG+ is specifically the former, but the latter is also true||

[pallid gull]

ohhh okay thank you!

i've been thinking of finishing today but idkkk maybe i should explore more

[wheat tulip]

Explore more!!

Im still not done with it either

[pallid gull]

im just scared of killing the final boss in one shot

[wheat tulip]

Gkfgkggk

I think ill still be quite scared of dying of it rn 😭

But maybe its because of my skill issue

[languid gyro]

||So far, for me, nothing in Act 3 has survived a non-optimized Maelle one-shot, including Sprong, so this is probably already my trajectory 💀 ||

[pallid gull]

i still die to a lot of things, so i get it! i think it's partially because i cannot be bothered to strip everyone of their luminas and pictos and do proper builds lmao

i did one build specifically for aiming because of an optional boss and i haven't bothered since 😭

[languid gyro]

I do think it'd be a lot easier if they a) had loadouts and/or b) more comprehensive sorting/grouping options (or hell, let me make my own custom categories), like grouping together all luminas that affect Free Aim, or all luminas that proc on Basic Attack, or all luminas that are connected to Burn, etc.

[pallid gull]

yeah, i know that we have a filtering system but i think it's lacking a lot at the moment, i just get overwhelmed and lazy and rawdog it

i also forget often what pictos they've already learned

[vivid peak]

Maybe they’ll patch it one day

[languid gyro]

My other ask is that when we're selecting Pictos, we can sort by Lumina cost (or have Lumina cost show up in the UI somewhere)

[wheat tulip]

Loadouts would help so much

[wheat tulip]

It is i think?

[pallid gull]

maybe im spreading misinformation but i think someone in lor's chat said they're looking into loadouts for the future?

[wheat tulip]

Oh when we are selecting pictos my bad

[languid gyro]

My "system" (if you can call it that), is whenever I get a new picto, I favorite/star it, as well as the picto I'm replacing, so when I learn it, it's easy for me to find what I just learned and also what I just replaced so I can slot it back in easily

[pallid gull]

oh that's such a good idea

i might actually try to build them when i get back to it lmao

[languid gyro]

Right now I want to see if I can just get through the game with my team of 3 faves, but I do have some ideas in my head for how to actually minmax my team more if any content pops up that would necessitate it

Likewise, I still have an unspent pool of 100 or so lumina points that I can give to whomever as needed, should I need to tweak my builds/teamcomp going forward

Speaking of faves ||Verso has officially surpassed Maelle in terms of colours of lumina eaten, despite the fact that it'd probably be more "efficient" to just dump everything into Maelle nuke 🫡 this was not originally a conscious decision but my unconscious favoritism won out I guess||

||both of them have like triple the total lumina points as the 3rd highest though, which is Lune lmao||

[pallid gull]

||verso...... wont him ||

[green escarp]

Hi I'm someone! And yeah it was an interview with one of the journalist/gaming outlets but I forget which one

But I also keep seeing it mentioned but can't find a citation so I'm hoping I'm not just spreading misinformation by people spreading misinformation...

[wheat tulip]

https://tenor.com/view/cat-cat-turning-head-confused-cat-rizalalthur-orange-cat-behavior-gif-10491959385063137392

Confused noise

[green escarp]

Hey how do you think I feel. I need to start screenshotting posts I see because I can never find them again

[fringe walrus]

https://bsky.app/profile/expedition33.bsky.social/post/3lpm4wuwcw22e

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (@expedition33.bsky.social)

Wheee!

We will have more details to share in the coming months, but we are so excited to bring this to you.

Editions Pix'n Love (@editionspixnlove.bsky.social)
Pix'n Love, @kepler-interactive.bsky.social
et Sandfall sont heureux d'annoncer l'arrivée, en 2025, de l'artbook officiel Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ! 📕 On brûle d'impatience à l'idée de vous en dire plus sur ce magnifique projet ! 😊 RDV prochainement.

@expedition33.bsky.social

Bluesky · May 20, 2025, 12:52 PM

[pallid gull]

i want it

[wheat tulip]

Yesss

[pallid gull]

also lor be careful idk how active they are on bsky but they post some things that might be spoilerish for you on twitter

[fringe walrus]

[languid gyro]

Holy shit I need

[vivid peak]

“On brûle d'impatience à l'idée” French is so poetic

This looks awesome though

[wheat tulip]

And for me its just another day lmao

I wonder how it will works for the others countries tho

Pixn love is a french editor😭

[pallid gull]

new lorie video

[wheat tulip]

Omgg

[wheat tulip]

|| SCREAMING NOT LORIE LISTENING TO UNE VIE À T'AIMER CIRKFKFCIIX||

[green escarp]

||NOOOOOO NOT THE SPOILERS 😭 ||

[wheat tulip]

||she understood it wasnt something she heard before and i was like no one says anything ||

[green escarp]

Also I hope that one guy who tried to spoil Lorie got permabanned.
I know I shouldn't tell randos to fuck off and let the mods handle it but I'm tried from a long day at work, I will throw hands lol

[wheat tulip]

[hasty halo]

I hope that person got permabanned too

Also wanna play more of this game but my brain is just all over the place again

[wheat tulip]

What the person said? Im being too curious kckfkfk

[hasty halo]

I don't even know. I was downloading something on my PlayStation while listening to the stream then went to look at my phone and then saw it was in emote only and sub only

[wheat tulip]

[keen thunder]

Act 2 Last Zone optional Boss spoil || I have defeated the Clair Obscur do I win the game? ||

Also finally made it to the beginning of act 3 and this is the first thing I do: (optional content in act 3) || stumbled upon the floating gestral arena and test out the damage uncapper ||

[green escarp]

At least 3 different people outright said or implied [Act 2 spoilers] ||Gustave dies||

[wheat tulip]

Smh people ugh

[hasty halo]

Okay yeah I hope they got banned

[green escarp]

Oh they did lol I saw the permanently banned message in chat xD
Had this song in my head:

https://tenor.com/view/freddie-mercury-another-one-bites-gif-15132770

Aiden would be famous in the Wild West with his quickdraw bans xD

[hasty halo]

People don't even realize when a person has "First play" in the title of the stream it actually means FIRST PLAY

[green escarp]

Oh no, they realize

[hasty halo]

They're just ignorant

[green escarp]

I find malice more common than ignorance lately

[hasty halo]

Yeah. People really out here bringing malice with them

[keen thunder]

What the there were several??? good job to the mods 😭

[green escarp]

Aiden be like

https://tenor.com/view/clint-eastwood-gunslinger-six-shooter-gun-flip-flip-gun-into-holster-gif-12524647873518510513

[wheat tulip]

Omg ||first time dealing 10 millions damage😭||

[rain widget]

omg lorie made it to act 2!!

[wheat tulip]

And finally got my first character lvl 99

[wheat tulip]

Yess

[rain widget]

yayy i missed the stream cause i had to run some errands but i'm watching the vod now

[green escarp]

Amalee hit Act 2 like 10 mins after Lorie ||I got to watch 2 streamers go through it 🥲||