Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Complete Walkthrough (Step-by-Step Strategy Guide) – PART 03

Clair Obscur Walkthrough: Expedition 33 – PART 01 Clair Obscur Walkthrough: Expedition 33 – PART 02 Clair Obscur Walkthrough: Expedition 33 – PART 03

Act 3

At the beginning of Act 3, as soon as you regain control, Maelle gains access to new Void-affinity abilities, but these still need to be unlocked and equipped normally, so don’t expect the game to automatically “turn everything on.” The top priority at this stage is to get the Pictos Painted Power working, because it removes the most annoying bottleneck in the endgame: the damage cap. The idea is simple: equip the Painted Power on your main carry and, as you accumulate Lumina Points, convert them into Lumina to distribute to everyone, ensuring that any character can surpass the damage cap when the build clicks. This completely changes how you approach chromatic bosses and challenge battles.

After progressing a bit and seeing the initial city scenes, you’ll head to the camp. A curious detail in Act 3 is that, in the camps, you continue to control the Verso, and this has practical implications: organize the group thinking of it as the “control point” for the menu and logistics. Another important change is that the Curator will no longer be available for upgrades, so weapon improvements and adjustments will now be done at the flags. Therefore, it’s worth adopting the mindset of always stopping at a flag before more demanding content, spending materials and adjusting Pictos, without the “I’ll check with the Curator later” routine. Also, ensure everyone has at least 5 Lumina Points available to allocate Painted Power when you distribute it universally.

In this first camp, talk to everyone, use the campfire to “check in” and watch extra scenes, write in Gustave’s journal, and finish the camp by choosing the option to complete the expedition. After the scenes, you receive the game’s final objective and unlock a huge map change: Esquie gains the ability to fly, which practically opens up the entire continent. You can still return to the camp and complete bond events to the maximum, but some characters have specific limitations. Sciel, upon reaching a high bond level, unlocks a record and, at most, unlocks the third gradient attack. Esquie, in a high-level event, engages in a fight against Francois that becomes a walk in the park, and at the end, recovers the last stone and allows underwater exploration; in addition, maximizing his bond also unlocks the maximum rank gradient of the Verso. Monoco can be taken to a certain point, but then requires a mission involving the Sacred River to bring Noco back. Maelle is locked until you complete a mission connected to Alicia on a specific Axon, and Lune is also locked until you visit Siren Island again. In other words, even “post-story,” there’s still a lot to unlock.

That said, it’s important to keep in mind that Act 3 allows you to get too strong. You can get absurdly powerful Pictos and easily level up to very high levels, but for the final stretch you don’t need to overdo it, and leveling up too much can take the fun out of the last dungeon. If you want to maintain difficulty, do only the minimum, get the essentials and move on to the end. If the game already offers options to adjust the challenge, such as increasing enemy health or limiting your party’s damage, this also helps maintain balance while you explore.

With Esquie flying, start by opening up some new overworld areas that yield upgrades without dragging you into an endless grind. The first recommended stop is a flying island northeast of Stone Wave Cliffs and southeast of the Painting Workshop, the Flying Casino. Before entering the casino, there’s an important precaution if you’re following the white Nevron sequence and want to secure the Lumina reward: go to the fountain associated with that sequence and collect the reward as soon as it’s available. The reason is that, in later stages, some decisions might put you in situations where killing the Nevron yields a valuable Pictos, but you could end up missing out on the Lumina reward if you leave it for later. By collecting the Lumina payout first, you protect yourself from accidentally missing it.

In the Flying Casino, enter and talk to the large Gestral, then proceed to the casino’s interior and circle around to the right of the building to find a record called Reveries Dans Paris. Before leaving, talk to the NPC at the entrance, but do so while controlling Monoco, as the correct conversation depends on him; upon completion, you’ll get a new look for Monoco, so it’s an easy cosmetic to secure since you’re already there.

The next stop is the Floating Cemetery, north of Falling Leaves. Enter the main building, but don’t rush: exiting through one of the left doors, you’ll find a Colour of Lumina outside. Go back inside and look for a Recoat at the far end of the building. Now talk to Chalier, another white Nevron. He’ll ask you to choose which weapon he should wield, and this choice determines how his fight works. After choosing, enter the building and face him. The fight itself is quite easy at this point; he just has a lot of health, and winning also improves an important defensive Pictos. After the battle, you can choose to spare him or fulfill his request, and here’s a progress detail: he asks to be defeated, and fulfilling this wish yields a Pictos Auto Powerful, but doing so before claiming the large Lumina reward from the fountain might cost you that reward. So, the safe order is to first collect the Lumina reward from the fountain, then decide if you’re going to finish off Chalier. When you’re finished, return to where it originally was, follow a path to a hook, climb a wall, and use another hook to return to the second floor of the building, where there is another Colour of Lumina at the end of the corridor.

Now fly to a small island northwest of Visages, the Isle of the Eyes. Outside, there’s a merchant selling the Linen and Cotton record; buy it if you’re collecting. Go inside, use the flag, and advance until you find a Colour of Lumina among masks. There’s a staircase that seems to suggest progress, but it’s not worth climbing, so instead, jump to the right of that staircase to continue. Soon you’ll find a Pétank; chase it to the finish line, which is further in. This Pétank has a trick: it only takes decent damage from free aiming, and its weak point “teleports” after the first hit, so you need to reposition your shot instead of insisting on the same spot. It can give you Dizzy to hinder your aim, but it’s more of a nuisance than a real danger. Winning will get you a very good pack of rare Catalysts, so it’s worth the effort.

With Pétank out of the way, solve the island’s puzzle. There are Contortionniste corpses scattered around, and if you look closely, their eyes are still following you. You need to find and destroy three specific eyes with shots: one is above the staircase you jumped down, another is near where you defeated Pétank, and the third is on the ceiling of a cave near where you first saw Pétank. Once all three eyes are destroyed, a passage opens to a chromatic boss. Cross the bridge and face Chromatic Boucheclier. He starts with several shields, so break them quickly with shots or light attacks and save your heavy damage for later. His pattern is simple: he basically has a single-target gradient attack smashing with his shield, and sometimes enters a counter-attack mode that you can cancel by shooting his shield. When his health is low, he starts gaining shields as he hits the group, but since his moveset is limited, he’s easy to control. It’s one of the more “honest” chromatic opponents in Act 3, and with Painted Power active on Maelle, the burn damage often far exceeds the previous limit, speeding up the end. By winning, you gain a new weapon, rare materials, and several Colours of Lumina.

The next destination is a unique area in the sky called The Canvas. Proceed until you find a large frame with an image of Alicia and the Verse family. Interact with it and choose to remove the painting, as this becomes a quest item you’ll use in the Manor soon. Then, fly to an island above the river north of Frozen Hearts called The Chosen Path. Here, there’s a different mechanic: you see five yellow canvases and need to enter each one, but each canvas requires choosing a single character, and the same character cannot be used twice. In other words, it’s “one warrior per painting.” Enter the leftmost canvas and complete the five fights, always choosing the character that makes the most sense for that enemy.

For this challenge, it’s recommended to be at least in the late 50s or 60s, and have Painted Power and solo-style passives, because it’s a 1v1 combat. The first screen is a fight against a Glaise, basically an easy repetition of what you’ve faced before, and it also improves an associated weapon. The second is against a Benisseur, which opens with a burst attack that’s difficult to parry, so it’s usually smart to send out Monoco here to ensure learning and because he can better control the pace if he’s fast enough to act first and force a pattern change. The third screen features a Stalact, also well-known, and this victory improves another weapon and yields valuable material. The fourth is a Jar similar to what you’ve already seen, without much surprise. The fifth is a Contortionniste, and it tends to be the most annoying in 1v1 because the weak point of the eye isn’t as comfortable to aim at head-on alone. Here, you can choose between Verso or Maelle: with Verso you can generate free-aim shots much more frequently and maintain the energy cycle, and with Maelle you can win more “damage over time,” using Burn to penetrate the target’s life even without hitting the eye as many times. Upon completing the five screens, a door opens at the end of the hall and you pick up the Pictos Base Shield.

With this reinforced kit, it’s worth revisiting an old fight that was previously fought by damage limits: head to the entrance of Coastal Cave and face Gross Tête outside. He resists fire and light, is weak to darkness, and has an annoying main pattern, jumping sequentially into the group. Individual timing is simple, the problem is the duration, because the number of jumps increases as the fight extends. Therefore, the plan is to break the boss as early as possible. When he’s broken, he takes much more damage, and if you manage to take enough life during a break, the fight dramatically “collapses” in your favor, to the point where the boss punishes himself in the script. Winning grants you Pictos Warming Up and another ability for Monoco if he’s in the group, so bring him along if you’re completing his repertoire.

Now make a quick stop at an island in the sky east of Coastal Cave, Sky Island. Proceed until you find the Chromatic Glaise. He enters with many shields and is weak to fire, resisting electricity. He opens with an easy-to-read area-of-effect attack and, like all Glaise, mixes ground punches that generate waves with a prepared attack that you can interrupt by breaking the bar. Defeat him to receive a weapon, Catalysts, and Colour of Lumina. Afterward, continue exploring the island and look for, by going up and down small ladders and grappling hooks, a Pictos Greater Slow, which is excellent for controlling more aggressive bosses.

Leaving Sky Island, fly southeast to White Sands. Once you enter, turn left onto an easy-to-miss Colour of Lumina, then follow it to the end to find a record linked to Aline near a boat. After that, you’re ready to tackle Frozen Hearts, which now makes sense both for quests and for loot and endgame training.

In Frozen Hearts, treat the area as a farming and upgrade zone: the enemies are tough, but they reward you greatly. Defeating Danseurs improves Pictos linked to death by fire, and Pelerins improve important ice weapons. Start by picking up a Colour of Lumina at the end of a train car leaning against a cliff near the starting flag. The area is quite divided, so the secret to not getting lost is to do it in sections. First, go left, enter a building with a reddish interior and collect a large block of Chroma. Return to the fork and follow the train tracks to the right until you find a rope going down; go down, defeat the enemy and look for more Chroma going down a ramp. Go back up and now follow the path to the right of the red building, and when you are at the top, memorize a cave to the left to use later. Continue to the right and, when you reach a train car, turn right to collect a Colour of Lumina at the end of the cliff. Go past the wagon, face another Danseur, and look for Expedition Journal 51 in a small recess of the scenery. Now return to the cave you had memorized and enter. At the end, climb a rope to access the second flag.

From this second area, go to the right from the cave exit, go around the wall to a hook and cross through to enter a larger cave. Use the rope to descend and you will reach a huge room with a large enemy and a door to the Manor. Before entering the Manor, face the cave’s chromatic boss, the Veilleur. Aim for the lamp, which is its weak point. It is weak to light and electricity, and its initial combo has several hits mixing arms and lamp, easier to dodge than to parry. At the end of each turn it applies Blight, reducing the party’s maximum health, but you can remove this effect from a character if they shoot the lamp, so don’t let it accumulate unnecessarily. By winning, you receive a Pictos Energising Burn and rare materials, as well as several Colours of Lumina. Take the opportunity to explore the cave: near the rope where you came from there is a recess in the left wall with a rare Catalyst, and near the Manor door there is another item on a table. Enter the Manor and pick up a record next to a harp. Then, go to the main hall and use the right staircase to find an empty frame. Interact with it and place the family portrait you picked up on the Canvas. This unlocks a new room behind the central staircase, where you’ll find another hidden diary and an outfit for Maelle. Leave the Manor and return to Frozen Hearts.

From the Manor’s door, follow the tracks to the right and you’ll end up on top of a wagon, near where Expedition Journal 51 was. The Pictos Burn Affinity is there. Go back inside the cave and continue exploring until you exit to the outside. On the left, there’s a Paint Cage; destroy the targets to open it and get the Pictos Anti-Freeze. Then, follow the opposite path until you find Chroma and realize that the route only returns you to a previous area. Return to the area of ​​the second flag and, this time, go to the left. Defeat the enemies and notice a slope going uphill, but leave that for later. Near a bell in the snow, there’s a Colour of Lumina. On the opposite side, climb some stairs in the back and follow the tracks to a cliff with another Colour of Lumina.

At this point you’ll find a large Danseuse, the teacher. Talk to her and agree to “dance,” because it’s a specific challenge controlling Lune. The objective isn’t to win by damage, but to parry a huge sequence of shots, around fifteen, and you need to parry them all to generate the counter-attack that ends the test. The most consistent way to pass is to use the sound as a metronome, so playing with very clear audio helps a lot. In conclusion, you win an outfit for Lune. The teacher can also be faced as a boss later, and defeating her gives an extremely valuable Pictos Augmented Counter III, but if you’re still pursuing the great Lumina reward from the White Nevron line, the safe order is to first secure the reward from the source and only then decide whether to defeat her, so as not to risk locking the prize.

Now go back to the slope you ignored earlier and climb up. Grab a Chroma, and near a bell on the cliff, step on it and jump to a ledge below to collect the Pictos Burning Break. Then, go down and head to a cave with two enemies and grab a rare Catalyst at the end of the wall, then use the nearby rope to climb up. Grab a Chroma on the left, defeat two enemies and collect more Chroma further on. Proceed to a hook, cross it and climb up the holds. In this section, the holds give you two directions, one upwards and one to the right. Go to the right first to go around a wagon and grab a rare Catalyst near a body. Just ahead there is a hook for a floating wagon, and at the end of it there is a rope you can lower to create a shortcut. Go back and continue climbing up the holds, turn right to grab a Chroma and follow the tracks to a long climb to a station. Eliminate the enemies at the top, especially a Stalact in a corner, because this improves an important weapon and there’s Chroma behind it. Also look for a path to the left near the top that leads to another Paint Cage; open it to get a Revive Tint Shard. Then, in front of the station, go to the right, climb onto ledges and go around rocks to the left to find a rare Catalyst on a high ledge.

Enter the station and defeat the inner Stalact. Before proceeding inside, look for a Pétank on the right platform and note that its landing point is to the left. Ride it there and fight. It always acts first and attacks in melee, so landing counters is key to gaining extra turns and finishing within the limit. In general, Verso with a fast weapon and energy passives can deal enough damage, especially with follow-up and shots. Proceed through the canyon to an open area with another flag. From the flag, follow the wall to the left to find a Colour of Lumina near a body, and walk further along the edge to find a Grandis corpse with Chroma. This area is straightforward, with only two more enemies besides this.

Return to the flag and climb the trains ahead, traversing wagons until you reach a series of hooks. After the third hook, you’ll reach a point where the route opens up: you can jump to a lower train or use hooks to climb upwards. First, jump down and use the hook to reach an upper platform with a merchant selling clothes. On the opposite side of the merchant, there’s a Mime and a rare Catalyst near some crates. Behind the Mime, in a more hidden corner with more crates, there’s another rare Catalyst. Lower a shortcut rope and, still near the merchant, look for a Colour of Lumina hidden behind crates in a corner to the right. Use the shortcut to return to the flag and repeat the train climb, but now, when you reach the decision point, follow the route of hooks upwards, defeating enemies and continuing to climb until you reach the top, where there’s a flag and the boss.

The top boss is Gargant, and here he’s stronger than the version you faced in the Monolith. He alternates between ice and fire stances, and this changes what he absorbs and what he suffers, so observe his state and adjust your element accordingly. The most common combo is a sequence of four punches, difficult to parry without practice, so it’s safer to dodge until you understand the rhythm. In ice stance, he can freeze an ally at the end of the turn, but a weak point appears, and if you shoot it, it removes the freeze, so be mindful of the open aim. He also has an area attack with multiple impacts and a finishing blow, and closer to half his health he tends to automatically switch stances and increase the number of hits in the combo. When he’s broken, he doesn’t switch stances, so an efficient strategy is to take him down in a state where you can punish him better, and then unleash Burn and maximum damage on the window. Winning rewards you with the Snowim weapon for Lune, the Pictos Anti-Burn, and most importantly, the Eternal Ice quest item.

With Eternal Ice in hand, return to the merchant Grandis who gave you the quest at the station and turn it in. He will release a huge stockpile of weapons and Picts, many of them expensive and some being higher-level versions of what you already have. If you don’t want to spend everything now, the smart purchase strategy is to prioritize what you don’t have, and then come back when you have more Chroma. Among the most useful items, look for effects that speed up combat and survival, such as a stronger rush and survival passives, because they help both in the final dungeon and in optional content without forcing you to become overleveled.

With that, you’ve already completed the “minimum efficient” portion of Act 3 to be ready for the final stretch, with Painted Power active, air routes open, shard upgrades, and your Grandis inventory cleared. From here, the next natural step is to head to Lumiere and tackle the final content, keeping in mind that continuing to explore too much can make you too strong and reduce the challenge of the ending.

Lumiere

Lumiere is located at the southernmost point of the map and is, in practice, your final dungeon. You can enter from the port side; before crossing the port portal, check your weapons, Picts, and Lumina, ensure your party has Painted Power active, and that you have a maximum amount of Tints, because from here on out the game is no longer interested in “testing if you understood,” but rather in demanding execution.

Once the arrival scenes at the Harbour are over, walk to the flag and make a quick collection before heading towards the center. To the right of the flag, behind the stairs, there is a Colour of Lumina. Go up the stairs and, when you reach the third landing, turn right to find a nail of ink in a corner, which hides Chroma. With these items secured, continue to the fountain square. Here you begin to face a new type of enemy, the Aberrations, and they have a tricky detail: the orb in the center of their body is not a weak point and does not take damage, but you can shoot it to remove negative effects that the enemy itself applies, such as Blight or Burn. So, whenever you notice the group suffering from these statuses, use the free aim on the orb to clear and stabilize the fight. If it’s the first time you defeat this enemy, it can also drop a specific Pictos, but this depends on your history in previous areas, so don’t be surprised if the drop doesn’t appear.

In the fountain square itself, scan counter-clockwise to avoid missing collectibles. To the left of the fountain, behind the stairs you climbed, there’s a Resplendent Chroma Catalyst. Further along, against the left wall of the sector, you’ll find another Colour of Lumina. Return to the fountain and go to the right. You’ll see an Aberration fighting “reborn” expeditionaries, and near the wall behind the fight there’s another Colour of Lumina. Then, cross the street past the stalls that were full of flowers in the prologue; there’s Chroma hidden behind the stalls on both sides, so grab the glows before continuing. At the end of this section, two Aberrations appear guarding the passage; defeat them and advance, because the progression now climbs to the rooftops.

Climbing the rope that leads to the top, you reach the rooftop area from the beginning of the game. Once you climb up, the path splits. Go to the right first, follow the trail and use the grappling hooks as needed until you reach the point where it all began with Gustave. The reward here is an excellent Pictos, Energising Powerful. Then, return to the split point near the initial rope and now take the left route, using the grappling hook to reach another area with a flag.

From this flag, descend the rope to Central Plaza. Here, the “human” enemy becomes commonplace: they are fallen expeditionaries, similar to Maelle’s summons, but fighting on Renoir’s side. The important detail is that they mimic the styles of your own team, so expect combos, attacks with timing similar to yours, and patterns that seem “too familiar.” Right after descending, defeat the first group to receive a weapon for the Verso. Before continuing straight ahead, make two short detours to collect Lumina: from the rope, go left to the end and pick up a Colour of Lumina on top of scrap metal, then return and go right to find another Colour of Lumina near boxes and carts.

Now, go around the Central Plaza fountain and face another group to earn another weapon upgrade. There’s also a Resplendent Chroma Catalyst around the fountain, so grab it before leaving the sector. Continue along the main route and, after defeating the next mixed group of Aberration and Expeditionary, advance a little and turn right at the first opportunity to find a dead end with another Resplendent Chroma Catalyst. Follow the path to the tree where you controlled Sofie in the prologue; there’s a faded boy there, and it’s worth talking to him for context. Don’t leave without picking up the Pictos Charging Stun hidden behind the tree. Then, go back to the boy and head left to find a Resplendent Chroma Catalyst next to a gramophone. With that done, advance to the next flag, which marks the entrance to Shattered Alley.

In Shattered Alley, right after the flag, the path splits into two loops that rejoin, so the idea is to collect everything without going in circles. Take the left path first to collect Chroma, then continue until you find an enemy and, near a cart, another Colour of Lumina. Proceed and listen for music when it starts playing, because you’re approaching an open area with a large Nevron. Before talking to it, turn left and defeat an enemy to get a Colour of Lumina behind it. Then, go around the large Nevron and head to the edge of the cliff to get another Colour of Lumina.

Now face the big Nevron, because he’s a must-have Chromatic boss, the Chromatic Échassier. The usual rule for this enemy still applies: aim and shoot at the light above his head until it breaks, because that’s where you create your real damage window. He has a dangerous habit of messing with the group’s Blight and healing himself a little, but compared to other Chromatics, he’s surprisingly “light”. His most common attacks include an easy-to-defend two-hit combo and a jump followed by a gradient attack; if this gradient hits you, the group can get Exhausted and your rhythm drops, so prioritize defending that moment. After winning, grab the Colour of Lumina behind the arena. Then, use the grappling hooks to cross and climb up the path until you see a boat, where there’s another Colour of Lumina next to it.

You’ll arrive in front of the Opera House building. Before entering, pick up the Chroma on the left and, on the right side of the building, look for a damaged trail on the edge. Interact there and ask Esquie to retrieve an item from the water, as this yields an important expedition journal. Now enter the Opera House, go up the stairs to the right and pick up a Colour of Lumina near a door. Continue and you’ll see a large, faded boy at the piano who can’t be interacted with; near him there’s a flag, so use it to arrange the group.

From here on, the Opera House opens into large areas with forks and more aggressive enemies. Proceed to a wide area and, where the path splits, go right first. Defeat the enemies guarding a Pictos called Healing Stun. Continue along this same route to face an Aberration along with a human enemy, and pick up a Colour of Lumina that they have. Return to the fork and go left to find a Resplendent Chroma Catalyst next to a building. Continue, defeat the group of three enemies and, before going to where the paths join, turn right and look behind a building near the fork for a hidden Pictos. Go to a damaged flag and use the grappling hook to cross the gap; on the other side, turn left and pick up a Colour of Lumina. Further on, talk to another faded boy for more context and, from there, turn right and go around the building to find a nail ink with Chroma. Continue until you reach a hook, go through it, and once you’re on the other side, turn left to pick up another Colour of Lumina.

Following the main route, you’ll find a merchant. It’s worth dueling him, as this unlocks a powerful Pictos for purchase, as well as a weapon from Maelle, and other high-level weapons if you haven’t obtained them through previous detours. Just be prepared to spend a lot of Chroma if you intend to buy everything. Afterward, continue to another flag, and you’ll enter the Gardens of Lumière.

In the Gardens, the area is large and full of scattered items, so the secret is to explore along the walls to avoid getting lost. Right at the beginning, near the fountain and the flag, you’ll find a Recoat among bodies on the ground. As soon as you enter the large garden, turn left and follow the wall to find a Colour of Lumina. Continue sticking to the left until two Aberrations appear; defeat them and pick up the Pictos Gradient Fighter behind them. Keep following the same pattern, because further ahead three Aberrations will appear; after defeating them, pick up another Colour of Lumina hidden behind them. Now return to the center of the garden, near the area where you found the Pictos, and look for an Aberration “body” in the grass, because between two corpses there is another Recoat. Then, return to the beginning of the large garden and go to the right side: you will see another body with a Colour of Lumina between two corpses. Follow the right wall, defeat the Aberrations that appear, and pick up a Chroma point right after. Continue along the right wall until you reach another Aberration ambush; After defeating them, look for a building with Chroma on the outside, and on the opposite side there is another body with a Recoat among the corpses.

Finally, return to the central path at the beginning of the garden and look for a bench with a Recoat, but it’s located a little before the entrance to the large garden, so it may require a short detour. With all this collected, advance along the central path until you find a sub-boss called Creation. It follows the logic of the Aberrations in one aspect: there’s a sphere on its body that, when you shoot it, heals your group, not causing damage to them. But there’s a catch here, because the enemy can invert the group’s states, and with that, what was healing can become punishment. Furthermore, when it loses half its health, it protects itself with shields and starts using new patterns when flying. In this aerial phase, it creates orbs that can be destroyed by gunfire, but if your group is inverted, shooting can become a problem, and if you ignore the orbs, they explode at the end of the turn, causing damage that can be defended, but accumulates pressure. The combat becomes easier if you take down the orbs quickly when you’re safe and prioritize stabilizing any inversion before “using the sphere to heal”. By winning, you gain a Pictos with speed and strength, which is excellent for aggressive builds.

After Creation, proceed to the final flag and talk to the faded boy. Here the game makes it clear that you are entering the ending, so organize your team and remember that there is an important narrative decision later on that alters the ending and the final battle. It’s a choice you can’t “unsee” in the same save without NG+, so make it carefully when the time comes.

The main final fight against Renoir on this route is long and changes considerably as the stages progress. In the first part, he appears in Curator form, with long single-target combos, “black hole” area attacks, and a Void cross strike that can eliminate a character if you mistime it, as well as a sequence where he jumps and then unleashes a large impact on the group that can wipe if your team is weak. At half health, he starts summoning Axons to attack and buff together, which is the most dangerous part of this stage because the pressure becomes “end-of-turn” and not just a direct hit. Near the end of his life, he is healed, and the fight continues into a continuous stage with cutscenes, without giving you that “clean” interval to reorganize. From then on, the combos become more frantic, he includes gradient attacks at the end of sequences, and the safest plan is to dodge most of them and focus on defending the gradient, because missing a multi-hit here can wipe out the group. He also creates pools of darkness with explosions at different intervals and a Void meteor shower with a short cadence, so use the audio as a timing guide, apply shields whenever you can, and don’t hesitate to use revives if a character falls, because the combat is based on endurance. In another transition, he gains wings and pulls off a very fast sequence that requires a specific dodge timing after a characteristic metallic sound, and that’s where many people miss an attempt due to anticipatory reflexes. The fight ends when he tries to repeat this move with low health, and the game triggers the conclusion.

When you regain control after that, there’s still a final confrontation, more narrative than mechanical, and it depends on the choice you make in the following scenes. You control the Verse, go to a large sphere and talk to the boy, choosing the option that starts the ending. Then, the game puts you in front of the final conflict and asks you to choose which side to play in the decisive battle. This decision locks the epilogue and also changes the final combat, and you can’t change it later in the same save without NG+. The good news is that this final fight, whatever the choice, is much simpler and more scripted than Renoir’s, so treat it as a thematic ending, not as “the new impossible boss”.

Upon completing the final showdown, you receive a record called Our Drafts Collide, which usually completes the collection if you’ve collected the other discs throughout the game, and the epilogue corresponding to your choice is displayed. After the credits, the game returns you to the main menu and allows you to load a save file from before the final boss, to play remaining post-game content or start NG+ at any flag. Wardrobe rewards also vary depending on the chosen epilogue, so if you’re collecting skins, remember that this is tied to your ending decision.

Post-Game

After Frozen Hearts, you can unlock a very lucrative post-game route that mixes strong upgrades, rare Pictos, chromatic battles, and some bond event completions. The idea here is to go through blocks, always using the flags to adjust builds and evolve weapons, since at the end of the game you’ll be changing sets frequently, especially if you’re using Painted Power to unlock damage above the standard limit.

Leaving Frozen Hearts, fly south and land on a small strip of land. There are three enemies roaming there, including a new type, the Échassier, so have Monoco in your active party so he can register the enemy and unlock skill learning. Defeating this group will not only upgrade important weapons to higher levels, but you will also receive the Pictos Sniper. Before leaving, walk to the far west of this same area and look for a camp, because that’s where you’ll find the Pictos Longer Rush, which greatly improves the pace of aggressive builds.

The next stop is a hidden area west of the Esoteric Ruins, across the water. Land and eliminate the enemies there to explore calmly. Here you’ll find three ink studs; two of them are usually distractions, but the larger one guards Chroma, so break them all to ensure you’re not leaving money on the ground. This type of place is useful precisely because it seems irrelevant, but it accumulates resources for very expensive post-game purchases.

Now fly to an elevated area northwest of Stone Quarry, where there’s a floating chromatic boss that can only be reached by flying with the Esquie. The target is the Chromatic Demineur. The fight has a detail that changes your approach: it practically doesn’t “respect” common attacks and melee abilities, so treat it as a free-aim combat with punishing shots. Its mine is incendiary and not usually destructible like you would in normal versions, but shooting it still causes excellent damage and accelerates the boss’s fall. Over time, its “internal” fire increases, which worsens the applied burn and reinforces the area fire waves. It alternates a wave attack on the group with three-hit strikes using the mine, and after a while unleashes a stronger blow that can wipe out the team if you don’t defend. At level 60+, with Lune using ice and the rest of the group focused on ranged attacks and crowd control, it’s a much simpler fight than it seems. Winning earns you Angerim and upgrade materials.

Also take advantage of a curious spot on the map that becomes almost a lottery of “fake nails”. There’s a region above and between Abbest Cave and Spring Meadows with several ink nails scattered around. Most are empty, but one of them hides the Pictos Breaking Slow. The best way to deal with this is to break them one by one until you find the right one, without trying to “guess” by the shine, because here the game likes to deceive.

Next, head to an area southeast of the south exit of Forgotten Battlefield. Clear out the enemies, including a Bourgeon, and look for a corner with crates to collect the Pictos Shielding Tint. This Pictos is valuable for its constant defensive effect, especially in long post-game fights where you might want to conserve resources and still stabilize.

Now it’s time to settle an important Monoco task: fly to the Sacred River, northwest of the Carousel, and land near the entrance. Outside, there’s a merchant selling the Children of Lumiere record, so grab it if you’re completing discs. Inside the Sacred River, proceed until you see a large, glowing pink Gestral, which serves as the central point of the area. Before interacting with it, take a detour to the left to find some blue Gestrals next to a totem; nearby is a Colour of Lumina. Return to the pink Gestral and follow the other route until you find a merchant. Talk to him and accept the combat to unlock the shop. This fight involves the merchant and two luminous Gestrals, so expect high pressure and area combos; if you’re below level 60, it tends to be a struggle, but from then on it’s manageable with good defense and concentrated damage. Upon winning, the unlocked stock is huge, but generally consists of high-level versions of Pictos that you probably already own; The highlight for those who have been collecting everything is a rarer Pictos focused on critical stun, so buy what you’re missing and leave the rest for when you have extra Chroma.

With the shop unlocked, return to the pink Gestral and choose to resurrect Noco. This triggers a fight against Golgra, but here the confrontation is different from the traditional duel versions: you enter with a fixed duo, usually Verso and Monoco, so adjust your equipment thinking about consistency and survivability, not “trio rotation”. Golgra still has a lot of health and fast combos, and her gradient attack is the easiest to read because it comes with a very characteristic movement, almost a dance before the hit. The real problem is the quick combo with more than five hits and, after losing more than half of her health, she enters a second phase with an even more brutal and accelerated sequence. Here it helps a lot to use effects like Second Chance and Survivor, because you will mistime at some point, and the fight doesn’t forgive chain falls. Play aggressively between attacks, but without greed: your window is short, so punish, recover, and go back to defending. Upon winning and exiting, Monoco’s bond advances, you receive his record, and then drop into camp, clearing the way to take Monoco to the maximum bond and unlock the final gradient.

The next exploration is in the Crimson Forest, in a region southwest of Blades’ Graveyard. The map here is platforming and path-reading. Advance by jumping between platforms and, after passing two statues on either side, jump to the left to collect Chroma and then climb back up. Continue using grappling hooks until you reach a flag. Near it, there’s a rope to descend; once you’re down there, turn around and go through an opening to find more Chroma. Descend using another rope and, on the lower level, turn right to collect a Colour of Lumina. From there, traverse platforms until you find holds to climb, climb up, jump to another rope, and advance.

At a certain point, the path splits. Take the rightmost path to a statue and interact with it. This changes the atmosphere of the place and causes “hidden” enemies to appear in areas that previously seemed empty. Go through the hook, defeat the group, and you upgrade a risky Pictos parry to a higher level. Continue, and when you see a gap with an item on the other side, go down instead of trying to jump straight through, because this puts you in a new area with another statue and a Resplendent Chroma Catalyst in the corner. Interact with this second statue, and the scenery loses almost all its color, making navigation difficult but also revealing more enemies, including Obscur. Proceed, go under an opening and down to return to a previous sector; then return to the first statue, go through again, defeat the enemies again, and make a more delicate crossing over very narrow planks until you reach a Colour of Lumina. In this same area, there is a rope that returns you to the beginning of the dungeon, which is great as a shortcut. Return to the fork in the path and continue downhill to pick up another Colour of Lumina. Further ahead, momentarily ignore a jump that would lead to a flag and veer left to break crates and collect a Resplendent Chroma Catalyst, only then cross over to the flag.

From the flag, you reach a large pool with three statues; two are lit and one is unlit. The objective is to “light up” the last one. Go to the right, climb ledges, fight enemies, and use a grappling hook to reach the remaining statue. Activating it causes enemies to reappear and new ones to appear, but the good news is that visibility improves, so your map becomes less confusing. Follow the path past the statue, use a grappling hook, defeat an enemy, and pick up a Colour of Lumina between two crates. Use the planks to cross and return to the fork in the path. Now return to the second flag and examine the fountain with the three lit statues to start the Crimson Forest chromatic boss fight.

The boss is the Chromatic Gold Chevalier, and he comes accompanied by a Clair and an Obscur. The priority order here is the same as always: eliminate the Obscur first, because Enrage buffs turn any mistake into a disaster; then, remove the Clair to cut extra shields. The Gold Chevalier himself is affected by light and darkness, so adjust your damage for those elements. He has two main patterns: a flaming slash that is now longer than normal, with an extended sequence of hits, and a freezing attack with many hits in succession, reaching a much higher number than previous versions. The secret is not to try to “guess” the rhythm: choose to dodge or parry and commit to that until you memorize the cadence, because switching in the middle tends to make you lose time. At level 60+, the fight is quite manageable. By winning, your risky parry Pictos reaches level 20 and, after the fight, an item appears at the fountain, Chevalim, a new weapon for the Verso. When you pick it up, the area loses its color again and the enemies disappear, a sign that the sector has been “solved”.

At this point, it’s usually a good time to visit the Endless Tower and at least complete the second set of challenges, because this gives a good level up and improves your arsenal for the next post-game challenges without having to farm random enemies. After that, continue with the aerial areas.

Fly to a special arena in the skies, above and between Yellow Harvest and the initial Gestral Beach. It’s the Dark Gestral Arena. There you interact with the Gestral “pots” and face 1 vs. 3 rounds, so the preparation is different: you need a character with a solid solo build, with sustain and energy passives, because there’s no teammate to cover mistakes. In the first round, the highlight is a chromatic Sakapatate with a catapult. It’s best to exploit weak points early, because the catapult attacks can extend and become an avalanche. After the catapult falls, it has a hidden attack that inflicts Exhaust, and the timing becomes easy when you notice a guiding sound before impact. Winning upgrades an important Lune weapon to a very high level.

In the second round, you face two Gestrals and a chromatic Ranger-type Sakapatate. The objective here is to remove its “device,” as this drastically reduces its health, but at the same time makes it more dangerous, so it’s a trade-off. While the device is active, it alternates between a large, difficult-to-parry combo, a more legible double sweep, and a “charging” sequence before firing. After the device disappears, it transforms its weapon into an electric blade and uses a single vertical slam that, if you parry, can practically end the fight with a strong counter, even more so if you have increased counter passives.

In the final round, recommended for level 70, the main enemy is a robust chromatic Sakapatate with support. You can greatly simplify the fight by destroying its left arm early and then forcing open its weak point with shots after removing shields. Without this, the boss has a shield crushing attack that becomes the main pattern, and you can learn to dodge or parry. Just be careful because it can counter-attack if you hit while the shield is raised, so learn the “safe moment” or use shots to deplete the shield. Winning grants you an absurdly strong combo Pictos, which changes a lot in the late game. After that, the potions invite you to challenge Golgra again. Here she is more “fair” than in other versions, with less health and more susceptible to breaking, so it’s viable around level 70 if you already master the combo timing, but it still requires practice.

If you haven’t yet completed the fountain sequence in the Red Woods, you can finish it now. Feed the fountain increasing amounts of Chroma until it reveals its true form, a white Benisseur. The fight isn’t about smashing and exploding, because it has gigantic health and a repetitive bubble behavior that doesn’t yield counters, so the focus is on surviving until the enemy itself is exhausted. The good news is that, upon finishing, you get back all the Chroma invested plus some extra, so it becomes an “investment with interest,” provided you have the patience to endure the marathon.

Finally, head to the east side of Sirene Island, where you’ll find the area called Sirene’s Dress. Upon landing, you’ll find a merchant with an outfit, so you can buy one if you’re collecting. Go to the flag, open the door, and choose the option to play music to unlock it. Further on, past another flag, you’ll encounter a chromatic boss, Chromatic Glissando. The most important detail is that its tail has a weak point. Shoot this point repeatedly until it’s destroyed, as this cuts off part of its kit and greatly reduces the risk of the fight. It’s weak to ice and, with a group of 60-70, usually falls without much trouble, even regenerating its tail at times. Upon death, it summons three Ballets and leaves an ally with Dizzy, but these enemies are fragile and die quickly with free aim. By winning, you gain a new weapon and upgrade another weapon to a high level. Continue and collect Expedition Journal 46, as well as the event related to Lune’s family. Upon leaving, the game takes you to the camp, which unlocks the continuation of Lune’s bonds to the maximum, including her record and final gradient attack. If you haven’t locked into a previous romance route, this is also where an alternate route can be started.

The Reacher

Before heading to The Reacher, make a quick stop on a small strip of land northeast of the area’s entrance. It’s a simple but useful “pit stop”: at the far north you’ll find a merchant with new hairstyles, and at the far south, another Lost Gestral to add to your count. Once that’s sorted, enter The Reacher and follow the main path to the first flag for a cutscene, then cross using the grappling hook. Soon after, you climb a rope, and as soon as you reach the top, there’s a paint spike right in front of you. Break it, but don’t go straight ahead yet: just beyond it there’s a hidden path; climb the rope in this secret section, advance and pick up a Colour of Lumina, then return to the spike area.

Now look to your left and defeat the Orphelins that appear there, preferably with Monoco in the active group so he can learn the skill associated with that type of enemy. You’ll see a hook going through a gap, but ignore it for now and continue further into the same route to find more Orphelins and, in the corner, another Colour of Lumina. Go back, go through the gap with the hook twice and continue forward. There are easy-to-collect Chroma points along the way, so don’t rush. When you find a rope going down, go down and prepare for another area with a short fork. With your back to the rope, go to the right: defeat two Orphelins and pick up the Pictos Draining Cleanse near them. Then return to the rope and go in the opposite direction.

From here on, the path becomes much more linear until you reach a hot air balloon carrying a platform, which acts as an elevator. Before using the balloon, look to the opposite side of it and pick up a Colour of Lumina. Get on the balloon, move forward, and you’ll soon find another flag, as well as a series of hooks (usually two in a row) to cross. Continue, defeat two enemies, and climb the hill to a fork in the path. Take the right path first: you’ll see a Pictos on the other side and need to cross platforms to reach him. The reward is a high-level version of the Longer Shell, which improves the one you already have. Return to the fork and continue uphill.

You’ll find another hot air balloon, but don’t use it yet. Look to your left for climbing holds on the wall, climb up and advance until you see a hook on an ledge. Defeat the enemies in that sector, grab Chroma on the right ledge, and follow the path to the left until you find a Fading Man (the Verso in faded form), which adds another piece of context. Continue crossing through two more hooks and you’ll reach a fork in the path. There’s an opening to the left; ignore it for a moment and go straight ahead to defeat enemies and grab the Pictos Charging Counter on the cliff edge. Then go back and, this time, go under the opening and jump down to grab the Pictos Charging Attack. At this point, you can return to the balloon and use it to advance to the next section.

Moving forward, you’ll find another flag. Go down a ramp and turn right to pick up a Colour of Lumina in a corner. To the left of the ramp, there’s a rope leading down to a detour with Mime; go down, fight Mime, and pick up another Colour of Lumina highlighted near a large object in the scenery. Go back up and, in the central area after the flag, look for a ledge on the right from which you can jump to a lower level with two enemies. Defeat them, and you’ll find a door to the Manor down there.

Inside the Manor on this Reacher route, first grab the hidden journal (it usually appears as “unknown,” but it becomes part of the collection). Don’t leave immediately, because there are extra secrets in the building. On the second floor, to the left when your back is to the main entrance, there’s a large painting you can jump through; inside is a hidden room connected to the “real-world Monoco,” and the item there is a Shape of Life, which basically completes the upgrade cycle for the Tints to their stronger versions. Then go to the dining room in the center of the Manor and look for four hidden switches scattered around the room; activating them all opens a secret passage near the first switch. Go inside, break boxes, and get a record called Nocturne pour un masque de tristesse. Once you’ve done that, go back outside and resume The Reacher.

As soon as you exit the Manor, look to your right: there are three large Orphelins surrounding a Colour of Lumina. Pick up this item and, still on that side, look for a more distant Pétank landing point to the right. The Pétank itself is usually even further to the right; chase it to the point and defeat it as usual. Then return to the Manor and look for a ramp going up behind the entrance; go around behind this ramp to find another hidden Colour of Lumina. Now return to the sector after the flag, go up the ramp and advance along the ramp in front of the center of the area to face a stronger group of Orphelins (they hit like “almost chromatic”). Defeat them calmly, because this fight is usually the map’s filter.

Follow the path past beams and platforms until you reach a grappling hook. After it, you’ll find an Orphelin wearing a hat sitting at a table; a cutscene plays, and shortly after, a hot air balloon takes you to another section. Use the flag and, upon entering an open space, make a quick pickup: turn around, climb onto a beam, and pick up the Pictos Protecting Tint near a body. From there, the path forks. Go left first, defeat a Veilleur, and when the path splits again, take the leftmost branch and descend until you find a Colour of Lumina and a rope. Go down this rope to find a hidden merchant. He sells valuable Pictos such as Anti Blight, Exposing Break, and Charging Weakness, and if you defeat him in a duel, you’ll unlock a Verso weapon. The balloon next to it usually returns you to a “stairs/ladder” area, so take the opportunity to clear enemies from the path and, after grappling and descending a rope, pick up the Pictos Healing Boon.

Return to the fog zone and, at the second fork (not the first), go right. Defeat three enemies and look for a rope going up, followed by another rope. At the top, to the left, there is a Colour of Lumina. Continue, pick up Chroma, and then jump down to return to the original intersection. Now follow the missing path, face another Veilleur, and continue climbing until you find a balloon near Expedition Journal 61. Pick up the journal, use the balloon, and you’ll reach the Peak.

At the Peak, use the flag and advance. After the first hook, a fork appears: turn left to get Chroma and continue through another hook that leads to a longer sequence of traversals until you reach a chromatic boss, the Chromatic Braseleur. The threat here is the summoned orbs, which keep firing until they kill someone or until the boss falls, so the discipline is to defend against the shots with timing and respond with counters whenever possible. The Braseleur also alternates posture (fire and ice) when hit by its weakness, and this includes damage you deal when destroying orbs, so don’t be surprised if the element “changes mid-way”. If you are in the 70+ range and have well-built counter and break passives, this fight tends to be shorter than it seems, and the reward even improves an important weapon in your inventory. After the chromatic boss, return to the previous fork and follow the other direction to another flag, because the main boss of the area comes soon after.

The boss of this sequence is Alicia, and the combat is 1-on-1. Her style is very reminiscent of Maelle’s movements, so treat it as a technical duel: parry windows exist, but it’s safer to rely on dodging, because the damage is high and she speeds up as the combat progresses, buffing herself and gaining more actions. Go in with good defensive passives and a clear strategy to shorten the fight. A very consistent way is to use the combination of Burn and Maelle’s Virtuoso stance to stack multipliers and let the burn damage finish the bar even when you’re playing more defensively. Winning grants you an important reward, and upon exiting, the game takes you to the camp to complete the final events of Maelle’s bond, unlocking record and the maximum gradient attack. Here’s a word of caution: in one of the final events, choosing to lie can permanently block the bond’s progress in that playthrough, so treat this moment as a final decision.

With The Reacher resolved, head to Dark Shores. Upon entering, use the flag and, immediately to its left, inside a structure that looks like part of a ship, pick up a Colour of Lumina. Return to the flag and proceed to the left, where two Noirs from the prologue appear, who were previously too strong. Now they are defeatable, but still have a lot of health and annoying patterns. They are weak to light and absorb darkness, so adjust your weapons and abilities to avoid accidentally “healing” the enemy. By winning, you gain a weapon and find two Colours of Lumina in the area: one is where the enemy was and the other is behind crates. Continue and look for two more Colours of Lumina on a detour to the left, one near crates and the other on top of a small hill. Returning to the main path, defeat another pair of Noirs and pick up the Pictos In Media Res behind them. There’s not much more besides more Noirs and Chroma points, but here’s a tip: these Noirs yield good experience, so you can “reset” the area and farm if you want to level up without relying on super bosses.

From here, open another area that was previously inaccessible due to being “landlocked,” west of The Meadows. Land on the southernmost coastline and you’ll find a merchant selling wardrobe items and, a little further on, a Chromatic Benisseur. This Chromatic opens with a shower of bubbles (you can dodge, parry, and even counter-attack), is weak to darkness and ice, resists light, and after taking the first hit, switches to spear attacks. The spear combo has four hits and can kill with one mistake, so the fight is 90% memorizing rhythm and 10% patience to punish safely. Winning allows you to upgrade a specific weapon to a very high level, which already makes up for the time.

Continue exploring this region and prepare for a boss-level “trio” battle with Hexga, Veilleur, and Glaise together. They function as a real team: Veilleur applies Blight and attacks with simple strikes, Hexga places shields and uses short combos, and Glaise damages the entire group. The safest way to break this composition is to take out Glaise first, as he usually has the lowest health and is the biggest immediate risk due to his area-of-effect damage; use fire and ice heavily on him. Then eliminate Hexga to stop his shield generation. Finally, Veilleur becomes the “controllable remainder,” as his attacks are easier to defend against and counters greatly help to deplete his health bar. Winning allows several weapons and Pictos to level up many times at once, so it’s a fight that pays well.

On the northern coast of that same region, there’s a door to the Manor. Go inside, open a cupboard to reveal a hidden room with sculptures of Clair and Obscur, and pick up a record called Forlorn. Leaving, return to the narrow path connecting the southern and northern coasts and mentally mark the Pétank landing point there, because you’ll use it soon. Further north, you’ll find a large statue with an ink nail at its base; break it and take the Pictos Energising Shell. There are also enemies south of this statue that, when defeated, will upgrade an important weapon. Then, head north and you’ll see a giant Pétank, a Chromatic Petank. Chase it on Esquie, because it even flees over water after passing near the statue, and guide it to the marked landing point.

The Chromatic Petank is different because it doesn’t “just run away,” it fights and summons other smaller Petanks. The real objective is to prevent any summoned Petank from escaping: if one of the smaller ones manages to escape, the Chromatic Petank also abandons the fight. So the rule is: kill each smaller Petank within the limit and, in between, continue to take life from the Chromatic Petank. When you eliminate a summoned Petank, the Chromatic Petank loses a turn summoning another, which gives you breathing room to control the field. By winning, you receive a lot of experience and a Pictos Anti-Stun, plus the relief of never having to watch this fight again out of necessity.

After that, head to an area east of the Stone Wave Cliffs cave to face an optional yellow Eveque, the Thunder Eveque. It’s essentially the same ice boss you’ve already seen, but with thunder: it absorbs electricity, so you can’t rely on the Verse’s “standard electric kit,” and it’s usually more effective to use options that build Burn and consistent damage while you control the pace. Its main weakness is earth, and the rest of its kit remains based on combo attacks and magic pressure, so combat is all about timing and survival. Winning grants you a Pictos that fills the break bar when someone falls, which becomes a useful tool for quick-break strategies with specific setups.

East of Frozen Hearts lies a greenish ground with another chromatic creature, the Chromatic Goblu. It looks simple, but punishes carelessness: its most dangerous attack is a long sequence of jumps (around seven impacts) hitting the entire group and potentially knocking everyone out if you don’t defend. The timing is trainable, and there are small pauses between some jumps, so the secret is to maintain the rhythm and not panic. It also has an easy-to-learn four-hit standard combo and summons flowers with a weak point; destroy these flowers with quick shots to block part of its kit, because it summons more as it loses health. Near the end, it adds a single jump on a single target, which is even easier to parry. It is weak to electricity and has a lot of health, so it’s a long fight, but quite winnable once you learn the jumps. Winning allows you to upgrade an associated weapon to a very high level.

Head north to an island with the last Gestral Beach. Once you arrive, pick up Expedition Journal 37 on the right. There are no Gestral rules here: the challenge is to climb a tower using holds while orbs of water fall from above in somewhat whimsical patterns. When you get close, the camera widens and shows the entire climb. An important detail is that the top is only accessible via the central trail of holds, so even if you climb from the side, you eventually need to converge on the center. Winning completes all the Gestral games and earns you the final prize.

Now head to a forest of red Gestrals east of the lake on this beach. Land in the northern part, defeat the group of enemies, and you’ll upgrade the Pictos Powerful on Shell. On the opposite side of the combat, there’s a small camp with the Pictos Empowering Dodge. Then go to the far south of the forest and defeat another group to upgrade the Contorso weapon. A little north of this second combat, look for a small green tree with a tiny Gestral: it’s another Lost Gestral. Next, enter the nearby Endless Night Sanctuary dungeon.

In the Endless Night Sanctuary, proceed to the first flag and continue straight until you find an enemy; also note a tall item that you can’t reach yet, because you’ll be returning from above later. Defeat a more robust Sakapatate and continue until you speak with a Grandis Engineer. From there, the path splits. Take the right route first to defeat enemies and retrieve a Colour of Lumina hidden in a barrel. Go back and take the left route, then immediately turn right to enter a short tunnel with the Pictos Gradient Break. Return to the Grandis and follow the leftmost path, defeat enemies, and further ahead, turn left to find another Colour of Lumina leaning against the wall. Continue and crawl through an opening; advancing further, you’ll reach a circular rock structure with a Grandiose Chroma Catalyst.

Continue forward and the path splits again: to the right is Chroma and to the left a flag. Use the flag, advance to a cutscene and engage in a fight against an Ultimate Sakapatate with support, which follows the same logic as the previous boss, only longer. Winning will reward you with a high-level weapon. After the arena, the map splits and you’ll see an obvious exit to the left; ignore it for now, as there’s still more loot to be found. Go to the left of the exit, crawl under a gap, and you’ll reach the upper walkways of what you’ve already explored, allowing you to pick up previously unreachable items.

In this high area you’ll find a normal Pétank: lead it to the finish line and defeat it. From the finish line, follow the path to the left until you reach a ledge with a Grandiose Chroma Catalyst. Return to the finish line and proceed until you find a Colour of Lumina near a body. Return to the boss arena and, looking away from the flag, go to the right and crawl through a low tunnel to reach another flag in a wide-open area. In the center there are scattered “pieces” of Gestral, and by going around you’ll find a Grandiose Chroma Catalyst. Near the flag, to the right, there are grappling hooks leading upwards; climb up and you’ll find a Paint Cage. To open it, destroy the three targets: one is on the totem, another is on a tree to the left of the cage (when you’re on top), and the third is hidden behind boxes to the right of the cage. The reward is another Grandiose Chroma Catalyst.

Go down and, to the right of the large totem, follow a path that continues inward to a chromatic boss, the Chromatic Cruler. He starts with shields and has a weak point on his arm; if you hit this point, breaking him becomes very easy and the fight speeds up. The real danger of this chromatic boss isn’t “impossible damage,” but rather how easily he can break your group and throw you off balance. One way to overwhelm this fight is to abuse extra turns and quick breaks, with Verso working very well in builds focused on ranged attacks and constant pressure, and Maelle speeding things up even more with Burn. Winning will upgrade you to an important weapon and give you the Pictos Quick Break, which becomes an excellent tool for stun builds. After the boss, continue forward and jump down to pick up a Colour of Lumina near some boxes. Climb an edge and turn right to pick up another Colour of Lumina, also near some boxes.

Continue until you find a Gestral merchant. He has a lot of expensive items, some new Picts, and others that upgrade your Picts to very high levels. Many purchases here cost a fortune, so the sensible strategy is to prioritize effects you don’t already have that change your playstyle, such as marking upgrades, Shell in rush, stronger healing, and protection and acceleration passives. The merchant may also require a fight to unlock some of his stock, usually alongside a ranger-type Sakapatate. After the merchant, follow the path, descend a rope to a practically empty open area with a Chroma point, and unlock a return rope that takes you back to the totem, closing the loop. With that, you can leave the dungeon with a satisfying feeling of “clean and complete.”

Back in the overworld, there’s still a quick upgrade package. Go to a strip of land northeast of Siren’s dress and defeat the group of enemies there to upgrade important weapons and Pictos; behind the combat you’ll find the Pictos Effective Support. If you want to efficiently complete the list of Chromatics, go to the Monolith, enter, and use a flag to climb directly to the top where you fought the Paintress. There you’ll find a Chromatic Clair Obscur, which behaves like the normal version (without any new tricks), and defeating it will grant you a Pictos Combo Attack II.

Another important optional Chromatic is the Chromatic Portier, located on a floating island visible when you ascend high into the sky in the southern part of the map. He comes with shields and patterns that inflict Blight, and has a cruel catch: if you need to revive someone, he can heal himself absurdly, turning a mistake into a punishment. Therefore, combat requires defensive discipline, focusing on breaking the boss and exploding damage into windows, avoiding wasting items. He also has a four-hit combo where the last hit is gradient, so a safe strategy is to dodge the first hits and respond with the gradient. Winning upgrades your Anti-Blight to a high level.

When you’re ready for a duel challenge, return to Gestral Village and go to the boss’s house to face Golgra repeatedly. This is only worthwhile if you’re in the high 70/80 level range, because one mistake usually means death. The best way to survive is to go in with passives that maintain high health and protection buffs, combined with defensive mode when necessary. She has clear cues: when she “dances” it’s a gradient and you can punish her; her quick three-hit combos are safer to dodge than to parry; when her health drops below half, she enters a more aggressive state and mixes sequences into long combos, including a jump followed by a gradient. With practice, this becomes quite achievable. The rewards depend on who wins the duel: with Lune, an important weapon levels up; with Maelle, you obtain or improve her exclusive weapon; with Monoco and Sciel, you also unlock specific weapons. Take the opportunity to speak with Berrami in the village to collect a huge reward of Colour of Lumina for the diaries already delivered, which now have maximum value for distributing passive abilities in the endgame.

Regarding journals: even if an NPC says that “everything is complete,” there are still some hidden journals. Two are located in the final dungeons of Act 3, and two others appear in an area of ​​the overworld indicated by specific battles; defeating the groups in this sector also improves relevant weapons and Pictos, and the journals are positioned to the left and further along the path, including a journal belonging to Julie and a hidden journal belonging to the Verse.

Finally, with Esquie unlocking underwater exploration in the endgame, there’s a quick way to stack Colours of Lumina without relying on dungeons: look for diving spots scattered across the map (rivers, coastlines, and areas near important islands) and, at each one, collect large packages of Colour of Lumina from the bottom. There are spots southeast of The Crows, north of Siren Island, in the river north of Frozen Hearts, south of tower areas, in sections well west of The Meadows, south of the last Gestral Beach, southeast of a sinister cave, and also east of Lumière. Completing this circuit is practically “upgrade money” in the form of Lumina, and completes your preparation for any superboss or NG+ without getting stuck in repetitive grinding.

The Fountain

The Fountain is located in an area accessible by flying southwest of the Red Woods. Fly over the forest and land at the marked point, as this place serves as the “final resting place” for the last White Nevron. Once inside, use the flag and follow the main path until you find Blanche, a white Noire with a proper name. Here there is an important fork in the path: if you helped all the other White Nevrons and didn’t kill any of them, Blanche rewards you directly with 100 Lumina and the story continues without a fight. However, if you killed one or more White Nevrons along the way, she won’t engage in conversation and will initiate a boss fight.

In combat against Blanche, don’t expect any groundbreaking mechanics: she fights like a typical Noire, with two main dangers. The first is her Dark Chroma explosion, which can take down a character with a single mistake depending on their build and difficulty. The second is her spear summoning with a gradient strike, so pay attention to the signal and respond with the correct timing. She doesn’t have a special weakness to light, but she also doesn’t “lock” onto this element, so you can attack without fear of absorption. What makes this fight a test of patience is her excessive health; it’s a long fight, more about endurance and consistency than technical challenge. After finishing the interaction with Blanche (whether you fight or not), advance a little further into the area to collect Expedition Journal 84 and then leave.

Upon leaving the Fountain, fly south and look for a floating island just below, as there is an optional chromatic boss there. This fight is one of those worth saving for later if you’re not very skilled, because the difficulty curve climbs quite a bit. The enemy is a Chromatic Abberation, and if you haven’t had much experience with this type before, prepare to get beaten up until you “read” its body. Bring Monoco to the active party to guarantee the related ability and consider entering with a team at least between level 75 and 80; in practice, around level 90 the fight becomes much more manageable, but still demanding.

This chromatic Aberration likes to open turns by applying Powerful and works with long combos that are difficult to parry. She alternates between two main single-target combos, one of light and one of darkness, both capable of killing if you miss the timing. The light combo has many hits and the speed varies, so it’s the most treacherous; in addition, it can apply Burn. The darkness combo is a little more “readable” for dodging, but hits hard and applies Blight. The most consistent tip for surviving is not to look at the weapon’s flash or the “trail” of the attack, but rather the movement of the arms and torso: the body reveals the real moment of impact better than the visual effect. In addition to these combos, she has area attacks: the light attack usually has a long and deceptive preparation, because the enemy “arms” and holds for a moment before releasing; the darkness attack comes in three faster hits. She also uses an earthquake that combines a jump with a gradient strike, as well as a dash that functions as a jump attack on the group. You won’t win this fight “by sheer grit” without learning timing dodges or parries, because taking a full sequence usually results in a wipe.

Another critical point: she applies Burn and Blight frequently, but you can remove a charge of these effects by shooting the dark sphere in the center of her body. This sphere isn’t a weak point and doesn’t break, so treat it as a “clear” button and use it when the group is accumulating status effects to the point of becoming dangerous. To deal high damage, abuse gradient attacks and Pictos that accelerate the filling of the gradient bar, because this fight rewards bursts of damage more than slow DPS. If you win, you get Brumaro and the Pictos Longer Burn, which is simply perfect for Maelle’s burn builds. If this fight is hindering your progress, the smartest alternative is to do a few rounds in the Endless Tower to level up and gather resources before returning.

Since you’ll be near the Endless Tower, use the altitude to your advantage: fly high in the surrounding area and look for a hidden floating islet. The last Lost Gestral is there. Take it and then return to camp to speak with Sastro and collect your reward for completing the collection; he gives you the Pictos Pro Retreat, which is more of a “curiosity” item than a necessity, but counts towards completion.

Now you can fit in a boss that’s quite straightforward south of Blades’ Graveyard: Sprong. At this stage of the game, he tends to be much simpler than Clea and certain chromatic bosses, because his biggest threat is area-of-effect attacks that increase in number as the fight progresses. If you master the timing of these attacks (parry or dodge), the rest becomes break control and Burn application. Go into the fight thinking you’re aiming for a clean win at levels 70-90. Winning grants you the Pictos Cheater, which gives you an extra action per turn. It doesn’t stack with other mechanics that also let you act again, so it’s strong, but not “infinite mode”; still, if you equip it, several post-game fights become much easier.

Next, find the Flying Manor, an area easily missed on the map. Inside, go down the stairs until you see a large sculpture of Bruler; to the right of it, there’s a jump to a lower level where you’ll find a rope. Go down, follow it to a huge broken frame, and pick up the Pictos Protecting Shots at the end. Go back, advance to a sculpture of Rocher, and to the left, talk to a Gestral who leaves the area after the conversation. Continue, use grappling hooks to reach a central hall with glass display cases; there’s a flag to the left and a Fading Boy between the glass cases. Talk to him, because he gives you a clue about what to do: to unlock the main advancement of the Flying Manor, you need to follow different paths and defeat bosses on separate routes, unlocking the step-by-step progression.

The first worthwhile route is the Dualliste path, located opposite the Lampmaster’s display case (usually in the lower left corner of the display room). Go up the ramp, use the grappling hooks, cross with the grappling hook, and upon reaching the stairs, immediately turn right to pick up a Grandiose Chroma Catalyst. Defeat the Stalact and Glaise in this sector, and you’ll reach a fork in the path: go down the left path first, descend using a rope, cross, and when it forks again, go to the right to cross and face two Gold Chevalier guarding another Grandiose Chroma Catalyst. Return to the previous fork and climb back up the rope, because the next obstacle is a Gross Tête. It follows the same logic: withstand the jumps, break as quickly as possible, and use the increased damage on the break to accelerate. If you’re using Monoco for the ability, take advantage of the combat. There’s a “cheeky” way to shorten this fight if you’re already playing with passives: making a character more fragile with an effect that fills the break gauge upon death can create a quick break, but this depends on your playstyle and how much you want to force the mechanics. If the jump sequence becomes difficult to parry, dodge; it’s safer and more consistent.

Returning to the main route of the Dualliste, climb the stairs and face the Dualliste. Here he enters more aggressively, with both swords available from the start, and the fight is long because he has an absurd amount of health, even at a high level. It’s not an “unfair” battle, but it is time-consuming, so go in with a build focused on stable damage and survival skills. The reward is worth the effort: a Perfect Chroma Catalyst, which allows upgrades beyond what you usually achieve with common Catalysts. After the fight, the faded boy appears and offers to teleport back; don’t accept yet. Continue a little further to defeat a Hexga and upgrade an important weapon, pick up a Grandiose Chroma Catalyst on the right, and to the left of the large painting, fight a Bourgeon to upgrade several weapons/Pictos and collect a Colour of Lumina nearby. Still on this route, go back to just past the stairs and look for a path to the right (with your back to the stairs), climb up the ledges and continue to another upper area. Defeat two Ceramic Chevaliers to upgrade another weapon, and behind the building, open a Paint Cage to receive a high-level Pictos Powerful Revive. Only then speak to the boy and return to the central hall.

The second path is the Goblu Path, accessed by an elevator near the Dualliste route. Go up, reach an area with two sculptures, and before going down, look for a Colour of Lumina behind a statue on the left. Go down a rope to the left of the item, continue, and use another rope on the right to reach a Mime. Go back, use the grappling hook to cross, defeat the Cruler to upgrade a weapon, and pick up the Pictos Empowering Break. Return to the area with the two sculptures and continue forward, using the grappling hook to reach another fork. To the left, near screens, pick up a Colour of Lumina. If you go left, you’ll face a Bourgeon and upgrade important weapons and Pictos. At the end of this route, there’s a merchant with many weapons and Pictos; he’s usually more of an “expensive display” than a necessity, so prioritize what you don’t already have, especially passives focused on breaking and accelerating actions. Behind him, there’s a gap you can pass through to pick up a Grandiose Chroma Catalyst. Go back and follow the remaining route, defeat a Glaise to upgrade another weapon, advance and face a Jar, then look for grappling hooks to climb and reach two Chevalier guarding the Pictos Powerful Mark. Go back down, follow the main path and pick up a Grandiose Chroma Catalyst further ahead. At the end, face the “normal” Goblu of the Manor, which is basically the second boss of the game with much more health; if you’ve already beaten his chromatic form in the overworld, this fight even seems friendly. Just don’t leave the flowers alive when he summons them, because they disrupt part of the combat’s rhythm. After winning, pick up the Pictos Energising Shot in a corner to the left and return to the central hall with the boy.

Now take the Lampmaster route, which begins by descending stairs to a rope and an elevator down. This area is more confusing to navigate, so go point by point. Right at the beginning, go down the stairs on the left and, down there, go to the right to pick up a Colour of Lumina near two screens. Continue down and advance to a point where you need to answer a question; choose the option with the small pink flowers. There’s a cultist on the left; by defeating him, you upgrade a Pictos and pick up a Grandiose Chroma Catalyst nearby. There might also be a Jar wandering around, so clear it if you want. Look for a gazebo and use a grappling hook to reach a floating islet above; at the bottom is Chroma, and following the grappling hooks you reach a camp surrounded by screens with the Pictos Charging Alteration. Go back to the stairs and, turning right, face a Hexga; in a corner to the right after him is another Grandiose Chroma Catalyst. Advance to the large Gargant and defeat it; It’s a longer than difficult fight, and it improves your weapon and ice/fire Pictos. Afterward, climb the rope that unlocks the route and, before proceeding, go left and jump down to get the Pictos Energetic Heal. Follow the lanterns until you find the red Lampmaster. He’s very similar to the story version: the real challenge is dealing with the lanterns, shooting them when they light up to cancel the ritual/attack. Winning will earn you another Perfect Chroma Catalyst and upgrade an important weapon. Go back to the boy and return to the central hall.

The final route is the Eveque Path, accessed by going through a broken frame and using two hooks to enter an interior area. On the terrace, go left, defeat a Jar, and descend the stairs to the left to face a Bourgeon. On the opposite side of the Bourgeon is a Paint Cage with scattered targets, one of which is hidden inside a paint spike; opening it reveals the Pictos Energising Stun. You’ll see the three Eveques in the center of the hall, but ignore them for now. Cross to the opposite side of where the Paint Cage was, climb the stairs to the other terrace, and follow the path to a hook. Then, go through small gaps in the floor to get the Pictos Painter. Next, drop to the right and defeat a Cruler to upgrade a weapon, picking up a Grandiose Chroma Catalyst behind it. Enter a small room to the right to get the Pictos Roulette at a high level. Further on, you’ll find a Pétank; First, locate the landing point on the upper terrace, protected by two Chevaliers, and take the Pétank there. This Pétank has a habit of summoning an ally and remains resistant as long as the ally lives, so eliminate the support quickly and finish it off. Return to where it was and pick up a Colour of Lumina near the screens. Near the bosses, look for a broken part of the terrace next to the ice Eveque with a Grandiose Chroma Catalyst. Then, make a detour to the opposite lower part of the terrace and defeat a Portier, picking up a Colour of Lumina behind it.

Now, face the three Eveques. The difference here is that the ice and fire versions enter with immunity, and this immunity “rotates” between them, so you need to choose your targets intelligently. In some cases, you can break the immunity by shooting the cores, but not all of them are always vulnerable at the same time. The good news is that they have less health than world versions and fall quickly if you focus on one at a time. By winning, you earn another Perfect Chroma Catalyst. Return to the central hall, use the flag, and take advantage of these Perfect Catalysts to maximize the weapons you actually intend to use at the end of the post-game, because the next challenge is on another level.

With the main routes of Flying Manor completed, head to the Atelier and prepare for the fight against Clea. This is not recommended below mid-level 80, because the fight combines high health, constant healing, and patterns that require precise defense. She resists physical damage well, and the unique aspect of the fight is that she “summons” Nevrons to attack a member of your group. If you don’t counter these summoned attacks, she heals herself at the end of the turn for an absurd amount, so the real objective is to learn the timing of the summons and negate the healing as much as possible. She alternates summons with three strong Nevrons that break, a musical summon with Troubadour, a “dark” sequence with Noirs and Hexga that applies heavy debuffs and breaks for several turns, and then, below half health, she changes the rhythm and becomes even harder to parry. In this second half, she can summon a Bourgeon to swallow someone, and there’s a cruel detail: the first time, even if you manage to break free, the ally doesn’t return, so losing a key character (especially Maelle) can ruin the attempt. She also mixes quick attacks that are difficult to read, messy sequences with jumping, and summons that can freeze.

To have a more “practical” than heroic strategy, the most common way to take down Clea is to turn the fight into a race: set up a very strong Burn plan with Verso and Maelle, use Monoco as support, equip gradient-accelerating passives, and push burn damage to shorten phase 2 as much as possible. The goal is to create a window of opportunity and unleash your biggest hits, including Maelle’s high-rank gradient when available, because this can take a huge chunk of her life at once. Equipping stun and freeze protections also helps, because losing turns here is practically a death sentence. Winning grants you an extremely strong recovery Pictos and a Perfect Chroma Catalyst. If the fight is stalling your progress and you don’t mind “breaking” the challenge, there’s the Pictos Cheater which greatly speeds up the attempt, but that’s a matter of style choice.

After defeating Clea, return to speak with the faded boy at the Flying Manor to receive a wardrobe reward. There’s a curious quirk where, upon returning to routes where you’ve already defeated bosses and requesting teleportation from the boy, you can repeat the delivery and obtain more than one outfit in the same playthrough, but this may be fixed in an update, so treat it as a bonus and not a guarantee.

Endless Tower

Endless Tower is the best place in the game to truly test builds, farm specific upgrades, and “hunt” enemies that barely appear on the map after you’ve passed the main areas. To get there, go south of the Crimson Forest and enter the tower portal. Upon entering, you’ll find a faded woman (Clea) and can talk to her to hear some clues and unlock the start of the challenges. Approach this tower like a marathon: you don’t have to finish everything at once. If you get tired, get stuck in a Trial, or realize you’re hitting a level wall, the game was clearly designed for you to come back later with higher-level weapons, Painted Power active, and stronger Pictos.

An important detail: the Endless Tower can trigger bosses you haven’t yet faced in the story, depending on how far you’ve progressed in the main plot. So don’t be surprised to see “advanced” names if you’re doing the tower before completing Lumière or the ending. In practice, this turns the tower into a preview of movesets and also a great place for Monoco to learn skills, since many enemies and sub-bosses that yield skills appear here in sequence. If you want to optimize, always enter with Monoco in the active trio when you know the Trial has enemies that haven’t yet yielded a technique for him.

The challenges are organized by “screens” and stages, and the first set usually falls within a difficulty range of around level 60 to 69. At the beginning, the Trials mix common enemies and elites in groups, testing your ability to manage priorities: take down the buffing enemies first, remove the heavy debuffing enemies, and only then focus on the HP tank. A typical opening example places three different enemies at the same time, forcing you to alternate between clearing support and surviving area attacks. Soon after, the game begins to mix Chevalier with cultists and “control” enemies that punish timing errors.

The first major emotional “wall” of the tower usually comes when it summons Dualliste in advanced form accompanied by extra enemies. The catch isn’t a new move, but rather the sheer volume: it appears with absurd health and high enough damage to make it seem like everything becomes a one-shot. Even so, it’s possible to win around level 60-70 if you play with discipline, because the moveset is the same one you’ve already learned, but it requires consistency over a longer period. Here, bringing Monoco is practically mandatory if you still need this enemy’s ability, as it’s one of the best opportunities to “register” the skill without relying on world exploration. After passing this block, the tower’s rewards start to become more interesting, with high-level Pictos and upgrades you rarely find elsewhere.

In the second set of Trials, the tower begins to alternate between encounters with explosive enemies (which punish carelessness) and encounters that seem “easy” but drain resources over time. You’ll see combinations with cultists, Chapelier, Ballet, and other enemies that force you to read jump symbols, gradients, and burst attacks. When the Lamp Master enters the rotation, remember the rule that never gets old: treat lanterns as a priority when they light up, because taking down these lanterns reduces the chaos of the turn and prevents certain punishments. This version, in general, behaves more like the “classic” Lamp Master fight than the more exotic variations seen elsewhere. Completing this section usually yields turn/resource acceleration Pictos, sometimes as a new drop, sometimes as an upgrade to what you already use.

Starting with the third set of Trials, the tower begins to play with your ego, placing chromatic enemies in sequence, but with the usual twist: more HP and more damage. It’s not “new,” but it’s a test of preparedness. When you see combat with a chromatic enemy plus another recognizable boss from the beginning of the game, the priority is to survive the initial chaos, eliminate the area-of-effect pressure enemies, and only then focus on the chromatic enemy. Generally, this is where many people decide to stop and come back later, and that’s not a sign of weakness, just common sense. If you manage to get through this block, you unlock cosmetic rewards (hairstyles) and upgrades to utility items, as well as strengthening Pictos, which are already the basis of many builds.

From the fourth to the sixth set of Trials, the pattern becomes a “boss rush with variations”: the tower mixes chromatics with elites and also throws enemies you already know how to deal with, but in combinations that disrupt your rhythm, such as Bourgeon swallowing an ally in the middle of an area damage package, or Portier appearing to apply a status that forces you to spend turns clearing. If you’re unsure how to prioritize, follow a simple logic: first eliminate what prevents you from playing (those who give heavy debuffs, those who generate shields/Enrage, or those who swallow allies), then take down those who hit in an area, and finally finish off the HP drain. After the block that ends with a trio of bosses, the tower usually delivers strong Pictos focused on “critical weakness” and another hairstyle, so it gives a good sense of progression even when the combat was stressful.

From the seventh to the tenth set, the game assumes you’re already in the true endgame. This is where things like Ultimate Sakapatate mixed with chromatics and Danseuses come in, where the fight can seem “difficult to read” simply because the screen becomes a festival of icons. The trick is to mentally separate the patterns: if there’s a chromatic with explosive behavior (like a chromatic Luster without a boss bar), your goal is to delete it quickly, because it’s the type of enemy that turns a stable fight into a wipe by stacking. Once you get rid of it, the rest becomes a matter of timing. Completing certain Trials at this level grants you upgrades to support Pictos (like a high-level Empowering Tint) and more cosmetic rewards.

In the ninth and tenth sets, the tower also starts combining Eveques and chromatics in sequence. There’s no great secret besides respecting elemental absorptions and weaknesses, because some of these enemies punish you for using the wrong element (losing a turn and sometimes healing the target). If you maintain your defensive rotation and have Painted Power spread across the team, you can shorten these fights, but it’s still recommended to go in with a solid group, because a mistake in a multi-hit combat usually costs two characters at once.

Stage 11 is the part you leave for when you’re truly “ready to finish the tower,” preferably around level 90 and having already overcome the other tough post-game challenges, because here the tower mixes large bosses in unforgiving sequences: you can face combinations like Moissonneuse with Dualliste and Mask Keeper together, and this becomes a battle of turn management and survival. The safest approach is to focus on whoever has the lowest “chaos value per turn” first. Generally, Mask Keeper falls faster than Dualliste, and if you remove it, the pressure decreases. In another Trial of this stage, the danger is usually the chromatic effect between the bosses and not the “known” boss, so the priority becomes clearing Lamp Master and Creation for stability and only then facing the remaining chromatic effect.

The highlight of Stage 11 is the special tower boss, a unique fight where two enemies share the same health bar but don’t share a breakdown bar or status effects. This means you can debuff one, break the other, and still have their “global” health decrease, but you need to pay attention to who has which status effect, because the game won’t track that for you. This fight tends to be easier than it seems at level 90+, provided you respect the rhythm, focus more on dodging than parrying when the sequence gets confusing, and use gradient attacks to accelerate the shared health bar’s depletion. Winning rewards you with significant bonuses, such as a record, a Perfect Chroma Catalyst, and an outfit.

After finishing Stage 11, go back and talk to the faded Clea to receive the conclusion of the tower’s storyline, including one last hint and another cosmetic reward. The red screens and the large door in the background, for now, do nothing in the current state of the game, so don’t waste time trying to “force” anything there. If the Endless Tower was the last pending item in your save, you’ve basically completed the game’s challenge package: now you just have to decide if you want to start a NG+ or continue hunting superbosses and collectibles scattered around the map.

Serpanphare

Serpanphare is that “giant boss in the sky” that sits above the White Sands and that many people avoid out of pure survival instinct. When you’re ready to take it down, fly to the white sands region, gain altitude, and approach the creature to initiate the fight. The combat has a very particular logic: at the beginning of several turns, it drains your party’s AP and uses that energy to fire a beam from its mouth. The number of shots depends on how much AP it has drained, and the good news is that this pattern is relatively easy to read and defend against; the final shot usually comes as a gradient attack, so pay special attention to the last one.

Here’s the trick: free-aim shots usually don’t do significant damage because Serpanphare continues to drain AP anyway, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you “feed” it enough AP, on the next turn it can overload and explode. This explosion is an attack, so you need to dodge or parry, but after that it’s stunned, giving you a huge window to deal real damage. This is the time to unleash everything: Burn, heavy hits, gradient, and whatever other burst damage you have. However, this condition changes throughout the fight. After it recovers from the stun, it starts to self-buff with shields and Rush at the beginning of turns, and from then on, the “exploding due to too much AP” mechanic practically ceases to be its main tool. So, the most efficient part of the fight is to take full advantage of the first big stun and push its health as low as possible before it goes into defensive mode.

Besides the lightning bolt, he has a combo with three tail strikes where the first and third are normal attacks and the middle strike is a jump attack, so don’t make the mistake of blocking everything “on the ground” and getting hit by the jump icon on your forehead. He also has a pattern where he dives and writhes underneath, releasing energy projectiles that explode with a delay and apply Silence if they hit; there are few shots, but they are slow and treacherous, so the secret is not to rush: observe the trajectory, wait for the timing, and block calmly. By defeating Serpanphare, you receive the Pictos Energy Master and a Perfect Chroma Catalyst, so it’s one of those optional bosses that are really worth the effort.

With the Serpanphare issue resolved, take the opportunity to finish the remaining Painting Workshop quest. Go to the last entrance of the Painting Workshop, located east of Sirene’s Dress. Inside, follow the platforming path until you find a glass display case and talk to the boy to receive the quest item Shape of the Beast. Then, return to the central area and go to the Lamp Master statue. When you interact with the correct point, the color returns to the workshop, indicating that the “restoration” stage is complete. Use the flag, organize the group, and proceed to the boss arena.

The Lampmaster here is essentially a reinforced version of the advanced stage you’ve seen before, so you’re not learning from scratch, just dealing with larger numbers and harsher punishments. One of the most annoying patterns is a multi-armed attack that can lead to a long sequence; generally, it’s more reliable to dodge than to try and parry everything, especially if you don’t yet have the timing memorized. The other central mechanic is the ritual: instead of obvious lanterns, the boss uses “masks” as targets, and visibility is worse. Even so, the rule is the same: identify the order in which the targets light up and shoot in the correct sequence to cancel the punishment. If you fail the test, he can respond with a very strong single blow that applies Blight and can wipe out the group if you don’t defend. Therefore, survival Pictos who hold the team when someone falls or when the fight gets tough are great here, and strategies that benefit when the boss kills someone can also give you an immediate punishment window. Overall, it’s a tricky but fair fight: if you perform the ritual correctly, the fight becomes quite manageable. Upon winning, you upgrade important Pictos related to “danger of death” and energizing attacks to high levels. Afterward, return to the exit and speak to the boy to receive an extra Perfect Chroma Catalyst, and then leave the workshop.

Now you can find a quick and very different challenge in Sunless Cliffs, a dungeon south of Siren Island. Enter, follow the flag, and notice the large Chroma door. This door only allows one character to enter at a time, so choose the one with the best defense and timing. Inside, you’ll face a “definitive” Mime (the game might just call it Mime), but in terms of moveset, it’s basically the standard Mime: the danger is that it can knock you out with one mistake, so the fight becomes a test of consistency in parrying and dodging. Winning will grant you Pictos The One, which reduces your maximum HP to 1, and also unlocks a hairstyle for the winning character. If you want all the hairstyles, you can repeat with other characters; the door disappears after a while, so try while it’s available. These fights can vary greatly in length depending on how you built each character: some become a walk in the park, others become a marathon.

The next block is Renoir’s Drafts, an area located between Sirene and Visages. Enter, advance to the flag, and continue down until you find a group of enemies that is a mix of Aberration, Benisseur, and Ballet. Defeat them, and you will upgrade an important weapon and may even receive a Pictos called Shortcut, if you haven’t already obtained it elsewhere in the game. Before continuing straight ahead, take a detour: turn back and follow the path to a hook, continue down a slope, and facing the descent, turn right to get a record called Endless Light.

In that same area of ​​the record, three Contortionists appear. They are annoying because they have a lot of health and patterns that punish hasty parries, so the best approach is to play by dodging, aiming for their weak point whenever it appears, and maintaining the pace without being greedy. By winning, you upgrade a weapon associated with that enemy, and then you can pick up a Pictos inside the “mouth” of a mask in the environment: it’s the high-level Quick Break, which improves what you already have. Once that’s done, return to the point where you defeated the first group and continue along the main path, defeating the next group of enemies.

When the path forks, take the right side first to fight another group and upgrade Pictos’ ranged shots. At the end of this branch, there’s an alley with a Colour of Lumina. Go back to the fork and follow the other path to find a Fading Man linked to Renoir, then proceed and fight more enemies to upgrade another important weapon. Next, the map forks again. Go straight ahead first, defeat enemies, and pick up a Grandiose Chroma Catalyst behind them. Then go back and follow the left path, where there’s an ink nail. This nail opens a hidden path leading to the last “new” enemy type in the game and one of the strongest optional bosses in this content: the Chromatic Creation.

In Chromatic Creation, bring Monoco if you want to guarantee his ultimate ability, because this is the kind of fight you don’t want to repeat just for the sake of a collection detail. The boss has a cruel behavior: there’s a sphere on his body that would normally serve as an “interaction point” for healing, but he starts by applying Inversion to the group, and when you’re inverted, what would help you starts hurting you, so you need to control the inversion before trying to use the mechanic to your advantage. His moveset is full of long sequences: a single kick with his hind legs, multi-hit tail attacks, and a melee combo with many hits that can also apply Inversion if you get hit. When he falls below half health, he enters a phase with extra orbs that explode if not damaged, but if you’re inverted you won’t want to be shooting them mindlessly, so the plan becomes: survive the explosion with dodging/defense when necessary and, whenever safe, drop orbs and force the boss to return to the ground. Despite the intimidating text, the fight isn’t “impossible”: most attacks are long and give you time to react, so once you learn the rhythm, you win with standard endgame strategies like Burn, Break, and Gradient. Upon winning, you receive a Perfect Chroma Catalyst and complete Monoco’s ability collection if you’ve already faced all other types with it.

After Chromatic Creation, return to the fork and take the right path down the slope. Jump to either side and look under the incline to find a hidden Grandiose Chroma Catalyst. Continue, and when the path splits again, go left to defeat an enemy, then return to the fork without going too far. Instead, go under an arch and defeat the group on the other side, as they contain common Creations that improve a crucial high-level survival Pictos. Also look for a hidden Grandiose Chroma Catalyst behind branches further down. Then, continue and defeat another group of enemies to reach a large central area with several exits. This part is the final “hub” of the dungeon, so remember: this is where you’ll find the merchant, rare Pictos, and the door to the superboss.

The first thing to do in this hub is to climb the ramp near a building and use a grappling hook to reach an upper level. There you’ll find a Grandiose Chroma Catalyst and a merchant. This merchant comes with an escort if you fight and can be a bit annoying, but it’s worth it for the stock: he sells high-level Pictos, various weapons, and even large Colour of Lumina packs, but everything is expensive, so prioritize buying what you need and avoid spending on redundant upgrades if you’re counting on Chroma. On the opposite side of the merchant, there’s a series of platforms leading to the Pictos Charging Critical. Go back and, behind the merchant, look for another walkway that gives access to the Pictos Charging Burn.

Returning to the hub, look for a rope near the area opposite the hook and climb up. At the end of this path there is another Grandiose Chroma Catalyst. Go back and, as you descend, turn left into a small recess to pick up a Colour of Lumina near a body. Then, return to the center and find two statues; pass between them, climbing a slope to reach a flag. There is an exit there that leads to another area, but before entering, go around the outside of this exit to find a hook that leads you to a group of enemies and, after defeating them, to Pictos Rush on Powerful.

When you’re ready for the heavier content, go through the exit and enter The Abyss. The path will cause you to fall, and you’ll land in a wide, strange area filled with giant swords. Look for the flag (the exact location may vary depending on where you land), and near it, you’ll find an important journal. The message here is: don’t advance on autopilot. The next boss is a true superboss, the kind that demands an optimized build. This is the time to use Recoats, reorganize attributes, adjust Lumina, and assemble a group focused on consistent damage and turn control, not just “survive and fight.”

The superboss is Simon, and he’s divided into phases with cruel rules. In phase 1, he frequently steals shields from the group, so builds that rely on Shell and shields become fuel for the enemy. The second warning is worse: if a member of your group is dead at the start of his turn, he permanently removes that character from the fight, so you can’t leave someone down “to revive later.” This alone changes the mindset: reviving has to be immediate. He also tends to reduce a character to 1 HP at the end of the turn in various situations, creating a constant “any hit kill” state. His attacks mix 3-hit combos, 5-hit sequences with jumps, attacks where he plunges his sword and goes for a brawl, and a long combo that requires more attention. Phase 1, with the endgame in hand, is winnable by using the basics well: defend, break, and punish, applying Burn and not letting the combat drag on.

Phase 2 is where the fight takes a whole new turn. He becomes faster, has much more health, and several combos gain extra hits in a way that destroys your “memory timing.” He also adds new techniques: one is an extremely fast single-target attack, practically “one mistake, you’re dead,” and another is an area attack with many cuts that ends with a final blow capable of wiping out the group if you don’t respond correctly, either with a perfect parry or a dodge at the right moment. At this stage, the practical recommendation is to focus on turn control and burst damage: you want less “turn-switching” and more “locking the boss and finishing him off,” because the more time you give him, the more chances he has to wipe someone out, and wiping someone out almost always means the end of the attempt.

Phase 3 is the most conceptually unfair: at a certain point, it inevitably eliminates part of the group, forcing you to finish the fight with only two characters. Furthermore, it starts adding “ghost” attacks, increasing the number of hits in each combo and making parrying and dodging even more demanding. The goal, whenever possible, is to kill before reaching this point, but you need to be prepared in case you fail and have to finish with the reserve duo.

The most efficient strategy for Simon revolves around speed, turn control, breaking, and status damage. A fairly solid composition to start with is Verso, Sciel, and Maelle. Verso serves as the damage and breaking engine, applying speed and defense debuffs and trying to keep the boss stunned as much as possible. Sciel comes in as a “time controller,” delaying the boss’s actions and granting extra turns to Verso or Maelle when the window appears. Maelle finishes as the executioner, taking advantage of accumulated Burn and using her strongest attacks and high-level gradient when the bar is ready. For this type of combat, weapons with maximized attributes and a focus on Agility make a difference, because acting first and acting more is literally survival. It’s also good to start with passives that save you from unexpected death, because even playing well, the game tries to throw you off balance with 1 HP and strangely timed attacks.

After defeating Simon, you receive an exclusive weapon, a huge amount of Colour of Lumina, and Perfect Chroma Catalysts. And, in a recent update, the game now allows you to replay Simon, usually in a specific section of the fight, which becomes a form of training and farming for those who enjoy the challenge.

With Serpanphare defeated, Painting Workshop completed, Sunless Cliffs cleared, Renoir’s Drafts explored, and The Abyss conquered, the rest becomes “inventory cleanup”: buying missing Pictos and weapons from Act 3 merchants, finishing what’s left of the Endless Tower, and, if you haven’t already, completing Lumière’s final route. It’s the kind of post-game where you decide whether you want to collect everything or just watch the world shrink in comparison to your build.

New Game +

Here, the golden rule is: you start the story from scratch, but you enter it like a truckload of accumulated equipment and power. In other words, the narrative progression and almost the entire “campaign” part is reset, while your collection of weapons, Pictos, upgrades, and resources stays with you. This makes NG+ feel more like a way to replay the game with complete build freedom than a second playthrough that’s “the same, just harder.”

What doesn’t carry over to NG+ is everything that directly depends on story progression and missions. This includes quest progress, event status, bond levels between characters, and generally anything the game treats as “only existing because you made a certain choice or reached a certain chapter.” You also lose mission items and mission collectibles, such as Expedition Journals, because these objects exist to mark discoveries within that narrative thread. Another point that trips up many people: your previous save is overwritten, so it’s good to be sure before confirming, since you don’t get a separate “first cycle file” in the same slot.

There’s a somewhat tricky behavior in the inventory: some items and records may continue to appear as if you still possess them, but the game doesn’t consider them “obtained” in NG+ until you acquire them again within the new campaign. In practice, it’s as if you have a “ghost” copy: it’s visually there, but the triggers that unlock interactions and uses require you to re-acquire it. A very common example is when there’s a key item tied to a specific trade; even if you have the item residually in your inventory, you still need to re-trade it in the new cycle for the game to recognize it. The most forgiving exception to this behavior is the Prologue Tokens that you haven’t spent: if you saved them, they remain valid and can be used in NG+.

Records follow a similar logic: they remain listed, but in NG+, you need to collect them again for them to count as “activatable” within that campaign. So, if your goal is to complete a collection or unlock record-related rewards, treat NG+ as a new hunt, not as “I already got it, so it counts.”

Another significant loss is the ability to break Paint Nails right at the beginning. Even if your character is absurdly strong, exploring certain secrets and map locks still depends on unlocks that come with progression and in-game events. So, some “clearing” routes that you did at the end of Act 3 aren’t immediately available on your second playthrough.

Now, what you keep is practically everything else: equipment, Pictos, resources, upgrades, Tints, and your current configuration. Even if you finished the game with pre-built builds, NG+ lets you start with everything already assembled, which is great for those who like to test team combinations and variations. Just be aware of one detail regarding characters: what was equipped in the Verse becomes “on top” of the character who occupies its place at the beginning of the game (in practice, Gustave). And when the Verse re-enters the story, it comes with its own stat and skill adjustments, so it’s normal to need to reconfigure part of its kit when it returns to the group.

In terms of difficulty, the game markets NG+ as if it were a gigantic climb, but in practice the increase is usually moderate for those who have completed a lot of optional post-game content and Act 3. You’ll notice tougher enemies with more HP and higher stats, but nothing that will hold off a well-organized group for very long. Where things tend to get really serious is in superbosses and specific challenges, especially if you’re going for the most extreme content.

The biggest change in “feel” in NG+ comes from the loot. The game significantly increases the Chroma values ​​found on the map and in fights, so what gave you small change in the prologue now gives you thousands. Furthermore, enemies and field rewards tend to drop higher-tier items: Catalysts found as sparkles on the ground now appear in more advanced versions (Grandiose and, later, Perfect), and the Pictos you collect throughout the world come at much higher levels than in the first campaign. This is excellent for speeding up builds, because you don’t need to “level up” many fundamental Pictos from scratch.

Enemies also start dropping better Catalysts more frequently, yielding more XP, so you level up quickly even without heavy farming. A side effect of this system is that if you pick up a Pictos on the map that’s already in your inventory at the same or higher level, the game usually converts the “reward” into Chroma instead of giving you another copy. This avoids pointless duplication and turns repeated exploration into money.

Colors of Lumina, on the other hand, don’t change that much logically: the sources still exist and the drops follow the usual pattern, so NG+ doesn’t become an “infinite rain” of Lumina just because it’s NG+. What changes is that, as you get more Chroma and better Catalysts, you can transform Lumina into real power sooner and with less suffering.

In NG+, Mimes don’t become a factory for new clothes. They tend to repeat rewards you’ve already received (with the exception of the first encounter, which is usually the tutorial/coherence trigger). So, do the Mimes for the challenge or to clear the map, not expecting a second batch of brand new cosmetics.

Tint Shards remain in the same locations and continue to increase their maximum size, so even if you’re already comfortable with healing and reviving, it’s worth picking them up again to get them to the top as soon as possible. Just keep in mind that certain items used to enhance Tints don’t exceed the final “maximum size”; that is, you don’t create a super-Tint larger than the last stage, you only ensure that you reach it and maintain it.

The merchants also “reset” their inventory: everything you’ve bought becomes available for purchase again, but in NG+, the weapon and Pict versions they sell tend to be higher level and, consequently, more expensive. This is great for those who want to complete level collections or upgrade equipment early, but it also means your money will fly if you try to buy everything at once.

Finally, there’s a really cool tidbit related to the Prologue Tokens: if you saved those tokens from the beginning of the game, you can spend them again in the prologue, after meeting Sofie, by going to a specific bakery and interacting with the door. These tokens allow you to buy a special weapon for the character you’re controlling at that moment. Since you can only have up to three tokens per campaign, you need more than one playthrough to get all the versions. These weapons are of the Void element and come with extremely strong passives, equivalent to effects like automatic death, second chance, and first hit advantage, so they completely change the beginning of NG+ and even some intermediate challenges. If you spent the tokens in the first campaign, you can’t “repurchase” them in the same NG+; only in a future cycle where you have tokens available again.

DLC – Verso’s Drafts

The Verso’s Drafts DLC adds a new area and an entire route of collectibles, chromatic bosses, and platforming fun, so the first thing to do is check out the merchants that appear in the overworld. Head to Coastal Cave and look outside for a new merchant, Gestral: he doesn’t bring any new Pictos, but he sells various cosmetics, mainly clothing and hairstyles. If you’re in NG+ and have Gustave available, it’s also worth visiting the merchant Carrabi north of Esquie’s Nest, because he starts offering extra Gustave skins that aren’t obtainable within the DLC.

To reach Verso’s Drafts, you need Esquie with the diving skill, as the entrance is near Lumière and is accessed via an underwater point. Once inside, the initial path is quite straightforward, so just follow it to the first clearing to trigger dialogues and unlock exploration of the area.

Early on, you’ll reach an area that serves as a “playground” and bathing area for the Gestrals. Go down the hill until you find a flag with a drawing of a child and a dog and use it as your checkpoint. From this flag, go to the right and down a little further to talk to a bright blue Gestral. Cross the nearby river and you’ll see some strange bluish creatures that follow you and complain, but don’t attack; near them is a Colour of Lumina.

While still in the relaxation area, notice that there are six Esquie statues scattered around. You can alternate their color between red and blue, and the “puzzle” here is simple: leave exactly half red and half blue to balance the set. After that, talk to the Half-Baked Lifeguard and you’ll receive a quest item called Piece of Cake and also unlock a haircut for Monoco.

Nearby, there’s a hopscotch circuit on the ground. The goal is to step on the squares in the correct numerical order; when you get it right, the square lights up green. Completing it earns you a hairstyle for the Verso (Chic). On the opposite side of this hopscotch, there’s a small hut with a Grandiose Chroma Catalyst inside, so grab it before continuing.

Now go to the pool near the lifeguard and look for a Pictos hidden behind the waterfall, between two Esquie statues: it’s the Slowing Attack. To the left of this area you’ll find a line of Gestrals waiting for a diving board, but a “kid” is blocking the way. Take him down in the event and cross the plank to get Esquiaro, a new weapon from Monoco.

While still on the trampoline, look down and notice three colored hoops (red, blue, and yellow). You can jump and try to land right in the center of the hoop, and if you miss, you can climb back up the rope and repeat. Each hoop gives a different reward, and you can get all three: in the red hoop, a French Bob hairstyle for Monoco; in the blue hoop, a Double Bun for Maelle; and in the yellow hoop, a Colour of Lumina.

With that “touristing” part done, return to the first flag in the area and, instead of going to the baths, head straight downhill to find the first new enemies of the DLC. They have an annoying mechanic called Barbapapa stacks, which reduces your attack and ability damage to 1 per stack, so here you learn the hard way not to hit “the wrong target”. One of the enemies (the one playing with candy) may be passive at first, but goes into a rage if you destroy the items he carries, spreading more stacks; in addition, he summons candies that generate shields on his side and uses these items to attack. The other enemy, with a mechanical appearance, attacks and mainly strengthens allies, also applying stacks. By winning this encounter, you earn the Pictos Longer Break and Double Third.

A little further on, another new enemy appears with a head full of blue mushrooms, of the Franctale type. They usually perform long laser combos, so treat it as a fight of timing and dodging; upon winning, you receive the SOS Healing Tint. Behind where the Franctale was, there is a Paint Cage that looks like “pink dough”. To open it, you need to shoot three targets that look like deformed balloons scattered around; opening the cage, you get Esquim, a new weapon for Lune.

Now enter the purple cave on the left. This cave is a candy festival and has glass jars that you can break to collect Chroma. Look for a bright blue entrance inside the cave, because it leads to the Pictos Alternating Critical. Continue down and you’ll start to see purple versions of the creatures from the bathing area, called Licorne. They function similarly to Francois in aggressive behavior, but their “real purpose” is to stack Barbapapa stacks, so finish them off quickly or you’ll get stuck in a fight where your damage disappears.

Follow the path until you reach a giant hand and use the grappling hook to reach a flag, entering the area called Candy Land. To the left of the flag there is a low step; climb it and continue to the dead end, then climb the “faces” of the scenery to reach the cliff. Midway up, when you are ascending between masks, make the correct detour: go to the right instead of continuing to the left, and you will find Esquion, a new weapon for Sciel.

Continuing along this route, you’ll find a Mime. It fights like standard Mimes, so there’s no secret besides timing and patience. Upon defeating it, it releases a themed outfit (Baguette) for Monoco and also drops a new weapon for him (Bauettaro). Return to the flag, go to the right, defeat a group of enemies and pick up an Energy Tint Shard in a corner. Then, return to the flag and descend the rope to its right. Defeat the enemy below and, going to the left, break a candy pot to receive three Colours of Lumina.

Back in the center of the lower section, looking at the rope going up, go left and break another candy pot to open a hidden path. On the other side you need to jump across candy platforms to another hopscotch grid, but now the squares are floating, so it’s a test of timing and nerves. Upon completion, you win Lune’s Double Bun. Since you can’t go down this way, return to the previous area and follow the remaining cave to a place that looks like a Gestral water park.

Before interacting with the water park, take a detour to the right of the nearest Gestral to face a Chromatic Machinapieds. If you’ve already completed other endgame challenges, it usually falls quickly, and the rewards are worthwhile: a new Monoco weapon, two Grandiose Chroma Catalysts, Colour of Lumina, and a Perfect Chroma Catalyst. Return to the park area and look for a small Gestral guarding candy jars; break it to get another Colour of Lumina. At the other end of the carousel is a stylish Gestral, and before talking to it, pick up a Healing Tint Shard hidden behind the pillar next to it.

Talk to this “cool” Gestral and choose the response that complains about the queue. He offers you a “ticket” to choose someone to cut the line for the ride. The trick is to use the ticket on each character, one at a time, because each one receives an Esquie outfit. After everyone “cuts the line,” you get another Piece of Cake. Still in this area, talk to Monsieur Frappe, the large Gestral under the umbrella, answer with the correct phrase, and he challenges you to a test: counter-attack three of his attacks. The gimmick is that he makes several feints before the real attack, and you need to parry exactly the true hit. It’s annoying more than difficult, so go in with defensive passives to have extra attempts and focus on observing his body, not the cake or the effect. Winning will earn you the Pictos Feint.

Exiting through a door, you return to the outside of the cave, to a lower area. Before proceeding, look to your right and descend a rope to find a Chromatic Franctale. By defeating it, you gain more Catalysts and Lumina, as well as a Perfect CC. Behind it lies the grand prize: Esqium, a weapon for Maelle that is excellent for aggressive builds because one of its effects converts excess AP into a damage multiplier. This synergizes incredibly well with setups that generate a lot of AP and use free aiming and skill sequences.

Go back up and head towards a large purple enemy. Before reaching it, break a glass jar to gain three Colours of Lumina. Then, face the Chromatic Barbasucette. By winning, you receive a weapon for Sciel, two Grandiose CCs, five Colours of Lumina, and one Perfect CC. Now take a detour back towards the carousel and turn right, following the water to a waterfall and a train car; inside the car is a Colour of Lumina, and right after, in front of a giant block, there is another. Continue, defeat enemies, and notice the golden blocks on the left: it’s a mini parkour course.

In this parkour route, you need to climb blocks to the top, use a red half-block, cross ornaments that act as steps, jump between colored platforms, and walk along beams to a point where the route splits. First, go left to get the Pictos Gradient OverCharge on top of a blue lollipop. Return to the wooden platform and do the right side, crossing beams and platforms until you trigger a scene where a Chromatic Licorne appears. It’s not usually problematic in the endgame and rewards well: two Grandiose CCs, five Colours of Lumina, Perfect CC, and a weapon for Maelle (Licorum).

After the parkour, continue to a bridge that looks like a xylophone. Behind a giant letter-shaped block is a merchant. He sells Esquie-themed hairstyles for the group, Colours of Lumina, and consumables. If you defeat him, you unlock a new Lune weapon for purchase and can also buy useful Pictos such as AP discounts and effects that interact with resource consumption. Use the nearby flag.

Now you reach the lower section of the Gestral baths. Climb the hill to a smaller well with Gestrals and talk to the little one on a seesaw swing for a jumping challenge. The trick here is to jump when he touches the ground, not when the symbol appears, so it’s all about timing and “impact.” By doing about five jumps in a row, you’ll earn the Pictos Empowering Jumps. Nearby, behind a Gestral with balloons, pick up a Revive Tint Shard.

Next, pop the “kid’s” balloons and choose the right taunt to start another challenge: you don’t deal damage to him normally, but instead shoot the floating balloons to reduce his health. If you don’t deplete his health before the balloons run out, he heals completely, so it’s a test of aim and speed. Winning will earn you the Pictos Trigger Happy. Also in this area, there’s another hopscotch game near a wall where two Gestrals are located; completing it will give you the Chic hairstyle for Maelle. Talk to a trio of Gestrals in the background to hear the story of a lost pirate ship. Follow the river to a waterfall, jump, turn, and go behind the waterfall to find the ship. Go back and report to receive the third Piece of Cake, completing the Birthday Cake, which is used later.

Now backtrack to the flag by the baths and enter the forest path next to it, the Spooky Forest. It’s easy to get lost here, so follow a route. Upon entering, continue straight ahead and don’t go down the slope yet. You’ll see a hand pointing to the cliff; step on it and use the grappling hook to cross. Enter a treehouse, go through it, and find a piano; behind it is a weapon for the Verso (Sucreso). If you climb onto the roof of the house, there’s Chroma. Go back via the grappling hook to the previous point and only then go down the slope to a torch, where the path splits.

Take the right path first and cross the planks to get the Pictos Empowered Healer. Return the same way, without jumping down, so as not to mess up your orientation. At the fork, go left and immediately climb a small step to the left to get the Pictos Gradient Parry. Continue down and you will see a door with eyes; ignore it for now and go left up to find a rope that leads back to the treehouse, but don’t use it. Turn to face the rope and go straight under a log to find a Paint Cage. Shoot the three targets and pick up a Chroma Elixir.

Now return to the door with eyes. Defeat the enemies in front of it and, on the opposite side, near the water, defeat two more enemies and break a pot to earn three Colours of Lumina. Before opening the door, you need to solve a hopscotch puzzle scattered throughout the forest: it’s a “tile hunt”. Step on all the tiles, one by one, to activate the complete circuit. They are located near the door, behind nearby rocks, near trees, in passages where you picked up the Gradient Parry, in areas with flowers near the cliff, and also in lower points near the breakable jars. Completing the sequence unlocks Sciel’s Double Bun hairstyle.

With the puzzle completed, return to the door and offer the Birthday Cake. Follow the path, use the grappling hook to descend, and at the bottom, defeat an enemy and enter the tracks. Turn around to pick up a Colour of Lumina, then return to the platform and pick up a Grandiose CC on top of the crates. Continue along the tracks until you reach the train, which takes you to Licornapieds Station. Use the flag and face Licornapieds as the boss. He’s not on the level of a Simon, but he has more health and hits harder than most bosses in the content, so respect the patterns, play defensively, and finish consistently. By winning, you receive the Pictos Frenzy. Take the other train to advance.

From here, the next target is the Reverie Path Flag, that flag near the merchant. Follow the slope uphill to a giant Esquie and its “arch-enemy.” Take the train and enter the structure to face Osquio, the final boss of this pack. Before the arena, use the flag, because this fight is much more serious, comparable to the major optional endgame bosses. His attacks accumulate Barbapapa stacks in the group, so if you let the fight drag on, your damage disappears and you enter forced survival mode.

Osquio has three types of pressure: a combo of punches with multiple impacts that are difficult to parry (safer to dodge), a rolling charge that seems simple but is followed by an off-screen slam that requires a second dodge immediately afterward, and a summoning of several floating miniatures that fire in sequence at varying speeds (sometimes slow, sometimes very fast). Almost all of these patterns have good sound effects for timing, so play by “listening” and not just looking. When his life gets close to 1%, he enters phase 2, recovers full life, and adds new moves, such as lasers fired from his belt. Near the end, he begins to absorb damage, and when he reaches 1% again, he uses a gradient attack that must be answered with a gradient block; if you miss, it’s game over. Winning grants you a weapon for Verso, a Perfect CC, two Grandiose CCs, and ten Colours of Lumina, as well as unlocking the Verso outfit and hairstyle linked to Osquio. There’s a merchant near the flag who sells this set to the rest of the group, and you can redo Osquio as many times as you want by interacting with the Chroma he leaves behind after the fight.

With that, the complete exploration of Verso’s Drafts is concluded: you collected the Pieces of Cake, assembled the Birthday Cake, unlocked hopscotch puzzles, collected new weapons, cleared chromatics, and left with Pictos that change builds. It’s a compact package, but with true endgame rewards.

DLC – Endless Tower Revisit

After installing the extra content and finishing Verso’s Drafts, it’s worth returning to the Endless Tower, because the tower gains a new “level” of brutality: the four red screens in the background, which were previously just decoration, now become portals to brand new superbosses. Before even thinking about the boss, grab an easy cosmetic: upon entering the tower and reaching the main staircase, go to the right of the stairs and pass under the walkway. There’s a red item on the ground there that unlocks a Visages outfit for Verso.

Now, let’s focus on the new bosses. The idea behind these encounters is quite clear: they were designed after the community had already discovered broken builds, infinite stun lock, “two-turn game” mechanics, and other delightful atrocities. So, a lot of what worked against Simon or against superbosses in the base game simply doesn’t work here, because these bosses actively react to turn abuse, free shields, “deliberately dying” to gain a break window, and so on. In other words: either you go in with an absurd damage plan and clean execution, or you prepare to learn long patterns the hard way, with lots of dodging and perfectly timed parries.

The first portal that’s usually worth tackling is the reimagined Duollist, called Duollistes. Phase 1 is a double battle against two Duelists, one light and one dark, who share the same HP bar but don’t share effects: if you apply Burn to one, it doesn’t mean the other is burning; if you mark one, the other remains “clean.” And here comes the number one drawback: they can’t be broken, so you lose that “breathing” tool that solves half the endgame. Furthermore, their attacks are synchronized: in many turns, the two act as if they’re choreographed, stringing together huge sequences. The “good” part is that, most of the time, they focus on one target at a time, so you don’t take all the hits in the group at once. The bad part is that any combo you don’t defend tends to be fatal, so the goal is to learn the rhythm and not waste revives unnecessarily. When you deplete your combined life to the last shred, the fight doesn’t end: it switches to phase 2.

In phase 2, the two merge into one body, and that’s where the most important combat mechanic comes in: the combined Duolliste doesn’t “normally” appear in the turn order, because it acts after each of your actions. You play as Maelle, it responds; you play as Verso, it responds; you play as whoever is left, it responds. This is intentionally anti-abuse: any mechanic that gives you extra turns becomes a trap, because each extra turn you make creates more responses from the boss. And worse, if you insist on using effects that give you additional actions, the boss starts accumulating its own permanent turns and begins acting multiple times in a row, ignoring usual speed rules and even turn manipulation tools. There is a single “slack” that can occur when your party is knocked down and returns due to automatic effects, but this is not present: if you use this window to spam extra turns, the boss “learns” and returns even more monstrous.

Because of this, you have two realistic ways to deal with the combined Duolliste: play “clean,” without stacking extra turns, accepting the dance of defending and punishing until you win; or set up to kill the boss before it executes the first relevant response of phase 2, basically exploding the bar on your first action after the transition. For this second approach, the concept is simple: you don’t want to end phase 1 “nicely”; you want to end phase 1 already leaving your team ready for the first person in turn order in phase 2 to use an absurd execution, usually with Maelle converting Burn and multipliers into massive damage, while the rest of the group entered the combat only to prepare the ground. Winning yields a great reward, including an extremely powerful weapon for Sciel, a generous amount of Colour of Lumina, and advanced Catalysts.

The second new portal is the Chromatic Lampmaster, and if the Lampmaster was already annoying in the story, here he becomes a professor of patience. The beginning seems familiar: he lights up a random number of the four lanterns around him, and if you leave them lit, his attacks gain extra hits. But now there’s an additional punishment: the instant you turn off the last lantern, he plunges the field into darkness and starts dodging the vast majority of your attacks, except for free aiming. To remove this darkness, you need to pass a sequence “test”: among three targets (positions like up, left, and right), they light up in order, and you must shoot in the correct order before he plunges everything back into darkness. This pattern has a fixed number of steps, so if you’re making mistakes due to memory, the safest method is to stop and observe the sequence calmly until you memorize it.

As if that weren’t enough, this Lampmaster has “lives”: you need to empty his bar several times, and each time he recovers full health, losing a purple lamp from the scene. With each transition, he clears effects like Burn and Mark, resets stun, and weakens your break progression, but retains debuffs, so it’s worth prioritizing consistent debuffs and not relying solely on status effects. Closer to the end, he starts generating darkness without relying on the ritual, and his damage increases.

The most dangerous mechanic, however, is another: there’s an invisible timer based on your turns. With each of your turns, purple lights behind him will light up; when they’re all lit, they “flip,” and the boss gains an unavoidable extra permanent turn, as well as relighting lanterns if they’re off. There are two ways to delay this: shooting lanterns (sometimes this stops the countdown in that cycle) and breaking the boss (while he’s stunned, these lights don’t advance). The most efficient strategy, therefore, is a repeated chain: charge gradient and break, break with a character capable of filling the bar quickly, delete one of the boss’s “lives” during the stun, and break again as soon as he respawns, before the light system punishes you. At a certain point, when there are few lives left, the boss tends to get an extra turn anyway, so the safe way is to enter this final phase with strong shields already prepared and know that he repeats a very specific pattern there, which allows you to withstand the impact and finish the last bars at the same pace. By winning, you receive endgame level rewards and advance to the next portals.

The third portal is Clea Unleashed, and here the game abandons subtlety: she creates a Chroma barrier that isn’t “healing and tanking,” it’s total invulnerability. While the barrier is active, she simply takes no damage from anything. And the only way to break the barrier is to correctly counter at least one of her initial combos. In other words, you can’t “build and ignore execution”: you’ll have to learn at least one timing and return the counter. The good news is that, initially, she has a smaller set of combos, so you can practice and get the hang of it. The bad news is that, even with the barrier broken, she has an absurd damage reduction that makes almost everything hit like a featherweight, including burn, shots, and abilities. In practice, many people despair because it seems like her health doesn’t go down.

The path to defeating this Clea isn’t about “playing longer,” but rather scaling damage to such a high level that the reduction still results in a significant chunk of life being lost. In other words: you need to build a burst setup, with multipliers, Painted Power active, and an execution that concentrates the maximum damage possible in one or two key actions on the turn the barrier drops. The combat becomes almost a puzzle of “how to build a hit that still hurts even with the reduction,” rather than a traditional continuous DPS fight. If you go in without this mindset, you can spend minutes hitting and feel like you haven’t made any progress.

The fourth and final portal is Simon the Divergent Star, and he’s the kind of thing that seems designed to laugh in your face, but in a friendly way. He retains some of the “normal” Simon’s mischief, like stealing shields and reducing someone to 1 HP at the end of some turns, but adds a mandatory opening: he always starts the fight with a combo called Light Speed, which ignores First Strike effects. This combo is long and ends with a final blow that wipes out the party if it hits, so you need to learn how to defend. The “fair” part is that, despite its size, it’s slower than the original Simon’s infernal combos and has a characteristic sound, which greatly helps with timing. However, there is variation: sometimes he uses the standard version, and sometimes he uses a version with echoes/afterimages, doubling the impacts and making the sequence almost twice as many hits. You can predict which version is coming by observing visual cues before the first cut, so if you’re training, you can choose to restart when the more annoying version comes until you master both.

Divergent Star has another rule that ruins the “revive as a plan” strategy: when any member of your party dies, it gains extra turns. So, relying on Second Chance and similar abilities becomes a double-edged sword, because the boss starts stringing together more actions, increasing the chance of another death, and so on. His combos, aside from Light Speed, are also “variable”: he shows signs of how many echoes each hit will have, turning a short combo into a huge random sequence. And to top it off, breaking him down is almost useless, because he gains an invulnerable barrier while broken and only becomes vulnerable again after executing the next attack.

This fight also has multiple phases. When his health reaches a low point, he wipes out the group, recovers full health, and clears effects, so you can’t skip the transition like you could with some older bosses. The most consistent way to win is to think of two teams: one to hold the beginning and inflict a burst of damage as soon as you have an opening, and another for the next phase, already prepared to act before him with tools like immediate attack/shortcut. In both phases, the minimum execution requirement is to survive the initial Light Speed, either by dodging or parrying, and then punish heavily before the variable chaos starts to pile up.

After defeating the four superbosses on the red screens, you practically unlock the “new challenge ceiling” of the Endless Tower DLC. If you went in with the equipment and Pictos from Verso’s Drafts, the experience is tough but achievable; if you tried before that, the feeling is usually that the game is cheating, and… well… it really is!!! (laughs), only with official permission.

Clair Obscur Walkthrough: Expedition 33 – PART 01 Clair Obscur Walkthrough: Expedition 33 – PART 02 Clair Obscur Walkthrough: Expedition 33 – PART 03