After rolling credits on Clair Obscur Expedition 33, there was so much left to do. There were a ton of tough bosses where my real immortal Verso was key. I lucked into the right combo of Pictos and weapons that ensured my Verso could not die. His immortality pushed me through to the true end and to earning 100% of the achievements.
Building my Immortal Verso
Midway through tackling the end game side content for Expedition 33, I noticed Verso died and revived multiple times. The Second Chance Picto I assigned to him would revive him automatically, but only once. In my case, it happened over a dozen times. I figured it was just a one time bug, but then it happened again.
Immortal Verso helped me clear out the optional bosses and the Endless Tower. He also helped me defeat Simon. After I finished all the bosses and achievements, I went back to figure out what led to Verso’s immortality. I did plenty of trial and error to finally figure it out.
The first requirement is choosing the right weapon, Glaceso. I’m not sure why it’s just that weapon, or whether the level matters (mine is 33), but it’s the only one that works for me. Next it takes the right Pictos. The winning combination is Second Chance, Painted Power and Death Bomb.
With the right weapon and those Pictos, Verso is immortal. It is worth noting that it does not trigger 100% of the time, but it felt like 95% of the time. Once the immortality is triggered though, it will keep going until all I win the battle or the game crashes.
Defeating Simon with Immortal Verso
When I finally challenged Simon with my immortal Verso, it was a long slog. Getting through his first phase wasn’t too bad, but phase 2 took forever. Lune and Monoco did not last long in phase 2, but Verso couldn’t die. He also could hardly put a dent into Simon. It took nearly an hour to get to phase 3.
Simon had a nasty surprise for me after all that time. In phase 3, he wiped Verso off of the canvas. No amount of immortality could save me from that. Technically a spoiler if you didn’t know, but better that you do and not feel the soul crushing defeat.
My Reserve team of Maelle and Sciel were not powerful enough to end Simon in phase 3. Immortal Verso can’t do it on his own, but he sure did help get me that far. To best the true final boss of Clair Obscur Expedition 33, some grind was in order. I traveled back to the Golden Tree in Renoir’s Drafts.
The Creations in that area are great for farming Lumina. A lot of people use the merchant on top of the building there to fight, but I prefer the giant horse bosses. They drop 2 Lumina after every battle. With my team of Verso, Lune and Monoco, it was more efficient to farm that way.
I built up plenty of Pictos to maximize damage and ignore most of the defense related stuff. No bothering with Shell or healing.
Loading up for Battle with Simon
It was then time to rearrange my skills. Using Overload sets me to A rank, but drops my health to 1. Using the Cheater Picto guarantees me a 2nd turn every time, so I followed up with the Berserk Slash. That skill does more damage above C rank and bonus damage for every bit of health missing. A good one two punch.
Stacking some Pictos that do more damage on low health just adds to the fun. I then finally used Recoat to move all my stat points away from Defense and Vitality to offense stats. Maxing out Verso’s damage was still not enough.
Defeating Simon requires a strong Reserve team, so I started faming Lumina to build up Maelle like I did with Verso. I used many of the same Pictos and Recoat to favor offense. I paired her Last Stand and Stendhal skills.
Immortal Verso is the A Team, but I need a Strong B Team
Last Stand set me up with Virtuose Stance (200% more damage), filled Maelle’s AP points and dropped health to 1 HP. Like Verso, I used Pictos to leverage higher damage at lower health. She also had the Cheater Picto, so I was able to immediately follow up with Stendhal. It’s high damage and sets the enemy up with Defenceless.
Teaming Maelle up with Sciel was also key for me. Sciel’s Fortune’s Fury guarantees Maelle will do double damage next turn. I could then use Sciel’s Intervention skill to immediately give Maelle a turn. I got it to the point where Maelle could do between 3 and 7 million worth of damage.
With all those pieces in place, I battled Simon for the last time. My Immortal Verso paired with Lune and Monoco blew through Simon’s phase 1. Verso was always my heavy hitter, but Lune lent a hand with a duo of her Elemental Trick and Elemental Genesis skills.
Monoco used his Glaise Smash to apply Powerful to the whole team while also doing some damage. I racked up enough Gradient Charge to use his level 3 instant break Gradient attack. All that cruised me through to phase 2.
Phase 2 was much tougher, but the team effort did get me through about 30% of Simon’s health. Once Lune and Monoco were taken out, my Immortal Verso was inevitably going to get it done. The parry window on all those hits were so hard to time, it actually did more damage over time to just let Simon kill Verso.
Conquering Simon’s Phase 3
Once Simon wiped away Verso from the fight with his phase 3 move, it was Maelle and Sciel’s turn. I had Maelle load up with Last Stand, then follow up with Stendhal. She hit hard, then I had Sciel load her back up and give Maelle another set of turns.
I thought I was in trouble when Simon finally started attacking. He likes to keep going until he kills someone. Well, he killed Sciel, but Second Chance revived her automatically and Shortcut immediately gave her a turn. I used that chance to buff Maelle again and then used Intervention to hand things over to Maelle.
One last hit with Stendhal finally defeated Simon. There was definitely some grinding to get there, but Expedition 33 is so good, even that was fun. Once I climbed that mountain, no challenge would stop me. I’m not the type to chase super hard optional bosses, but Expedition 33 is just that good.
Clair Obscur Expedition 33 100% Achievements
After finally defeating Simon, I felt the urge to truly finish Expedition 33. I only had a few achievements left, so I set out to finish. First had to track down the last of the Expedition Journal entries. The ones I didn’t have were pointed out in the Journals menu, but there were some unknown ones that are not listed.
Turns out the last entry I needed I technically didn’t miss. It was in the manor hidden room that I picked up earlier on, but apparently I did not save or something. I’m glad I didn’t need to hunt all over. I moved onto finding the last record and that was waiting for me where I first met immortal Verso.
The final test and the true big boss was the stupid Gestral games. Thankfully, the last achievement only required me to win the normal level of Gestral Volleyball. That one was a pain, but the boss even harder than Simon was the Gestral Ascension.
Expedition 33 is a fantastic game, but that jumping puzzle is infuriating. Over the course of all my attempts, I fell over 20 times. Not every time all the way down, but still. I’m not joking, when I finally reached the top it was near as exciting as defeating Simon.
Once I completed all the achievements, I could finally close the book on the game. Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is Game of the Year or we riot. Until then though, I’m finally moving onto other game.