The expedition to reach the Paintress is fraught with peril - Neurons unfortunately aren’t typically keen on diplomacy - and you’ll need to employ a variety of weapons to prevail against the enemies in your path. Not all weapons are created equal, however, and some have varying properties that may make one superior to another, at least situationally. This page will discuss weapons stats, scaling, and how to upgrade weapons in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33!

Page Breakdown¶

Weapon Properties¶

The primary purpose of a weapon is to… well, facilitate the downfall of your foes. There are a few ways in which a weapon can contribute to this worthy cause, however, and it’s not always as straight-forward as hit ’em harder (although that’s always important, too). Every weapon you find will have the following properties:

Power¶

The “hit ‘em harder” bit, this determines, in part, the damage you’ll deal with said weapon.

Element¶

All weapons deal damage, ,but not all weapons deal the same sort of damage. A weapon’s element will determine what type of damage it deals with base attacks. This does not typically change the damage done by skills. Some enemies are weak or resistant to different elements, so you need to be wary of a weapon’s element, but aside from situations where an enemy negates or absorbs a type of damage, or where a weapon gives a damage bonus to a certain element (+20% dark damage, for example) the innate element of a weapon isn’t usually that important.

Attribute Scaling¶

If you’ve played any Souls-like game before, you’ll be familiar with this property - different weapons have an attribute affinities that boost their Power depending on how many points you have in said attribute. Gustave’s Demonam weapons has Defense and Agility scaling, meaning it’ll gain bonus damage the more Gustave invests in Defense and Agility. Most weapons have two attribute affinities, and these scale in potency as measured in letter grades, with C-rank affinities benefiting less than B-rank or A-rank ones. For much of the game, this will likely be a somewhat negligible damage bonus, more of a nice-to-have than a necessity.

Weapon Passive Effects¶

The most important properties a weapon can have are its passive effects, which generally outweigh the value of Power, Element and Attribute Scaling by a wide margin… unless you’re trying to whack late-game enemies with a Lv1 weapon, of course. Almost all weapons have three passive effects that unlock at Lv4, Lv10 and Lv20, and these passive effects can significantly alter a character’s playstyle by altering how their character specific gimmick works, by modifying core gameplay elements, or by boosting certain attacks or types of damage.

Lune, for example, can get weapons that give her stains when she performs Base Attacks or Free Aim Shots, or whenever her turn rolls around, or she uses specific skills. If you use healing skills a lot, her Potierim weapon will reward you by generating light stains every time you cast a healing spell, potentially providing a positive feedback loop that makes it much easier to keep tossing out healing spells. Other examples include Maelle’s weapon, Medalum starting her in Virtuose Stance, enabling her to start out fights with massive damage combos, or Sciel’s weapon Corderon cursing her at the start of battle, but also boosting damage by 50% while cursed and incentivizing her to trigger her Twilight state to keep her curse at bay. Not all examples are quite as drastic - you also have weapons that focus on boosting a certain type of damage, but in either case it should be clear that passive effects can greatly augment certain playstyles and they are, along with [Attributes] and [Luminas] a significant component of character builds in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Weapon passive effects cannot be upgraded or modified, only unlocked by leveling up the weapon they’re attached to. Speaking of which…

Upgrading Weapons¶

When you find a weapon, it’ll generally be appropriately leveled for the location/source… which means the further you are in the game, the higher level weapons will be. Weapons may randomly upgrade when fighting new enemies (they don’t have to be equipped), but this can be quite unreliable and isn’t something that can be grinded out - if a weapon doesn’t upgrade within the first few encounters in a new area, it’s not going to. You could always try to tough it out and reach the next area to play the random leveling lottery, but when you need more damage you can upgrade select weapons manually.

To upgrade weapons you will need to clear the Flying Waters dungeon, after which the Curator will take up residence in a cave at your camp. Talk to the Curator and pick the option [Upgrade Weapons] and you can select weapons you wish to upgrade. Of course, nothing is free, and upgrading weapons requires various resources depending on the weapon’s level, as follows:

Weapon Upgrade Materials¶

Chroma Catalysts are dropped by enemies, found as loot while exploring and sold by Gestral merchants, and in the case of enemy drops they’re dropped often enough that they’re one of the few in-game resources that can be considered more or less infinite, if you’re willing to grind for them. You probably won’t have enough to upgrade every weapons in the game (not without extensive farming, anyways), but they’re not precious enough that you should refrain from giving a favored weapon some extra levels, either.