Clair Obscur’s 3 Billion Damage Build Getting An Emergency Nerf

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been hailed as a GOTY-contender and a refreshingly modern take on the beloved turn-based fantasy RPGs of yore. So it’s fitting that players have discovered a strategy so broken it lets a single character do over 2 billion damage, enough to kill the hardest boss dozens of times over.

The build revolves around the young fencer Maelle and a special sword called Medalum that is easy to miss early in the game. Maelle specializes in various stances that give her unique benefits in battle and the blade in question unlocks Virtuose stance which deals 200 percent bonus damage. Combine with the void magic attack Stendahl, the Cheater, Shortcut, and Last Stand Luminas active, as well as the right stat allocations, and you’re off to the races.

Players have been experimenting around these key pillars of Maelle’s nuke build over the last week to keep upping the total damage output, going from over one billion damage to over two billion, and eventually over three billion against certain enemies. Like Diablo IV and other buildcrafting-centric RPGs, a lot of Expedition 33 damage modifiers stack, multiplying the damage output as you layer each new buff on top of the last.

Not surprisingly, developer Sandfall Interactive has been watching Maelle’s increasingly busted builds with great interest, and finally announced on Thursday that it’s going to put an end to the DPS race. “We hadn’t planned to make any balance changes this early—just bug fixes, unless something clearly stood out,” the studio posted on X. “Well, Stendhal did.”

It continued, “It was underwhelming for most of development, so in our final pre-release balance pass, we gave it a big damage boost—and clearly overdid it. It ended up overshadowing most other options. We still want you to be able to break the game—and you absolutely still can—but Stendhal was making it a bit too easy.” Players have until a hotfix goes live on May 9 to have their remaining fun.

Not to worry, however. There’s still tons of other very busted builds in Expedition 33. While none scaled quite to the insane level of Maelle’s Stendahl nuke, they will still help players make short work of even the game’s toughest encounters, including the optional post-game boss fight against the 45 million HP Simon. An endgame Verso build is already breaking 2.5 million damage per turn. Not quite a god mode cheat, but close enough.

It sounds like Sandfall Interactive will be leaving those intact for now. After all, what’s the harm in letting fans go wild in a single-player RPG?

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