Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 devs to issue its first nerf to an ability that does 2 billion damage: 'We gave it a big damage boost—and clearly overdid it'

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is getting its first set of hotfixes tomorrow—which'll include a nerf to Stendhal, a skill that's been allowing players to do around 4 billion damage, which, as I observed yesterday, is enough to kill the game's hardest endgame superboss 45 times over.

"We hadn’t planned to make any balance changes this early," Sandfall Interactive writes on X, "just bug fixes, unless something clearly stood out. Well, Stendhal did."

In case you're unfamiliar with Stendhal, players are able to combo it with a set of skills, Pictos (equipment) and Luminas (equipment passives) to damage scale it into the stratosphere—while this required quite a bit of setup to start one-tapping postgame bosses, it was still good from the outset and only scaled into low orbit from there.

Interestingly enough, the team explains that Stendhal was initially underpowered during testing. "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."

While I'm typically on the side of players in these cases, as I don't think a build being overpowered in a single-player RPG matters too much, I do think Sandfall's making the right call here. Cranking absurd levels of damage with the right combo is fun, but the pinnacle of the game's difficulty—an endgame superboss named Simon—shouldn't be one-tapped by it 45 times over.

In my opinion, part of the game's appeal is having a lot of different builds to try out, since its Luminas system is deliciously complex. Having one both be easy to set up and much stronger than the competition seems counter to that goal. It's fun to feel strong, but it's also kind of, uh, boring to just skip over carefully-designed challenges.

"You’ve got one more day to enjoy it in its current form and set some wild records," warneth Sandfall. "The adjustment will be included in our first full hotfix set, going live tomorrow. The patch will roll out on Steam first, and other platforms will follow."

But don't worry: "After the change, it’ll still be a strong single-hit skill with great synergy potential... just more in line with everything else."

As for myself, I'm glad I didn't go in for this monster build before beating Simon. He's an absolute headache with some painful mechanics, but learning his attack patterns and parry timings was imminently more satisfying, even if I could've saved a cramp in my index finger and a busted R1 on my controller.

Expedition 33 tips: Conquer the continent
Expedition 33 lost Gestrals: Runaway kids
Expedition 33 mime locations: Beat the buskers
Expedition 33 old key: What it opens
Expedition 33 weird pictos: Where to use them