Players Break Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — Damage Counters Soar into Billions, Devs Had to Recode
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 players can push damage far beyond the usual 9,999 cap in the game’s final act, producing hits in the hundreds of thousands, millions, or more. Developers had to adjust the code to handle those larger values, and players have found multiple ways to stack abilities so damage numbers explode.
Final act damage and the broken counter
In Act 3 of Expedition 33, the game’s standard damage display and limits no longer hold. As a result, attacks that once showed a maximum of 9,999 now register in the hundreds of thousands or millions. Moreover, the on-screen damage counter itself reached a point where it could not reliably display the values, which required developer intervention.
Damage counter and code changes
COO and producer Francois Meurisse said, “Actually, the [damage] counter broke at some point.” In response, the team adjusted the programming to allow the damage indicator to handle much larger numbers. In addition, team members tested extreme internal builds to find edge cases before release.
Sciel stacking and player examples
One character, Sciel, shows particularly high potential for stacking damage. By using the Pictos and Lumina abilities to boost stats and by stacking Sciel’s Foretell along with her End Slice skill, players can dramatically increase damage output.
Player records and community examples
Players in the community have demonstrated very large damage totals. For example, one player hit 40 billion in around 20 minutes, and suggested Sciel could theoretically reach much higher totals over longer sessions.
Developer comments on testing and balancing
CTO and lead programmer Tom Guillermin explained the team’s approach to preventing runtime issues. He said, “The lesson we learned from that was that when we take the craziest [character] build that people built within the team, you have to multiply that by a hundred, at least, to be sure that in the release era all the players don’t have issues.”
Guillermin also noted that the team avoided getting bogged down in technical weeds during the interview, but emphasized practical testing to ensure stability when players create extreme builds.
Patch 1.3.0 and enemy health modifiers
In June, Patch 1.3.0 added enemy health modifiers to Act 3. Consequently, players can increase enemy HP to make fights harder; the patch supports doubling enemy health and also increasing health by a factor of 100 for those seeking a much tougher challenge.
Because enemy health can scale so high, some players choose to both raise foe HP and stack their own damage to create lengthy, high-number encounters rather than simply speed-running content.
Image and credits
Image: Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive
