Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 players find a way to do 2,177,438,000 damage, which is enough to kill the hardest endgame superboss over 45.8 times

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s endgame is pretty nutty—for good and for ill. In case you’re unfamiliar, the game allows you to equip Pictos (equipment that you have three slots for), each which come with their own passives. It also allows you to unlock those passives as “Luminas” for all your characters.

This requires spending points from a pool to equip them—a point pool that can go into the hundreds. Imagine, if you will, your average RPG. Then imagine being able to (with a bit of grinding) equip dozens of passive effects from all the gear you collected in your run at the same time. That is how Expedition 33 does it.

Players have stumbled across the peak of this maze of systems-based nonsense in the character of Maelle, a teen duelist and, apparently, walking nuclear weapon. There’ll be some very minor spoilers for Act 3 of the game to follow.

So, here’s the basic concept. Maelle has a skill called Stendhal. Stendhal does a lot of damage. Maelle also has a stance called Virtuose, in which she deals 200% more damage. You put her in Virtuose stance, slap enemies with Stendhal, and then watch as they explode.

There’s a whole laundry-list of Luminas that make this actually work, but the key ones are Cheater, which gives you a second turn, and Shortcut, which gives you a turn when you drop below 30% hit points. As for how to get into Virtuose stance? It’s a combination of Medalum, which has you start each battle in Virtuose stance, as well as her skill Last Stand, which puts you into Virtuose stance and reduces you to one hit point.

Once you have these pieces assembled, you do this:

• Start in Virtuose stance using Medalum. Hit Stendhal.
• Get a second turn from Cheater. Use Last Stand to go back into Virtuose stance and reduce your HP to one.
• Get a third turn from Shortcut. Stendhal again.

This is just the core of this nonsense—there’s a ton of other Pictos and Luminas you want to put in place to buff Maelle’s damage into the stratosphere. Sciel gets a special mention for being able to double her damage, but there’s a whole bunch of Luminas you can huck at Maelle to have her melting gods.

Naturally, you’ll need the Pictos that lets you deal more than 9,999 damage from the end of Act 2, but that’s just what you need to get started: At Death’s Door gives you an extra 50% at low health, Burn Affinity gives you 25% against burning targets, Confident Fighter gives you 30% but removes your ability to heal (this doesn’t matter), Inverted affinity gives you 50% extra damage but makes healing hurt you (this, if you can believe it, also doesn’t matter).

This is just a shortlist, there are more—but this jumble of bullcrap allows you to do, uh, 2 billion, 177 million, 438 thousand damage.

For contrast, Simon, the post-endgame superboss I just spent ages killing, has around 45 million HP. This build hits hard enough to kill him 48.3 times over—a sort of poetic number, working out to roughly one full health bar for every million health I spent time chipping through the hard way. I might’ve had a more satisfying knock-out brawl with the guy, parrying him 193 times in a gruelling 16-minute skirmish, but I definitely could’ve saved some time (and grinding) with this build.

And you know what? I’m glad. All my favourite games in the genre have me breaking my ankles on their hardest challenges, only to stumble into someone who found the secret arcane language of buildcraft, rocked up to god, and slapped them in the face for 2 billion damage. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. After all, I’m something of a powergamer myself.