Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 adds another character, Verso, to your party at the beginning of Act 2, and he’s as close as Sandfall’s RPG gets to having a glass cannon archetype.
Built correctly, the Expeditioner can easily dish out more damage than Maelle or Sciel. However, he also has an incredibly high skill ceiling, requiring mastery of Expedition 33’s parry system to quickly max out his Perfection gauge.
Each Perfection rank, increased through successful attacks and parries, grants unique augments for certain skills and a passive damage buff. The key to a successful Verso build is getting him to S rank as early as possible to snowball his damage.
Best character build for Verso
As an almost polar opposite to Sciel, Verso can dish out excellent damage as soon as a battle starts. A high-risk, high-reward archetype that snowballs out of control by avoiding damage, Defensive stats are of little use to him; attack power and speed attributes take priority.
- Agility: Increases your turn speed. Being able to attack uninterrupted more often will help Verso build Perfection faster.
- Might: While Verso’s skills naturally hit hard, Might is still important to keep him scaling with enemies while progressing through the story and beyond.
- Defense: Ideally, you never want Verso to get hit, but mistakes happen. For the Early Game, at least, investing in survivability is a good idea. In late game, once you’ve learned most enemy patterns and have access to top-tier Defense-boosting Pictos, you can drop Defense entirely.
Here’s the stat spread you should be aiming for, depending on your progress through Expedition 33.
- Early Game: Agility (40%) / Might (40%) / Defense (20%)
- Late Game: Agility (60%) / Might (40%)
If you’re having trouble keeping Verso alive with the above Early Game spread, Might can be lowered in favor of Defense until you feel confident enough to reliably perform parries.
Best Skills for Verso
Picking the right skills is arguably more important for Verso than any other Expedition 33 character. As his Perfection gauge increases per hit and not per attack, multi-hit abilities are an absolute must to ensure S rank is reached as fast as possible.
Verso also has access to some incredible party synergy skills, but these can largely be ignored until late game, where they become much more important.
Early Game
- Assault Zero: Performs a five-hit combo. With the right AP-boosting Pictos, this is the best opener for Verso, allowing him to build substantial Perfection off the rip.
- Blitz: Low damage but essentially hits twice, as it guarantees an immediate second turn. AP-intensive, but pairs well with Assault Zero.
- Perfect Recovery: Restores Verso’s health by 50% (100% if at C-rank), giving 0-2 Perfection. Excellent sustain skill.
- Paradigm Shift: Arguably Verso’s strongest skill. Refunds 1-3 AP and performs a three-hit combo.
Mid–Late Game
- Perfect Break: One of Verso’s strongest skills. Does high damage at S-rank.
- Light Holder: Automatically increases Verso’s rank by an entire grade and deals modest damage.
- Steeled Strike: Whopping 13-hit combo that deals massive damage. Best used at A-rank for the additional 2 AP generation.
- Leadership: Not integral to the build, but worth considering as a support tool to help other AP-hungry party members like Lune build resources for their biggest skills.
Best Pictos for Verso
Outside of Steel Strike and other big finishers, Verso’s skills don’t consume much AP, and he’ll usually generate enough during natural combat.
You’ll want to give him a starting boost in this department, but otherwise prioritize Pictos that increase survivability and provide utility rather than his already high damage.
Early Game
- Auto Shell: Automatically grants Shell at the start of battle for added survivability without having to spend AP.
- Energising Start III: +1 AP on battle start. Perfect to help Verso perform a turn one Assault Zero.
- First Strike: The sooner Verso attacks, the better, so this is a must-have
Late Game
- Augmented Counter I: Increases counterattack damage by 25%. As Verso wants to perform as many counters as possible for Perfection, this is a massive damage buff.
- Perilous Parry: +1 AP on a successful Parry but doubles damage. Can replace Energising Start III.
- Confident: Take half damage but can’t heal. Allows for more mistakes but makes Perfect Recovery’s heal useless.
Best Weapons for Verso
Early Game
- Sakaram: Removes the passive damage increase from Perfection but makes it impossible to lose, too. Perfect for Early Game Verso while you accustom yourself to his playstyle, and scales well with Agility.
Late Game
- Delaram: Automatically start on Perfection rank B, skipping D and C entirely. This makes some of the bonus conditions on Verso’s skills impossible to trigger without Leadership. The trade-off is that you reach S rank considerably faster for more DPS.
Who is Verso? Lore explained
Without venturing too far into spoiler territory, Verso is an enigmatic Expeditioner Gustave and his team encounter at the end of Act I. Appearing from the shadows to help Expedition 33 fend off an attacking Renoir, Verso subsequently joins the team.
While he didn’t leave Lumiere with 33, Verso is nonetheless from the city with deep ties to the Fractured world’s inhabitants, including Esquie.