Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – The best Pictos and Luminas for the early and late game

Pictos are the core of party building in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The passive effects they convey on characters can make a huge difference to the flow of combat, and once you transform them into Luminas, your entire party benefits. There is a huge range of effects available, especially as you get into the late game, so we’ve gone through and picked out the very best.

We’ve separated this into two categories. First, we’ll go through the best Pictos you can get relatively early in the game, and you should rely on well into the mid-game. Then we’ll run down some of the ridiculously powerful effects you can find on Pictos in the late-game.

Best early-game Pictos and Luminas

Dodger

While parrying is always preferable due to the AP gain and counterattack capabilities, as we explained in our Expedition 33 beginner tips, when you’re first learning an enemy’s attack patterns, dodging is easier. This makes Dodger useful Picto as it’s one of the first you’ll find and costs just one Lumina point. It makes it so that once per turn, a perfect dodge will grant you 1 AP, just like if you had countered it.

Cleansing Tint

Healing mid-battle is something you’re obviously going to be doing a fair bit of, but much more tricky to deal with are status effects, as very few skills clear those by default. This Picto removes that worry, as it ensures that using you healing tint items will also remove status effects, making them much more powerful.

Breaker

Breaking enemies is a great way to deal loads of damage while they are unable to hit back, so the usefulness of this Picto is pretty straightforward. It increases the amount of break damage you do, letting you fill their bars quicker and stun them easier.

Dead Energy

Most non-boss battles will put you up against multiple enemies at once, so you’re always going to be benefiting from this Picto, which grants 3 AP when you kill an enemy. This means that even if you spend all your AP for a big attack to take down a foe, you’ll immediately have some replenished so you don’t have to waste time building back up.

Augmented Counter

If you get good enough at the parry system, you’ll be constantly launching counterattacks against enemies, so a 25% boost to that damage is an easy win for a Picto.

Energising Start

This is where the Pictos start to get a bit more expensive in terms of Lumina points, but this one is absolutely worth it. Energising Start lets you start with 1 AP extra every battle. There are more than one of these Pictos too, and they stack, so you can start with way more AP than usual.

First Strike

While ambushing enemies will always grant you a round of actions at the start of combat, equipping one party member with this Picto will ensure that they always move first no matter what. This stacks on top of ambushes too, meaning whichever character uses this will get two actions in a row at the start of an ambush.

Powerful Revive

This is one you won’t find until around the mid-game, but it is very useful. In this game’s toughest boss battles you’re probably going to slip up and get one of your allies killed at some point, but they can be revived, and this Picto immediately casts Powerful on them for three turns when you do, helping them come back swinging.

Best late-game Pictos and Luminas

Painted Power

This one is pretty much mandatory for success in the late-game. Unlocked as soon as you start Act 3, Painted Power removes the 9,999 damage limit on your attacks. This means you are no longer limited in any way, and your most powerful abilities can deal damage in the millions.

Cheater

From the name alone, you know this one is powerful. Obtained by defeating Sprung – the weird statue monster in the ocean – this Picto allows the equipped character to act twice every turn, giving you way more opportunities to do just about anything in combat. It is arguably required if you want to survive the game’s toughest battles, too. It may come at the hefty cost of 40 Lumina points, but it is absolutely worth it.

Second Chance

This one also costs an expensive 40 Lumina points, but is just as worth it as Cheater. Second Chance gives the equipped character one auto-revive with 100% health restored each battle. We surely don’t need to explain why this is useful.

Base Shield

Shield Pictos can be quite good, but a lot of them come at a heavy cost, like the one that grants you starting shields but cuts your max HP in half. This one doesn’t have such a downside though, simply granting you one shield at the start of your turn if you don’t already have one. This may not sound amazing, but being able to take even one free hit can be a huge boon in the late-game where enemies make big multi-hit combos and even one mistake can cost you the battle.

Double Burn

In our beginner’s tips guide we explained that burning opponents is an extremely powerful strategy and that continues into the late-game too, which is why this is so useful. This Picto doubles the stacks on any burn you apply – so if the skill would apply 3 burn per hit, it would now apply 6 instead. Stacking up huge amounts of burn is a great way to deal damage to bosses, so doubling that output is an easy win.