How to break enemies in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

The break bar in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a huge boon against some of the game’s bigger and tougher foes, as it’ll help you both increase your damage while protecting you from an entire turn’s worth of attacks. It is, however, a bit difficult to understand — partially because of how infrequently enemies live long enough to use it against them.

In this Expedition 33 guide, we’ll walk you through how to break enemies, including how to fill the break bar, and what actually happens when you successfully break an enemy.

How to fill the break bar in Expedition 33

As you deal damage to enemies in Expedition 33, you’ll fill a gold bar underneath their health bar (as you can see in the image above).

The in-game expedition basics guide says this is proportional to the damage the enemy takes, but that doesn’t seem entirely true according to our testing, as plenty of enemies die well before their bar hits max. Big hits — specifically hitting weak points with your free aim attack — seems to fill quite a bit of the break bar, for example.

How to break enemies in Expedition 33

If the enemy is still alive after you’ve managed to fully fill the bar, you’ll see a little star appear to the right of the bar. This means the enemy is susceptible to the break status effect. To inflict the effect, you’ll need to use certain kinds of skills that specifically call out their ability to break.

Gustave’s Overcharge attack, for example, says it “can break” and has a little gold diamond next to the name. This means that if you use this attack on an enemy with a full break bar, they will gain the break status effect. Other skills, however, might require you to do a little more work than just using it on an enemy. Lune’s Mayhem skill is a good example of this, as it can break, but only if you consume four stains while using it.

Break status effects in Expedition 33

Going through all the trouble to break an enemy is well worth it, as they’ll take 20% additional damage for the duration of the turn. Most enemies — though not all — will also be stunned, causing them to lose the turn right after they’re broken. This means you and your allies can each go twice in a row, depending on your speed stat.

Breaking isn’t a very common status effect, as most enemies in the wild won’t survive your attacks long enough for you to fill their entire break bar, let alone survive the attack that finally breaks them. This is more of a boon against bosses, whose attack cycles you’ll benefit greatly from interrupting.

For more Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 guides, see our beginner’s tips and the best attributes to level up.