Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 NG+ – Carryovers & New Content

New Game Plus in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 keeps almost all of your power and resets almost all of your world state. Levels, skills, Gradient Attacks, Pictos, Luminas, Lumina points, weapons and their upgrade levels, tints, outfits and haircuts all carry over. Story progress, side quests, key items, relationship levels, Paint Break, Esquie’s abilities, journals and music records all reset. The payoff is that NG+ unlocks the top of the upgrade curve — Grandiose and Perfect Chroma Catalysts, weapon levels 32 and 33, higher-tier Pictos and NG+-only cosmetics — and lets you re-loot gear you already own for free upgrades. This guide covers exactly what moves, what resets, what is new, and how to prep so your second run does not flatten you in Act 1.

Fast pre-NG+ checklist

• Story: final boss in Lumière (Act 3) beaten and credits watched.
• Save safety: keep a manual save before you confirm NG+, so your completed file stays reachable.
• Weapons: push your two or three real weapons as far as your catalysts allow. Upgrade levels carry; loose catalysts are better spent than hoarded.
• Collectibles that reset: mop up any Music Records, Expedition Journals and Lost Gestrals you actually care about — you will be re-collecting them.
• Festival Token: keep at least one unspent. It buys the Baguette in NG+.
• Side quests: finish anything you want narrative closure on. It all resets.

How to start New Game Plus

Nothing is hidden. Beat the Act 3 final boss in Lumière, let the credits run, and a post-credits save is created. From there, go to any Expedition Flag, open the action menu and choose New Game+. A confirmation screen spells out the carryover rules before you commit. You are dropped back at the prologue with your progression intact.

The manual save is the part people skip and regret. Once you confirm, that world state is gone — including any boss you wanted to re-farm at first-run scaling.

Everything that carries over

• Character levels, attributes and skill points — you restart the prologue at your endgame power level.
• Skills and Gradient Attacks — including Gradients earned through relationships. The relationship reset does not strip Gradients you already unlocked.
• Party members — they rejoin as the story reintroduces them. Because NG+ restarts from the prologue, Gustave is playable again through Act 1 and leaves again at the same point; this is a replay of the story, not a permanent roster change.
• Pictos and Luminas — your entire collection, plus your Lumina points and applied upgrades.
• Weapons and upgrade levels — a +15 main weapon is still +15 in the prologue.
• Tints and Chroma Elixir upgrades.
• Outfits and haircuts, including the 1st Anniversary haircuts added in patch 1.5.5.
• Écu, crafting materials and general inventory items.

Everything that resets

• Story progress — you begin at the prologue.
• All side quests, including the Lost Gestral chains, White Nevron tasks and the Endless Tower questline.
• Key and quest items — the Old Key and anything else quest-bound is cleared.
• Relationship levels. Relationship events unlock again in Act II. Gradients already earned stay.
• Paint Break — it must be relearned, because Lost Gestral progress is gone.
• Esquie’s abilities — flight and diving are re-unlocked through story progress. Esquie also does not join immediately.
• Flag-to-world-map fast travel — re-unlocked as you progress.
• Expedition Journals, Music Records and Lost Gestrals — these have to be picked up again. (One guide reports the codex retains collection tracking while the world pickups respawn; treat them as re-collectables either way, and note that NG+ adds nine crimson “Author’s Cut” journals that replace some original spawns.)

Correction worth flagging: the Endless Tower is not NG+ exclusive. It is Act 3 content in the base game, and NG+ resets your progress through it like any other side questline. What NG+ changes is that you climb it again with a carried-over build against tougher enemies — and patch 1.5.0 added new Endless Tower boss variants based on main-story bosses, tuned harder for late-game parties.

What NG+ actually unlocks

The top of the weapon curve

This is the real reason to run NG+. Your catalyst upgrade paths are replaced with higher-tier variants, available earlier in the run:

• Grandiose Chroma Catalysts take weapons to level 32.
• Perfect Chroma Catalysts take a weapon to level 33 — the hard cap, and effectively NG+ territory.

Perfect Catalysts are one-time rewards from a fixed list of bosses and optional dungeons, so you get a finite number per file and have to choose which weapons to cap. Our Chroma Catalyst guide lists every source and the per-tier costs.

Free upgrades on gear you already own

NG+ drops higher-level versions of weapons and Pictos. Re-looting something you already have grants an upgrade rather than a duplicate, which means clearing the same content again is a genuine power gain, not a formality.

NG+-only rewards

• The Baguette — spend a Festival Token carried from Act 1 at the Boulangerie. A level 33 weapon equippable by any character, with stun-focused effects that pair well with tankier builds.
• Renoir outfits for Gustave and other second-playthrough-only cosmetics.
• New Picto and weapon upgrades tied to specific bosses and areas.
• Nine “Author’s Cut” Expedition Journals that only appear on a second run.

Verso’s Drafts (added in patch 1.5.0)

If you last played in 2025, you may not have seen this. The 12 December 2025 “Thank You” update added Verso’s Drafts, a brand-new area on the world map next to Lumière, accessible from Act III and gated behind Esquie’s underwater ability, with new encounters. It sits alongside the older Esquisses de Renoir as endgame content worth clearing on either run. The same update also brought Photo Mode, new Luminas and weapons, new costumes for every Expedition member, and an Old Key added to the final area so a single playthrough can complete all journals.

How difficulty changes

Enemies gain health and damage in NG+, and you should expect trash mobs to punish sloppy play rather than serving as filler. Precise scaling multipliers are not published, so treat any guide quoting exact percentages with suspicion — including older versions of this one. What is reliably true:

• Bosses hit harder and you will meet Endless Tower boss variants tuned for late-game builds.
• Collectibles respawn with tougher encounters guarding them, which makes re-exploration worth the detour.
• Your carried-over build is doing the heavy lifting, so a party without a coherent synergy will feel the HP pools far more than one built around a real damage pattern.

The practical answer is to enter NG+ with a plan, not just a level. The current endgame consensus — Maelle’s Stendhal Virtuose nuke, Lune stacking Burn and Dark Stains, Sciel handing out extra turns with Fortune’s Fury, Verso or Monoco applying Break and Mark — is covered in our best teams and rotations guide. Patch 1.5.0 also added Lumina Sets, letting you save up to 50 loadouts, so swapping between a nuke set and a survival set no longer costs you a re-spec.

Patch changes since launch that affect a second run

• 1.4.0 — DLSS and XeSS with Frame Generation on PC, a Battle Retry prompt after defeat (no more reloading a save), Lumina costs shown in the UI, and two important fixes: the Thermal Transfer extra-turn bug and the Second Chance + Healing Boon + Protecting Death immortality combo. If a 2025 guide still recommends that combo, it does not work.
• 1.5.0 (12 December 2025) — Verso’s Drafts, Endless Tower boss variants, new Luminas and weapons, costumes, Photo Mode, Lumina Sets, Old Key, and localisation up to 19 languages.
• 1.5.3 (early 2026) — crash fixes, including the widely reported post-Siren crash, plus a save bug affecting collectible registration.
• 1.5.5 (18 May 2026) — 1st Anniversary haircuts: Gustave’s from the Gestral Merchant near Stone Wave Cliffs, the rest of the party’s from the Gestral Merchant near Grosse Tête. Plus collision and rest-point fixes.
• 1.5.6 (30 June 2026) — Arabic support (20 languages), a Burn fix so applying Burn to a stunned enemy no longer lets it act early, and corrected Lumina triggers on Cleim, Martenon and Sireso.

As of July 2026 there is no paid DLC or expansion. Everything above arrived as a free title update.

How to prep in two to four hours

1. Concentrate your catalysts. Push two or three weapons you actually use as high as your stock allows. Spreading upgrades thin is the classic mistake — passives land at ranks 4, 10 and 20, so one committed weapon beats four half-built ones.
2. Farm continent bosses once more for Pictos and materials, so NG+ starts with strong passives.
3. Close out the side quests you care about. They reset; you will not want to redo them purely for story closure.
4. Grab the resetting collectibles you are invested in — Music Records, Journals, remaining Lost Gestrals — so your first file stays a complete reference.
5. Reserve a Festival Token so the Baguette is available early in NG+.

Is NG+ worth it?

Yes if you want the level 32–33 weapon cap, NG+-only Pictos and cosmetics, trophy and achievement completion with a powered-up party, or a proper testing ground for endgame builds. The free upgrades from re-looting gear you already own make the second run meaningfully stronger, not just longer.

Skip it if you played for the story and feel finished, if you have side content left in your first run that you would rather keep intact, or if repetition is what kills a replay for you. Nothing in NG+ changes the narrative.

FAQ

Do Pictos and Luminas carry over?

Yes — your full collection, your Lumina points and your applied upgrades. Re-looting a Picto in NG+ upgrades it rather than duplicating it.

Does the Endless Tower reset?

Yes. It is base-game Act 3 content, not an NG+ mode, and its questline resets with everything else. Patch 1.5.0 added tougher boss variants to it for late-game parties.

Do I lose Paint Break?

Yes. Paint Break comes from Lost Gestral progress, which resets, so you relearn it through story progression. Esquie’s flight and diving reset for the same reason.

Is there DLC for Expedition 33?

Not as of July 2026. Every post-launch addition — Verso’s Drafts, Endless Tower boss variants, Photo Mode, Lumina Sets, anniversary haircuts — has been a free update. More coverage lives on our Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 hub.