A Beginner's Guide To Mastering Sciel In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

When you reconnect with Sciel in the Gestral Village, she’s been champion at their local arena tournament for a while, and absolutely dominant at that, like a sexy, French Roman Reigns or something. It’s not till you finally get around to using her in your party that you really figure out why. She obviously took it easy on you in your arena fight. If Sciel wanted to, she could turn your ass into mirepoix faster than she puts up her ponytail.

That might not be totally obvious at the outset though, because my girl’s combat mechanics are the most unique and complex in the game; and it’s so easy to blow so many turns doing chip damage to low level grunts when you could and should be an unstoppable death dealer. Let’s show you how.

1. Basic kit
2. Special mechanic: Foretell and Twilight
3. Recommended builds and synergies

Basic kit

There’s not too much to say here since even compared to the rest of her Team, Sciel’s entire loadout is inextricable from the Twilight mechanics. But, just to keep it real simple, Sciel uses a double-sided scythe for a melee weapon. There are actually really heartbreaking reasons for that, but in context, it does mean that despite everything else, she’s still got some powerful melee capabilities you can and should take advantage of. In particular, though, one of her bread-and-butter abilities, Sealed Fate, will depend on what element and what weapon you’ve got equipped, so more than some of the others, you still wanna choose her main weapon wisely, and not just for max Attack power.

The main reason for that is because the vast majority of her abilities cast some form of Dark energy. She and, later, Monoco are the only ones who have consistent access to Dark skills, and given how rare it is for enemies to have a defense against it, that makes her innately pretty useful. But, of course, that’s the tip of the iceberg.

Screenshot: Sandfall Interactive / Justin Clark / Kotaku

Special mechanic: Foretell and Twilight

And now, the feature presentation: Sciel’s tutorial technically tells players all they need to know to use the Foretell system, but it sucks at telling you how to use it effectively. And you can see why, given how easy it is for Sciel to become Death, Destroyer of Worlds with the right loadout.

So, there’s actually two special mechanics going on here. The first is Foretell. Think of Sciel’s Foretell cards like they’re little sticky bombs. You can stick a maximum of 10 onto an enemy, and whenever you’re ready, you can Consume them, which detonates some or all of them for additional damage. Obviously, you want a full payload of 10, and to hopefully not waste too many turns getting there.

The second is the Twilight mechanic. Each of Sciel’s skills is coded as either a Light or Dark skill, noted by the little sun and moon icons in the upper right of the descriptions in the menus. Using a skill generates a card with either a Sun or Moon on it. Once you’ve generated at least one Sun card and one Moon card, Sciel enters Twilight mode, which increases damage by 50%, but also doubles the amount of Foretell you can slap onto an enemy from 10 to 20. That damage increase actually goes up by 25% for every card of one type you generate before generating the opposite card to enter Twilight (i.e. adding multiple Sun cards before generating a Moon and vice versa).

It’s not a hard mechanic to grasp, but the trickiness mostly comes in the fact that the skill descriptions get very Magic the Gathering real fast, and especially when you’re just getting acclimated, they’re throwing a LOT at you.

Recommended builds and synergies

We could honestly be here all day with this one. Synergizing means spending some considerable time in your skill menu optimizing your personal easiest path to a strong Twilight. But oh, believe us, it’s worth it.

It’s kind of a shame you can’t actually pin Skills in the menus, because Focused Foretell (applying 5 Foretell to enemies with no other Foretell) is going to be the way you say hello to every enemy 99% of the time. Searing Bond is the closest you get to a replacement later on, but the four-AP cost upfront can put you at a disadvantage a bit too early. That said, Searing Bond is still a pretty excellent second skill to have in your arsenal to get an enemy you hit with Focused Foretell to 10 Foretell in a hurry, and it pairs nicely with Maelle and Lune’s multi-enemy Fire skills and Sciel’s own Firing Shadow for clearing out group fights in a hurry.

Sealed Fate is Sciel’s Ace maneuver, though. It’s the best go-to trigger for Twilight once you’ve got your cards stacked. It’s right next to Phantom Blade on the Skills tree, so you can grab it early on; it does a pretty absurd amount of damage for only a fourAP cost. Pair it with the Critical Burn or Critical Break Picto/Lumina, and you’ve basically taken a chainsaw to a massive chunk of every enemy’s lifebar.The main thing to remember is that it does attack using your weapon’s element, so be aware if your opponent’s immune so you don’t wind up healing your enemy for thousands of points like a dumbass. And oh yeah, if you think that Skill hurts enemies now, once you’re actually in Twilight, Sealed Fate can be an absolute wrecking ball, especially once you’ve got the enemy up to 20 Foretell. Once you’ve unlocked Gradient Attacks, drop this right after Shadow Bringer, and watch enemies melt away.

While this is just a guide to get you started, it is worth noting just how much the game can and will change once you’ve got stuff like Fortune’s Fate in your back pocket. Also, when you’re finally brave enough to take down the colossal Sprong enemy hanging out in the southwestern part of the map, he’ll drop the Cheater Picto, allowing you to take two turns in a row, and putting that thing on Sciel makes her an absolute monster in terms of building up high Twilight percentages fast. If you go that route—and should—just make sure she has a skill that can trigger a Break, because she can get an enemy there fast.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows PCs.