Relationship Guide: All Ranks And Rewards

Discover all ranks and rewards for building relationships with Esquie, Lune, Maelle, Monoco, and Sciel in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Learn how to unlock and improve bonds.

After Verso joins the party at the end of Act 1, he’ll be able to start building relationships with the rest of the expeditioners. Verso can’t actually start forming relationships with the other characters until after you’ve cleared the Forgotten Battlefield, the first story dungeon in Act 2. Once you’ve cleared this dungeon, you’ll be back in camp, where you can talk to your companions. Talk to them and you’ll get a prompt asking if you wish to spend time with them. Accept, and you’ll have a relationship chat, which, provided you don’t say anything disastrously wrong, will usually end with your relationship ranking up. It’s a good idea to visit the expedition flag at your camp to trigger an autosave before these relationship chats, just in case you pick a dialog option causing a relationship to stall. Other than that, relationships are pretty straight-forward: complete a story dungeon and afterwards, when you’re back at camp, talk to everybody. If there’s a relationship chat available, see it through to rank up. Esquie, Lune, Maelle, Monoco, and Sciel can all reach relationship rank 7, although it’ll take a good bit of story progress to see this out—nobody will max out before Act 3 starts. Once you’ve ranked up a few times, you may have to do more than merely chat; for one rank up, Monoco will request a duel, and many characters will have some quest involving combat to go from rank 5 to rank 6.

Below you’ll find descriptions of how to rank up each character’s relationship:

Esquie Relationship

Esquie’s relationship is relatively straight-forward, save for a one-on-one encounter with Francois at rank 6. You’ll gain a vast majority of rank ups with him after Old Lumiere, after which you can finish up once you’re at camp in Act 3. Unlike other relationships, ranking up with Esquie unlocks Gradient Attacks for Verso, instead of the other character. The only bit of complication in this relationship is at rank 6. Make sure you have Verso prepared before you start this one, as it’ll take you into a fight against Francois. Francois isn’t too hard, but it’s a solo battle, so you have to rely on whatever power Verso himself has. Victory will earn you Esquie’s final stone, Urrie, which allows him to finally dive underwater and collect treasure at dive spots on the world map.

Esquie Relationship Ranks

Lune Relationship

Talk with Lune at camp after every major story dungeon in Act 2, and by Act 3 you should be at rank 5. After the initial camp at the start of Act 3, return to camp again and talk to Lune, and she’ll make a personal request. You’ll need to travel to the Sirene’s Dress dungeon and defeat a boss to advance to rank 6, but you’ll gain some journal entries along the way. Unlike some relationship battles, you do not have to use either Lune or Verso in combat to defeat her relationship boss, which should make this a pretty easy relationship to max out.

Lune Relationship Ranks

Maelle Relationship

Maelle’s relationship ranks are pretty standard—talk to her after story dungeons in Act 2, and you’ll hit rank 5 by Act 3. Once you get to Act 3, however, she’ll diverge a bit. Talk to her, and she’ll ask you for a favor, which will require you to clear The Reacher dungeon. Unlike most relationship fights/dungeons, this is not an isolated boss battle but a full, proper dungeon. Enemy encounters, loot pickups, optional enemies—all that stuff. It’s probably the dungeon you should complete immediately after reaching Act 3, progression-wise. At the top, Maelle will have to fight a solo boss, so if she’s not leveled up and properly equipped, you’ll need to see to that before you can complete this dungeon and rank up.

Maelle Relationship Ranks