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We were wondering whether the devs will be releasing updates and balance changes, and Sandfall has just revealed when to expect the first hotfix for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
One of the best releases of 2025 so far, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 proved that there is still a huge demand for story-driven, single-player games. Even though some players have issues with turn-based combat (each to their own, I guess), it managed to get over two million sales in less than two weeks and to even get commended by Emmanuel Macron himself. Add the fact that it was literally made by a “rag-tag” group of Juniors, and you get the idea of how much of a success story this is. And, knowing that Sandfall Interactive is a smaller team and Expedition 33 is a single-player game, people wondered when we would get some official updates.
Hotfixes are a much bigger priority for multiplayer games, compared to single-player ones, and knowing that the game is barely two weeks old, we figured it will be a while before Sandfall releases the first patch. Oh, how wrong we are!
Clair Obscur Expedition 33 Devs Revealed That the First Hotfix is Scheduled for May 9
The devs revealed that they were waiting for a glaring issue to come up before releasing a balance patch. Well, it did! On April 8, their X page posted:
“Expeditioners, a quick note on Stendhal and balance changes:
We hadn’t planned to make any balance changes this early—just bug fixes, unless something clearly stood out.
Well, Stendhal did.
It was underwhelming for most of development, so in our final pre-release balance pass, we gave it a big damage boost—and clearly overdid it. It ended up overshadowing most other options.
We still want you to be able to break the game—and you absolutely still can—but Stendhal was making it a bit too easy.
You’ve got one more day to enjoy it in its current form and set some wild records. The adjustment will be included in our first full hotfix set, going live tomorrow. The patch will roll out on Steam first, and other platforms will follow.
After the change, it’ll still be a strong single-hit skill with great synergy potential… just more in line with everything else.”
For clarity, Stendhal is the ability that Maelle gets in Act 3 that deals incredible single-target damage. Stendhal is also the pen name of a famous French novelist, Marie-Henri Beyle. Just a little trivia.
Surprisingly enough, the players are all supportive of this change, saying that it’s cool to be powerful, but Stendhal was just a no-brainer. “Nice to see some balance changes so early!” said Patchtap, and “I’m usually against nerfing single player games but as Standhal abuser who’ll 100% start NG+ by the end of the week, I appreciate it!” added Podcir.
We are looking forward to full patch notes tomorrow!