Damage types and status effects are the backbone of Expedition 33's combat. Reading enemy resistances and stacking the right status turns hard fights trivial — a well-applied Burn or Foretell detonation can outdamage a whole rotation of basics.
Status effects
🎨 Stains (Lune)
Lune builds elemental Stains that she consumes to empower skills — bank the right colours before a big cast.
🔥 Burn
Damage over time that ticks each turn; great against high-health bosses.
🃏 Foretell (Sciel)
Marks that detonate for bonus damage when Sciel follows up — set up, then cash in.
🎯 Mark / Charge
Several characters stack marks or charges that convert into burst — track them before spending AP.
Using weaknesses
- Free-aim shots reveal and hit weak points; exploit them to build Gradient faster.
- Match your attacker's element to the enemy's weakness for extra damage and quicker breaks.
- Some enemies heal from their own element — swap damage types instead of feeding them.
Stacking it right
- Set up damage-over-time (Burn) early so it ticks through the whole fight.
- Build Foretell/marks, then detonate during a Break for a damage spike.
- Hold Lune's Stains for the element the boss is weak to rather than spending on cooldown.
- Combine a status setup with a Break window for the biggest single-turn payoff.
Reading resistances
- Enemies resist some elements and fold to others — free-aim reveals weak points.
- Never feed an element a foe absorbs or heals from; swap damage types instead.
- Lune and Monoco can cover most elements, so build them as your flex answers.
- Match your burst turn to the element the boss is weakest to for maximum payoff.
The statuses, with their actual numbers
There are 13 of them — one source counts 14, so treat the total as
approximate and the individual figures below as the useful part.
| Status | What it does |
|---|---|
| Mark | +50% damage on the next single instance of damage, then it is gone |
| Defenceless | +25% damage received, for its duration |
| Slow | −25% speed |
| Shell | −20% damage taken |
| Powerless | −20% damage dealt |
| Rush | Raises speed |
| Burn | Ticks fire damage each turn, and stacks exponentially |
| Stun | The target loses its turn |
| Freeze | Stops the target acting on consecutive turns — but it breaks the moment the target takes damage |
| Inverted | Cannot be healed; healing it deals damage instead |
| Charm | The target turns on its own allies |
Freeze is the one that catches people: hitting a frozen enemy un-freezes it.
So Freeze is not a setup for your burst turn — it is a way to buy a turn, and the first hit you land spends it.
If you want a damage window, that is what Mark and Defenceless are for.
Mark and Defenceless stack differently, and it changes the order you play. Mark
is +50% but only on one hit, so it belongs immediately before your single biggest attack. Defenceless is +25% for a
duration, so it belongs before a multi-hit turn. Applying Mark and then chipping with basics throws it away.
Still to verify
Re-checked on 5 September 2026 against Fextralife and Game8: the disagreement did not resolve, it widened. Mark (+50%, one hit) and Defenceless (+25%, duration) both hold up against both sources, and both agree Freeze ends the instant the frozen target takes damage — but the two guides don't even agree on who can inflict Freeze in the first place, one describing it as enemies-only against the party and the other listing it as something the party can apply to enemies too. Sources still disagree on whether there are 13 or 14 statuses, and the element lists differ between them too (five Stain colours for Lune, seven affinities, eight weapon damage types), which is why this page does not print a single element count. Written from public sources, not from a playthrough — what is still unverified is the only thing reading cannot settle: nobody here has played it.