Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the free DLC expansion from Sandfall Interactive, has once again tested players with some of its most punishing endgame content. A run highlighted by IGN and shared on Reddit shows a party led by user Recordbreaks spending eight straight hours attempting to defeat the Duollistes, a tandem boss in the Endless Tower that reimagines the earlier Duollistes encounter from the Forgotten Battlefield. The feat underscores how far players must push to clear the DLC’s toughest content.
Duollistes is tuned for near-endgame power, with health pools that demand long stamina. Recordbreaks’ party was around level 80, well below the typical endgame threshold, yet Verso, the expeditioner left standing after most of the team fell, kept the fight alive. In the moment, Verso was dealing about 200,000 damage, a reminder that the fight scales beyond simple DPS. The eight-hour siege culminated in a total of 231 million damage dealt against Duollistes, illustrating the sheer health and multi-phase pressure in this encounter. Across the duration, the team landed 10,545 successful parries and recorded zero dodges, turning the battle into a protracted war of attrition. The terrain of the Endless Tower, combined with long, multi-hit sequences, made timing and stamina the deciding factors. Recordbreaks noted that the reason for the extended duration was that Verso had not yet been optimized into a high-damage configuration, and the fight’s structure encouraged patient, measured play. The length of the encounter highlights why some players consider Expedition 33 among the hardest content in Clair Obscur.
On the parry-focused approach, the run demonstrated one of Clair Obscur’s core tensions: despite epic health pools, skilled players can blunt large threats through precise timing. Recordbreaks described Duollistes' long combos as easy to parry, which negated the boss’s multi-hit rhythm and amplified the value of patient defense. Even so, eight hours of constant action took a toll: the player reported only minor twitching near the end and said the keyboard was still chugging along nicely. The persistence of the party and their careful execution — rather than pure brute force — defined the encounter.
Observers noted the timing of the run as especially telling: Recordbreaks tackled Duollistes before what many players consider the game's toughest boss, Simon, a feat notable because even a Sandfall co-founder has reportedly not beaten Simon. The contrast between Duollistes’ attrition fight and the rumored difficulty of Simon underscores the DLC’s broad range of challenges and the arbitrary nature of endurance testing in Clair Obscur.
Sandfall’s free Expedition 33 DLC continues to push the outer limits of Clair Obscur’s post-release content, with endgame encounters designed to reward coordination, build optimization, and sheer stamina. The eight-hour Duollistes fight is a striking data point in the community’s ongoing assessment of how the Endless Tower scales with number of players, equipment, and level brackets. While the feat is unusual, it reinforces the perception that Expedition 33 remains among the most demanding additions to the game’s roster, and it will likely influence builders and speedrunners to revisit unusual configurations for endgame fights.
The community response to this endurance run continues to underscore Clair Obscur’s reputation for punishing, but rewarding, combat rhythms. The DLC’s naming conventions and boss reworks create a mosaic of challenges that often require players to rethink their typical loadouts and strategies. For players who relish long-form combat and the satisfaction of outlasting a formidable foe, Expedition 33 delivers a concrete instance of how far a party can push in a single encounter. As players weigh whether to chase similar feats, the broader take is clear: Clair Obscur’s endgame content remains a proving ground for timing, patience, and optimization, even as some players test the limits with unconventional level brackets and builds.