In Act 1 you’ll pass through the Ancient Sanctuary to reach the Gestral Village, where the fun-loving but dangerously belligerent Gestrals live. To get a boat - or a means of conveyance crudely representing such a device - you’ll need to talk to their “Chef”, but before you get the answers you seek you’ll have to prove you’re not a weakling by participating in their tournament. The champion of said tournament will get a weapon, and this page will cover how the tournament works and what rewards each character will obtain if they’re crowned champion in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Page Breakdown¶

The Gestral Arena Tournament¶

After speaking to the gestral village “chef”, Golgra, follow the signs to the arena to find it ,and talk to the reclining lime-color gestral named Limonsol to get the rules: the tournament consists of four rounds where two combatants will face off, one-on-one. You will enter as a team, so you can pick whomever you wish to fight each round, and you’ll be fully healed after each fight. There’s even an expedition flag nearby, should you want to swap out skills, assign attribute points or otherwise alter your build.

Arena Opponents¶

None of these foes should be all that challenging provided you’re properly leveled (Lv15+) - most of them have fairly predictable one-hit attacks that can be easily parried, with Matthieu the Colossus having a feint. The Stranger is a bit of an exception, having more attacks with more hits per attack than the other foes, although even then it should only take two parries to defeat any of the enemies here. Whomever defeats The Stranger will win a special weapon at the end of the fight, and provided you haven’t ignored anybody, Gustave, Lune and Maelle should all be capable of winning this tournament. Who you use, then, should be determined by what weapon you wish to obtain, and these are as follows:

Best Gestral Tournament Rewards¶

Now that you know what weapons you can get from this tournament, we should discuss them based on their merits. First, note that in the Ancient Sanctuary you fought a Robust Sakapatate, which may have dropped one of these weapons. Every time we fought it, it dropped the Sakaram weapon for Gustave, and later on in the Ancient Sanctuary an enemy encounter yielded the Trebuchim for Lune. If you enter the Gestral Village with both of these weapons, you don’t need to participate in the tournament with Gustave or Lune, as doing so will only get you an upgraded variant of the same weapon, functionally reducing your reward from a new weapon to a Polished Chroma Catalyst, which is far less valuable.

Maelle’s Reward - Medalum¶

Assuming you have Sakaram and Trebuchim, that makes Maelle the logical choice for tournament contestant, and her reward, Medalum is quite a worthy weapon, indeed. It starts you out in Virtuouse stance, which allows her to land a telling first strike on her first turn, provided she’s got the AP to do so. Percee and Fleuret Fury are both excellent first turn attacks to take advantage of this, especially if you can Mark an enemy beforehand - with the right build, you’ll be one-shotting most non-boss enemies this way before long, and it may well be the first time you see the damage cap of 9,999. Sword Ballet, and later on, Gustave’s Homage, are great skills to use on Maelle’s first turn in Virtuose stance, with the latter being capable of dealing 70,000+ damage a turn and preserving Marked. Level up Medalum to Lv10+ and give Maelle the Double Burn Pictos and she’ll also inflict 4x Burns every hit against a Marked foe with Gustave’s Homage, adding 32x Burn stacks to the enemy should they have the misfortune of surviving the raw damage of the attack - it’s enough to see you through most of the game.

Sciel’s Reward - Hevason¶

When The Stranger reveals herself, the gestrals demand entertainment, which forces a fight… but at this point victory isn’t much of a concern - should your contestant lose, a member of Expedition 33 still wins, and hence gets a weapon as a reward. It’s hard to argue against Maelle’s Medalum, but if you throw the fight against The Stranger, Sciel will win tournament and obtain the weapon Hevason, which allows her to use Free Aim shots to consume a Sun charge to inflict 5 Foretell or a Moon charge to inflict 400% extra damage. At Lv10, consuming a Sun or Moon charge will give Sciel +1 AP, and at Lv20+ Base Attacks will apply 1 Moon charge. It’s an interesting option if you want Maelle to deal with flying enemies, not to mention being a fine way to stack Foretell and generate AP with Free Aim, which won’t use Sciel’s turn, potentially allowing for some potent followup attacks.

Be thorough during the Ancient Sanctuary, check your weapons in the Gestral Village, and use Maelle to win the tournament (or throw the fight against The Stranger) to gain a new weapon for your squad. In the case of Maelle’s Medalum, it may just end up being a weapon you use to great effect for quite a long time, and it would be a shame to miss a new weapon… especially when the alternative is merely an upgrade to an existing weapon!

Finding Tournament Weapons after the Gestral Village¶

If you for some reason don’t find one of the four potential reward weapons for the Gestral Tournament during (or before) your first visit to the Gestral Village, don’t abandon hope! There are still ways you can obtain the Hevason and Medalum (potentially the Sakaram and Trebuchim, too, but these should ideally drop before the Gestral Village): Defeat Golgra. Just talk to the village “chef” and pick a fight with her. If you win this one-on-one battle, the challenging character will get the weapon they could have won at the tournament, albeit a higher level version (in our case, the weapon was Lv27). Of course, you won’t get a weapon higher than Lv19 before the end of Act 2, and there’s a reason for this - Golgra is very, very strong. She’s capable of dealing thousands of damage per hit, and while almost everything is technically beatable at any time if you’re good enough at dodging and parrying, functionally she’s not a foe you’re meant to conquer before Act 3. So if you pass up a weapon at the Gestral Tournament, you haven’t necessarily missed it forever, but it’ll be a long time until you’re fit to challenge Golgra on even terms. On the other hand, even if you already have the weapon, challenging Golgra later for free upgrades might be worth doing!