Verso’s Drafts turns Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s endgame into a self‑contained amusement park: a compact zone of minigames, puzzles, and some of the hardest fights outside the Endless Tower. Buried in that pastel chaos are six bosses, ranging from powered‑up variants of familiar enemies to one of the most mechanically dense encounters in the game.
All six are optional, but they sit on top of strong rewards: new weapons for Maelle, Sciel, and Verso, high‑tier Chroma Catalysts, and powerful Pictos. If you want to push NG+ builds or prepare for the new Endless Tower superbosses, you’re expected to clear Verso’s Drafts first.
Recommended level and access to Verso’s Drafts
Verso’s Drafts is tuned as late‑game content. An expedition level in the mid‑80s or higher keeps the Chromatic fights from turning into damage‑check walls, especially if you’re not leaning on one‑turn nuke builds.
To reach the zone, you travel east of Lumiere and dive to the entrance, which requires Esquie’s underwater ability unlocked during the main game. If you arrive in the 60s or low 70s, Endless Tower floors are a more efficient way to catch up before taking on these bosses.
Within Verso’s Drafts, progression is loose. The four Chromatic minibosses are scattered around the central hill, Licornapieds sits behind a multi‑step cake puzzle, and Osquio anchors a separate sub‑area at the top of the zone.
Chromatic Machinapieds (carousel cavern)
Chromatic Machinapieds is the first obvious boss‑tier enemy you can find in Verso’s Drafts, and it’s also a template for how the DLC handles “Chromatic” upgrades. It reuses the base Machinapieds kit, then layers more hits, more Barbapapa stacks, and longer strings of parry checks on top.
You reach this fight by entering the candy‑themed cavern that leads to the carousel. Next to Monsieur Frappe’s counter challenge there’s a tunnel sloping down into a dedicated arena where the Chromatic Machinapieds rolls in.
Its key patterns:
- Buff + Barbapapa: It can grant itself Powerful while applying two Barbapapa stacks to every active character, heavily reducing your outgoing damage until you clear those stacks by landing normal attacks or skills.
- “Attacks frenetically” combo: three fast punches, two rainbow projectiles, then a Gradient divebomb. The safe window for the Gradient parry is after it finishes zig‑zagging and rises slightly before crashing down.
- “Impressive combo”: a huge diagonal party‑wide punch followed by five rapid parries as it spins, ending in a slam. On higher difficulties, missing one parry in this chain is usually lethal for squishy builds.
Defeating Chromatic Machinapieds rewards five Colour of Lumina, two Grandiose Chroma Catalysts, and a Perfect Chroma Catalyst, making it a reliable spike of late‑game upgrade materials.
Chromatic Franctale (cliffside arena below the hill)
Chromatic Franctale hides at the base of Verso’s main slope. From the big outdoor carousel hall, you can ride a vertical zipline down into a secluded circular arena where a tall, long‑legged Franctale variant waits.
The fight is a rhythm test more than a raw damage check. It stretches every recognizable attack from standard Franctales:
- Extended head swipes: multiple close‑range slashes while it stalks a single target, into an aerial slam, and a final delayed swipe. The last hit often catches players who start mashing parry too early.
- Triple “kick its head” jump: three Franctales jump and kick in sequence, demanding three precise jumps instead of one. The timing is tied to when each model lands, not the animation start.
- Laser volleys: the familiar “shoots lasers with style” returns as ten lasers in a row, plus a variant where three Franctales charge and fire simultaneously. Both rely on an audio cue, and the moment the charge animation collapses inward.
Clearing the arena drops five Colour of Lumina, two Grandiose Chroma Catalysts, a Perfect Chroma Catalyst, and the Esquim weapon for Maelle, which leans into her aggressive front‑line role.
Chromatic Licorne (high platforms above the toy blocks)
If you’re sweeping Verso’s Drafts and still missing one Chromatic fight, it’s almost always Chromatic Licorne. Its arena sits above a long chain of toy blocks, crayon platforms, and treehouse beams that are easy to miss if you stay on the ground.
From the stream where Chromatic Barbasucette patrols, head toward the giant stacked blocks and climb all the way up. Use the handholds and grapples across the white pillars and colored platforms until you trigger a cutscene where the Licorne drops in.
The boss keeps the playful bounce‑and‑rainbow identity of regular Licorne enemies but pushes everything to extremes:
- Seven‑hit bounce: six bounces in a steady rhythm and a seventh with a long delay as it drifts back to its starting point. Many players burn a parry too early on that final impact.
- Double rainbow shots: paired projectiles at the same target, forcing clean back‑to‑back parries or dodges.
- “Strongest rainbow attack ever” Gradient: a huge screen‑wide blast that only a Gradient Counter can save you from. The correct timing is a beat after the attack colors fill the screen, as the Licorne finishes spinning and starts to drop.
- Spot Barbapapa: single‑stack Barbapapa applications on individual characters, enough to blunt a Maelle or Lune nuke if you’re not careful.
Winning grants five Colour of Lumina, two Grandiose Chroma Catalysts, a Perfect Chroma Catalyst, and the Licorum weapon for Maelle, a late‑game sword built for high‑end burst builds.
Chromatic Barbasucette (lake in the central valley)
Chromatic Barbasucette takes over the shallow lake in the forested center of Verso’s Drafts. After the Franctale zipline, climb back up, then follow the streams until you see a wide pool with regular enemies on the shore and a single oversized Barbasucette pacing in the middle. Walking into the water is enough to start the encounter.
This fight is less about memorizing new patterns and more about respecting one key interaction: its lollipops.
- Lollipop control: as long as the lollipops survive, it can summon orbiting candy that constantly grants shields. The fastest way to keep this from spiraling is to immediately break the lollipops with Free Aim shots or by parrying their big crystal‑clear swipe combo.
- Six ground stomps: the familiar three‑jump stomp is doubled. All six land on a strict beat, so you can tap jumps instead of reacting to each individual impact.
- Triple rock throw: two quick throws and one heavily delayed third that punishes premature parries.
Once it goes down you pick up five Colour of Lumina, two Grandiose Chroma Catalysts, a Perfect Chroma Catalyst, and Sucetton, a new weapon for Sciel that slots neatly into late‑game support or hybrid damage builds.
Licornapieds (Birthday Cake door and hidden station)
Licornapieds is the most elaborate side encounter in Verso’s Drafts and the only one that isn’t explicitly tagged “Chromatic”. Mechanically it’s a fusion of Licorne and Machinapieds, and narratively it’s hidden behind the zone’s main scavenger hunt.
How to unlock Licornapieds
The boss sits behind the giant gingerbread door with spinning eyes in the forest below the Gestral Baths. To open it, you need the assembled Birthday Cake, which is built from three “Piece of Cake” collectibles scattered across the area:
Step 1: Solve the Esquie statue color puzzle in the Gestral Baths. Balancing the “Whee” and “Whoo” colors on statues across the pools earns a Piece of Cake from the lifeguard Gestral.
Step 2: Recover the Toy Boat from behind the waterfall below the Baths, return it to the trio of Gestrals staring at the water, and accept their reward, another Piece of Cake.
Step 3: Ride the carousel with every party member using the Very Very Cool Gestral’s skip‑the‑line ticket. After everyone has taken a turn, talk to the Gestral again to receive the final Piece of Cake.
Once all three are in your inventory, they automatically combine into the Birthday Cake. Interact with the gingerbread door, hand over the cake, and the door opens onto a short train tunnel.
Licornapieds fight and rewards
Inside, you clear a short gauntlet of mixed Nevrons, then board a tiny train that ferries you to Licornapieds Station. A new Expedition Flag marks the area, and the boss waits directly ahead on the platform.
The moveset is essentially a “greatest hits” package from Machinapieds with Licorne flair:
- Party‑wide buffs and Barbapapa: as with Chromatic Machinapieds, Licornapieds can grant itself Powerful while stacking Barbapapa on the entire party, punishing low‑hit big‑nuke builds.
- Melee combo: three rapid spinning punches followed by a noticeably delayed fourth. Overcommitting to early parries usually costs you that last hit.
- Eight‑hit “raging combo”: four pairs of blows: punches, spinning punches, more spaced punches, then two head slams with gaps between each pair. It’s designed to trip up players who respond on animation start rather than the actual impact timing.
- Flying dive and “wonderful combo”: a reprise of Machinapieds’ aerial dart into a slam, plus a series of cross‑screen punches, a back‑flip kick, and three rainbow projectiles that test both multi‑hit parries and projectile timing.
Licornapieds drops a single but extremely valuable reward: Frenzy, a Picto that supercharges multi‑hit skills and counter builds. For late‑game Maelle, Lune, Verso, and Sciel setups, Frenzy is a cornerstone of the DLC’s new damage ceilings.
After the fight you can board a second train that opens a shortcut back to the Reverie Path Flag near the base of the main hill.
Osquio (Root of All Evil)
Osquio is the capstone of Verso’s Drafts and one of Expedition 33’s signature bosses. It lives in a separate sub‑area called the Root of All Evil, accessible only after climbing the long slope past Najabla’s xylophone bridge to the giant Esquie mask and boarding the train parked in front of it.
The train ride ends at a swirling vortex; stepping through drops you into an eerie, red‑stained field with the Main Field Expedition Flag at the bottom and Osquio’s arena up a set of stairs. From there, the fight unfolds in two phases that hinge on tight parry timing and a new status effect, Barbapapa.
Osquio phase one
The first health bar is about pattern recognition under speed. Osquio juggles several attack families:
- “Fastest ball” roll: it curls into a ball and streaks side‑to‑side six times, demanding six consecutive parries or dodges without breaks.
- “Very very strong fists”: seven blows: three on a fixed cadence, three slightly delayed wind‑up punches, then a big two‑arm slam at the end. The gaps between beats change, which punishes rote mashing.
- “Flying gracefully” dive chain: casual float, teleport away, two diagonal dives, an elbow drop, then a belly flop. Every hit is discrete and timed differently, so it’s easy to miscount mid‑sequence.
- “Little friends” mask barrage: five hovering Esquie masks fire projectiles one by one, then once more simultaneously, and finally themselves crash down. The final crash happens slightly later than the last volley of beams, forcing you to adjust your timing mid‑pattern.
On its own, phase one is punishing but fair; most players plateau here while reacclimating to the game’s parry speed after a break.
Osquio phase two and Barbapapa
Once you empty the first bar, Osquio spins its belt, fully heals, and shifts into a red‑tinted second phase. The core patterns stay, but two new beams anchor the difficulty spike, together with Barbapapa management:
- Barbapapa status: every time Osquio deals damage, the target gains Barbapapa stacks. For each stack, that character’s next attacks drop to 1 damage until stacks are consumed by hitting. Aim attacks don’t clear stacks, so you must plan around basic skills or multi‑hit moves to restore damage output.
- “Pew Pew Pew” belt cannon: twelve projectiles from the belt, in an irregular rhythm. The first five are grouped, then a pause, then a final flurry, and a very late twelfth shot after Osquio taps the belt twice. The last shot exists to catch players who think the pattern is over.
- “Drop kick” sequence: a single belt shot at the party that inflicts Barbapapa if unblocked, then a rapid teleport above you into a kick, a follow‑up hand slam, two fly‑by attacks, another belt shot, and finally a Gradient drop kick. The Gradient parry window is several seconds after the sequence starts, once Osquio begins descending from its final jump.
- “Destroy the world” finisher: a giant orb charge and throw near the end of the fight, resolved by one last Gradient Counter. The trick is to commit to the Gradient parry while the orb is in flight, not at the instant of throw.
Because Barbapapa can neuter nukes for multiple turns, Osquio strongly favors multi‑hit skills, counter‑oriented builds, and reliable status cleanses such as Sciel’s Dark Cleansing or Lune’s Healing Light. Cheater, the Picto that grants a second action on turn start, remains extremely useful for pushing high‑AP sequences through narrow attack windows.
Beating Osquio pays out three Grandiose Chroma Catalysts, ten Colour of Lumina, a Perfect Chroma Catalyst, a Recoat, and Esquiso, a late‑game weapon for Verso (and Gustave) that plays directly into the new DLC builds. You also unlock Osquio‑themed outfit and hairstyle options for Verso by default, with matching sets for the rest of the cast purchasable from the Main Field Gestral Merchant next to the flag.
Taken together, Verso’s Drafts’ six bosses form a compact difficulty ladder: four Chromatic remixes that test your memory of enemy kits, a composite brawler locked behind environmental puzzles, and a set‑piece area boss that leans hard on Expedition 33’s timing‑driven combat. None are mandatory, but clearing them meaningfully reshapes how much headroom you have for the Endless Tower and NG+ experiments that sit beyond.
