The Tool Desk
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To beat Simon, reach The Abyss through Renoir’s Drafts, bring a fully prepared five-character roster, and reserve Sciel and Maelle for the forced final transition. Lune, Monoco, and Verso can control the opening phases with Slow, Burn, Defenseless, Powerful, Mark, Break, and burst damage; Sciel and Maelle then need to finish Simon before his final spectral-sword attacks become unmanageable.
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Simon is an optional, late-game boss in The Abyss. The safest plan is to enter with a fully prepared five-character roster, use Lune, Monoco, and Verso to control the first two phases, and keep Sciel and Maelle alive in reserve. When Simon reaches his final threshold, he unleashes an unavoidable attack that erases the active party; Sciel and Maelle then need to end the fight quickly before his final spectral-sword phase overwhelms them.
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Spoiler warning
This guide contains major spoilers for Simon, The Abyss, Renoir’s Drafts, the fight’s forced party wipe, Simon’s transformation, and the rewards. Read only as far as you need if you want to preserve the encounter’s surprises.
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How to reach Simon in The Abyss
Simon is at the bottom of The Abyss, an optional Act III area reached through Renoir’s Drafts. You cannot reach the entrance until Esquie can dive underwater.
- Raise Esquie’s relationship to Level 6 to unlock underwater diving.
- Travel to the water southeast of Visages.
- Enter Renoir’s Drafts and follow the area toward the end of the route.
- Look for the rock structure emitting a golden light.
- Enter the opening, cross the cave and bridge, and descend to the sword-filled bottom of The Abyss.
- Simon is sitting near the landing area. Approach him to start the cutscene and battle.
The Abyss also contains Simon’s journal and other loot, including Simoso. Because Simon is optional, you can leave and return while preparing your characters rather than treating the first approach as a commitment to a required story fight.
Preparation: treat Simon like a postgame-level challenge
A practical target is fully upgraded weapons and characters around the high 80s or approximately level 90. The fight can involve all five active characters over its full sequence, so do not prepare only a three-character team.
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Recommended party arrangement
| Role | Characters | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Opening team | Lune, Monoco, Verso | Elemental setup, healing, Slow, Defenseless, Powerful, Mark, Break pressure, and primary damage. |
| Reserve team | Sciel, Maelle | Survive the forced transition and deliver the strongest practical finishing burst. |
This is a recommended route, not a mandatory composition. A highly optimized Maelle, Verso, or another damage build may shorten the fight enough to skip much of the final phase. The important requirement is having a credible reserve plan when Simon erases the active party.
Preparation priorities
- Upgrade weapons and damage multipliers. Simon has a very large health pool. A low-damage defensive strategy gives him more turns and more opportunities to remove characters permanently from the encounter.
- Bring revival and death-trigger support. Simon can remove a dead character from the Canvas, preventing ordinary revival. Pictos or Luminas that revive immediately, prevent a death, or provide resources when someone dies can preserve a run.
- Prepare Break and burst damage. Breaking Simon at the start of a phase creates a valuable window before his attack cycle becomes difficult to manage.
- Prefer healing, prevention, dodging, and parrying over shields. Simon can absorb party shields and apply them to himself, making a shield-heavy plan less attractive.
- Build around the party’s Gradient Attacks. Relationship progress that unlocks important Gradient Attacks is particularly valuable for this encounter.
If the timing is proving too demanding, the game’s difficulty can be changed during play. The available settings described by the official PlayStation information are Story, Expeditioner, and Expert. Story difficulty weakens enemies and provides more generous dodge and parry timing.
Phase 1: establish control, then let Verso deal the damage
The first health bar teaches Simon’s rhythm while introducing the mechanics that remain dangerous throughout the fight. His sword and hand-to-hand strings contain irregular pauses, so reacting to the first movement is often a mistake.
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- Chroma attack: Simon can reduce a selected character’s health to 1. This attack is not intended to be dodged, and it does not itself kill the target.
- Shield theft: Simon can absorb your party’s shields and turn them into protection for himself.
- Canvas removal: If a character dies without an appropriate immediate-save effect, Simon can remove that character from the Canvas. Normal revival will not bring them back during the fight.
Lune’s job
Use Lune to establish elemental pressure and keep the party functional. Fire attacks apply Burn, while Ice Lance inflicts Slow. Continue building the elemental Stains needed for Elemental Genesis.
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After collecting four different Stains, Elemental Genesis becomes an eight-hit attack capable of substantial damage in the recommended setup. Do not build the entire strategy around a claimed universal elemental weakness: the relevant strategy relies on Simon having no applicable resistance or immunity to this sequence, not on a single confirmed weakness that applies in every version or build.
Monoco’s debuff order
Monoco should establish the conditions that make Verso’s burst worthwhile:
- Hexga Crush for Defenseless.
- Glaise Earthquake for Powerful.
- Gault Fury or Echassier Stabs for Mark.
Once these effects are active, keep them maintained rather than repeatedly rebuilding them at the expense of survival or an approaching phase transition.
Verso’s damage window
Verso is the main early damage dealer. Chevalam, obtained from the Chromatic Chevaliere encounter, is useful because it starts Verso at S-Rank. Use Break pressure and high-damage attacks such as Steeled Strike while Simon is affected by Mark, Defenseless, and Powerful.
Steeled Strike requires Verso to survive until his next turn. Do not begin it immediately before a Simon sequence that you cannot reliably dodge or parry. If the next attack pattern is uncertain, use a shorter action or defensive preparation instead of gambling the run on a long animation.
Reading Simon’s early attacks
Simon deliberately mixes fast attacks and delayed swings. In the short combo, the ground-level slash must be jumped. Several sword strings pause before the actual hit, baiting an early dodge or parry.
- Watch the animation through the pause instead of reacting to Simon’s first movement.
- Do not mash the defensive input after successfully avoiding the first strike.
- For the short combo’s jump-over strike, jump rather than attempting to dodge or parry it.
- Learn the rhythm from the impact timing and animation, not simply from the length of the visible sword motion.
An aggressive opener can combine death-trigger Pictos or Luminas for extra AP, Burn, and Break pressure, followed by Monoco’s debuffs, Lune’s Slow, and Verso’s Free Aim or Steeled Strike sequence. This is an optimization route, not a requirement. A less specialized team can win by rotating healing, debuffs, and safe damage while learning the patterns.
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Phase 2: survive the spectral-sword duplicates
When Simon’s first health bar is depleted, he transforms. The fight becomes substantially more dangerous because most of his ordinary attacks gain a spectral sword that repeats the strike almost immediately.
In practical terms, many attacks now require two defensive responses: one for the original attack and one for the spectral follow-up. The short combo’s jump-over strike is the notable exception identified in the recommended strategy, so do not assume that every move has exactly the same duplicate behavior.
New attacks and what makes them dangerous
- Sword of Lumiere combo: a long sequence combining Chroma effects, sword slashes, delayed swings, and a final descending sword after an audio and visual cue.
- Light-speed attack: a party-threatening multi-hit sequence with varied delays, apparent endings, and a final Chroma collapse. The sequence may look finished before its real final hit arrives.
The safest response is disciplined defense. Keep the target and camera readable, listen for the final audio cue, and continue watching after an apparent pause. Treat every spectral follow-up as a separate hit until the animation and sound confirm that the sequence is over.
Continue the team roles
- Monoco: maintain Defenseless, Powerful, and Mark where practical.
- Lune: maintain Slow and Burn, heal when necessary, and finish the Stain setup for Elemental Genesis.
- Verso: deliver the majority of the damage, but only commit to Steeled Strike when the turn order gives him a safe window.
As Simon approaches the low-health threshold, stop spending resources on unnecessary setup. The next transition is forced, and your priority is to ensure that Sciel and Maelle remain available with enough resources to act immediately afterward.
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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsThe forced party wipe: do not mistake it for a failed run
At a low-health threshold, Simon uses an unavoidable party-wide erasure attack. It cannot be dodged or blocked. The attack removes the active party and forces the reserve party to continue.
Sources describe the threshold differently: one places it below 25%, while another describes the transition at 30% or less. Because the exact value may vary by guide or game version, treat the reliable rule as “the low-health threshold triggers the erasure” rather than planning around a universally confirmed 25% or 30% marker.
This mechanic explains why allowing every other character to die earlier is so dangerous. Simon’s final transition is designed around having remaining characters available. If Lune, Monoco, Verso, Sciel, and Maelle are all dead or removed before the transition, there is no reserve team to perform the intended continuation.
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Phase 3: finish Simon with Sciel and Maelle
Simon’s final phase resembles Phase 2 but adds a second red spectral blade. His duplicated attacks can therefore become tripled in practice, making a prolonged defensive exchange extremely risky.
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Your goal is not to settle into another long rotation. Bring in Sciel and Maelle and attempt to end the fight immediately.
- Use Sciel to Break Simon if possible. A Break creates the safest opportunity for the finishing sequence.
- Cast Fortune’s Fury on Maelle. This doubles the damage of Maelle’s next turn.
- Use Marking Cards if Simon needs Mark. If an immediate action is more valuable, use Intervention to give Maelle an immediate turn with additional AP.
- Set up Maelle’s Virtuose Stance. The recommended route uses Medalum to begin in Virtuose Stance.
- Use Last Chance. This drops Maelle to 1 HP and gives her 9 AP, enabling the next burst sequence.
- Re-enter Virtuose Stance and use Stendhal. This is the primary finishing attack in the recommended route.
- Use Maelle’s level-3 Gommage Gradient Attack if Stendhal does not finish Simon or if it is the better available burst option.
The exact order may change with your AP, Break status, Stance, and available Luminas. The principle remains the same: amplify Maelle’s next turn, create a safe opening with Sciel, and spend the turn on the largest reliable burst rather than trying to outlast Simon’s triple-hit patterns.
If the burst fails, return to the fundamentals from Phase 2. Delay defensive inputs, account for every spectral follow-up, and preserve healing or revival support. A prolonged Phase 3 is possible, but it is considerably less forgiving than the earlier phases.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Common failure points and fixes
“I dodge the first hit, then still get hit.”
You are probably reacting to a duplicated or delayed strike. In Phase 2, many attacks have a spectral follow-up. Keep defending after the apparent first impact, and wait for the real end of the animation or audio sequence.
“Simon keeps surviving my shield strategy.”
Reduce your reliance on shields. Simon can absorb party shields and use them for himself. Healing, damage prevention, reliable dodges or parries, Break windows, and faster burst damage are generally better answers.
“A dead character cannot be revived.”
This is Simon’s Canvas-removal mechanic. Normal revival is not enough if the character was not saved immediately by an appropriate Pictos, Lumina, or death-prevention effect. Bring effects that trigger on death, prevent death, revive immediately, or provide resources when a character falls.
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“The active party disappears and I think the fight bugged.”
The erasure attack is scripted and unavoidable. It cannot be blocked or dodged. The encounter expects Sciel and Maelle—or another surviving reserve plan—to take over.
“My damage is too low to reach the final burst.”
Upgrade weapons, improve damage multipliers, and prioritize Break plus debuff windows. Simon’s large health pool makes purely defensive play increasingly dangerous because every additional turn gives him another chance to use Chroma, steal shields, or remove a dead character.
“I cannot parry the delayed swings.”
Stop responding to the beginning of the motion. Simon’s pauses are intentional. Watch for the actual impact, practice the short combo’s jump timing, and use the difficulty options if you need more generous defensive timing while learning the encounter.
Simon rewards
Defeating Simon awards:
- Simoso, Verso’s weapon.
- 50 Colours of Lumina.
- Two Perfect Chroma Catalysts.
- The Simon achievement or trophy.
You can also collect Simon’s journal entry from the ground near where he was defeated. It may be relevant to the broader Follow the Trail achievement, so check the area before leaving if you are pursuing collectibles or completion milestones.
Quick Simon checklist
- Unlock Esquie’s underwater diving at Relationship Level 6.
- Reach The Abyss through Renoir’s Drafts, southeast of Visages.
- Upgrade weapons and aim for high-80s or level-90 characters.
- Prepare five characters, not just three.
- Start with Lune, Monoco, and Verso; reserve Sciel and Maelle.
- Bring death-trigger revival or prevention support.
- Do not rely on shields as your main defense.
- Use Slow, Burn, Defenseless, Powerful, Mark, Break, and Verso’s burst in Phase 1.
- Defend twice against many Phase 2 attacks.
- Expect the unavoidable erasure attack at low health.
- Use Sciel to create an opening and Maelle to burst Simon in Phase 3.
- Collect Simoso, the Colours of Lumina, Perfect Chroma Catalysts, and Simon’s journal.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Simon required in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33?
Simon is an optional boss in The Abyss, reached through Renoir’s Drafts after unlocking Esquie’s underwater diving at Relationship Level 6. He is not required to complete the main story.
What health percentage triggers Simon’s party wipe?
No. The exact threshold is reported differently by available guides—below 25% in one account and 30% or less in another. Treat it as a low-health transition rather than relying on one exact percentage.
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Can Simon’s forced party wipe be dodged?
The attack is scripted and cannot be dodged or blocked. It erases the active party and forces the reserve party to continue, which is why Sciel and Maelle should remain available.
Who should I use after Simon wipes the active party?
A strong recommended route is Sciel and Maelle. Sciel can Break Simon and use Fortune’s Fury on Maelle, while Maelle uses Virtuose Stance, Last Chance, and Stendhal for a high-damage finish.
The Bottom Line
The key to beating Simon is preparation for the transition, not simply surviving his first two health bars. Keep a five-character roster intact, save Sciel and Maelle for the forced erasure, and use their Break-and-burst sequence to avoid the final phase’s tripled spectral attacks.
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