In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a Colour of Lumina is a consumable that gives one character one extra Lumina Point, and you spend it through the Upgrade Expedition Resources option, at the Curator in camp during Act I and at any Expedition Flag from Act II onward. More Lumina Points means more Luminas equipped at once, which is the game’s whole build system. This guide covers what Lumina Points actually buy, how to spend a Colour, where the item comes from, who should get it first, and what the patches since launch changed about the Lumina menus.
Pictos, Luminas and Lumina Points
Three terms get mixed up here, so a quick sort-out. A Picto is an equippable item: each character wears up to three, and each Picto gives stat bonuses plus one passive effect. Keep a Picto equipped through a few winning battles and it becomes mastered, which adds its passive to a shared list as a Lumina. Any party member can then equip that Lumina, without needing the Picto itself, for a cost in Lumina Points.
A character’s Lumina Points are a budget. Every Lumina has a cost (shown in the Pictos menu since patch 1.4.0), and you can stack as many as the budget allows. Points come from two places: characters gain them as they level up, and Colours of Lumina add to the pool permanently. The item’s in-game description, per player wikis, reads “Can be consumed to give an additional Lumina Point to a character”, and that is exactly what it does: one item, one point, one character.
How to spend a Colour of Lumina
The item is not used from the inventory. Instead:
- Act I: unlock camping (it opens partway through the act), set up camp on the Continent, and speak to the Curator in his cave. Choose Upgrade Expedition Resources.
- Act II onward: interact with any Expedition Flag and choose Upgrade Expedition Resources from the flag menu, next to Upgrade Weapons, Upgrade Attributes and Learn Skills.
- Pick the character, then confirm how many Colours to spend on them. Each one adds a Lumina Point to that character immediately.
The same Upgrade Expedition Resources menu is where healing tints are upgraded, so if you have seen it while improving your healing items, you have already found it. Once spent, a Colour cannot be moved to another character, so decide before you confirm.
Where Colours of Lumina come from
Colours are everywhere once you learn to spot them. They glow purple as pickups in every region from Spring Meadows onward, they drop from bosses and stronger enemies, and Gestral merchants across the Continent sell them for Chroma (player guides put the standard price at 1,000 Chroma each, which we have not confirmed against an official source). Late in the game a few optional areas hand them out in bulk to players who beat their bosses, and New Game Plus re-seeds the world with more.
Because the supply is generous (player guides count hundreds across a full playthrough), do not agonise over any single one. The mistake is not spending them at all: a character sitting on 30 unspent Colours is a character with 30 fewer Lumina Points than they could have.
Who should get them first
Our recommendation is to keep the party roughly even rather than pouring everything into three favourites. Expedition 33 has story sections where a specific character is forced into the party, and a character with a tiny Lumina budget is a liability there. A sensible pattern:
- Give your main damage dealer enough points to run the expensive Luminas their build depends on.
- Bring everyone else up behind them so nobody falls more than a handful of points behind.
- Once a character can equip their whole planned loadout, stop and move on; extra points do nothing on their own.
Lumina Points are only half the equation. Weapon levels unlock their own passive effects at levels 4, 10 and 20, and those stack with Luminas; see our weapon upgrade guide for that side.
What the patches changed
The item itself has not changed, but the menus around it have, verified against the official patch notes:
- Patch 1.4.0 (July 2025) added the Lumina Cost Display, so the Pictos menu shows every Lumina’s cost for planning.
- Patch 1.5.0 (December 2025) added Lumina Sets, which let you save up to 50 different Lumina loadouts and swap between them, plus new filters for the Pictos and Luminas lists and a batch of new Luminas. The same patch fixed Sweet Kill, Teamwork, Dead Energy II, First Strike and others that were quietly giving an extra 10 percent damage, and fixed Boucharo giving +150% Critical chance instead of +50%.
- Hotfix 1.5.1 (December 2025) fixed overlapping text in the Pictos and Luminas lists.
- Patch 1.5.6 (June 2026) fixed Martenon’s Lumina effects not working unless Sciel had two consecutive turns, and the Sireso level 4 Lumina and the Powerful buff overriding each other at the start of battle.
Lumina Sets are the big one. Before December 2025, switching a character from a boss build to an exploration build meant unequipping Luminas one by one; now it is a saved loadout, so it is worth building a set per boss rather than one all-purpose spread.
The 2025 version of this guide called Colour of Lumina “a resource that boosts Lumina Points” that made abilities “trigger more often”. That was muddled: the item does one thing, add a point, and the point does one thing, raise the cap on equipped Luminas. Everything else about the system is in our tips and tricks guide and on the Expedition 33 hub.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Colour of Lumina do? It permanently adds one Lumina Point to one character, raising how many Luminas they can equip at once.
Where do I use Colour of Lumina? Through Upgrade Expedition Resources: at the Curator in camp during Act I, then at any Expedition Flag from Act II onward.
How else do I get Lumina Points? Characters gain Lumina Points as they level up. Colours of Lumina are the only way to add more on top.
Can I move Lumina Points between characters? No. A Colour spent on a character stays with them, so spread them deliberately.
What are Lumina Sets? A feature added in patch 1.5.0 that saves up to 50 Lumina loadouts per game so you can switch builds between fights without re-equipping everything.