🧠 How Pictos & Luminas Work in Expedition 33 – A Beginner’s Guide

If you’ve reached Act 2 in Expedition 33, you need to know how Pictos & Luminas work in expedition 33, because chances are the game has suddenly gotten much tougher, especially if you're playing on Expeditioner or Expert difficulty. Many players hit a wall here, and there's one big reason why: they haven’t learned how to properly use Pictos and Luminas.

I was one of those players myself, and in this post, I’ll explain everything I’ve learned so you don’t make the same mistakes I did.

Pictos and Luminas

📜 What Are Pictos and Luminas?

Let’s start with the basics.

• Pictos are special items you equip to characters.

• Each Pictos comes with a Lumina, which grants your character a passive bonus.

• Once a Lumina is unlocked, it can be assigned to any character, not just the one it was equipped to.

  
  

For example:

The Breaking Shots Pictos has a Lumina that gives +50% break damage with free aim shots. Equip it to Lune, and she gets the bonus immediately. After completing four battles, the Lumina becomes unlocked and usable for all characters.

🎨 How to Read the Pictos Menu

If you go into the Pictos menu, you’ll notice:

• Fully Colored Pictos: Already unlocked Luminas.

• Grey Pictos: Locked. Equip them to a character to start unlocking them.

  
  

The Energising Parry has 2 of 4 corners filled in.

Look closely at the icons. For example, the Energizing Parry Pictos has 2 of 4 corners filled in. That means you only need two more battles with it equipped to unlock the Lumina.

⚡ How to Equip Luminas

Once a Lumina is unlocked, go to the Lumina menu (right side of the screen). There, you can assign Luminas to characters using Lumina Points.

• Each character has a certain number of points.

• Each Lumina costs a specific number of points.

• You can build customized loadouts by balancing these points.

  
  

The Luminas menu in Expedition 33

For example, if Lune has 6 Lumina Points left, you can add a couple more useful Luminas to boost her damage or survivability.

🏠 Unlocking Lumina Customization: Meet the Curator

You’ll first gain access to Lumina customization after reaching the manor in Act 1 and speaking to the Curator. After that, the Curator joins your camp and becomes the go-to NPC for upgrades.

In your camp, talk to the Curator to:

• Upgrade Luminas

• Upgrade weapons (more on that in a future post!)

  
  

The Curator menu in Expedition 33

🟢 Tip: If you found this helpful, consider subscribing or liking my video on YouTube. It really helps me out and I hope to make more guide videos in the future!

💥 How Pictos & Luminas Work in Expedition 33 & Why This Matters in Act 2

If you're still ignoring Luminas by the time you reach Act 2, you’re going to struggle. Enemies scale quickly, and without these power boosts, your characters will fall behind.

Trust me, I only learned this because someone told me during a livestream. But once I figured it out, the game opened up, and I actually started having fun again instead of getting stuck.

📺 Watch the Full Video Guide

Want to see all this in action? Check out my full breakdown here:🔗

You NEED to Understand Pictos & Luminas Before Act 2 – Expedition 33 Guide

If you want to see a specific build or guide, leave a comment or send a message, I love digging into this stuff.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one!