Reading the clues in Classic mode, column by column

The grid at a glance

Each guess adds a row at the top of the grid: the portrait and name of the character you proposed, then six cells compared with today's answer. The most recent row is outlined in thin gold. On mobile, the grid scrolls sideways.

• Green: the value is exactly the answer's. A small ✓ appears in the corner of the cell.
• Orange: a partial match, only possible for Affiliation and Combat. Look for the ◐ symbol.
• Red: the value does not match.

Above the grid, the "Last try" line shows six small diamonds, one lit for each green cell in your latest guess. It is a handy summary, but it does not replace reading the cells one by one. Green on Category and Gender is worth far less than a single green on Zone.

Category: five very uneven families

Category places each character in one of five families: Human, Nevron, Gestral, Axon or Creature. The catch is how uneven they are:

With 71 Nevrons out of 91 characters, a green "Nevron" tells you almost nothing. A red one, on the other hand, wipes out most of the mode in one go. The other families are small and easy to remember:

• Human: the expedition's heroes, a few people of Lumière and a handful of major story characters.
• Gestral: Monoco, the merchant Noco and the chief, Golgra.
• Axon: Visages, the Mask Keeper, Sirène and The Reacher.
• Creature: Esquie and Francois.

Role: the cell that sorts the bosses

Classic mode uses four roles: Playable, NPC, Boss and Optional Boss. The "Mob" role only exists in Complete mode, since Classic leaves ordinary enemies out.

Above all, remember the site's convention: every chromatic Nevron is classed as an "Optional Boss". They make up most of that role, alongside about ten non-chromatic optional bosses such as Clea, Simon, Golgra, Serpenphare, Sprong or the Mime. "Mandatory" bosses (the Boss role) are the ones the main story or an update puts in your path.

A classic trap: the same name can carry two roles. Goblu is a Boss, Chromatic Goblu an Optional Boss. If the Role cell turns red while everything else points to Goblu, try the variant.

Gender: nearly always "Unknown"

Gender is Male, Female or Unknown. Every Nevron is "Unknown", which covers 79% of the mode. The consequence is immediate: a green Male or Female leaves only about ten characters, among the humans, Gestrals, Axons and creatures, and a red "Unknown" leaves barely twenty. A green "Unknown", on the other hand, merely confirms what you suspected.

Affiliation: taming the orange

Affiliation is a list, and that is where orange comes in. There are eight values: Expedition 33, Lumière, Gestrals, Axons, Nevrons, Dessendre Family, Expedition Zero and Unaffiliated. Most characters have only one, but the expedition members and a few others combine two or three.

The colour rule is strict:

• Green if both lists are identical, order aside.
• Orange if they share at least one value without being identical.
• Red if they share nothing.

So orange does not mean "nearly". It means "at least one value in common, but not the same list". The answer may have more affiliations than your guess, fewer, or different extra ones. If you guessed Gustave (Expedition 33 and Lumière) and got orange, the answer could be another expedition member who is not from Lumière, or someone from Lumière who never joined the expedition. To settle it, follow up with a character who has only one of the two values: the cell will turn plainly green or red.

Combat: the same trap, only more frequent

Combat works exactly like Affiliation: a list of styles (Sword, Magic, Ice, Flight…) with the same green, orange and red rule. Two styles dominate: "Chroma", found on 61 characters, and "Brute Force" (19).

That frequency creates a trap. A chromatic variant keeps the styles of its base form and adds "Chroma". If you guess a chromatic, an orange Combat very often just means "the answer has Chroma too" and nothing more. To get more out of it, look at the other style of your guess: if it is rare, the orange becomes far more telling.

Zone: where the character first appears

Zone shows where the character appears for the first time in the game, cutscenes included. It only knows green and red. The mode has some thirty zones, from the Continent to the Endless Tower, and their names follow the game's official localisation. The guide to the areas of the Continent covers them all, with the number of characters who make their entrance in each.

Two practical notes. First, the zone of first appearance is not necessarily where you fought the character most. Second, a chromatic variant rarely lives in the same place as its base form; that is the case for the large majority of them. Gault first appears in Yellow Harvest, whereas Chromatic Gault waits for you on the Stone Wave Cliffs.

An annotated game

Here is a real game replayed with the actual grid. The answer was Tisseur, a boss from Sirène.

First guess. The opener recommended by our first-guess analysis returns three greens (Category, Gender, Affiliation) and three reds. In plain words: a Nevron, but not an optional boss, with neither Chroma nor Brute Force, and not from the Continent. Together, those four constraints leave only a handful of Nevron bosses.

Second guess. Among the remaining candidates, Glissando has the advantage of testing a precise zone, Sirène, home to two of them. Result: five greens and a single red, on Combat. The answer is therefore a Nevron boss from Sirène that does not fight with music. Only one character fits every condition.

Third guess. All that is left is to type it in. Three guesses, without a single blind stab.

The method in short

1. Open with a guess that splits the list, not with your favourite character. Common values (Nevron, Optional Boss, Chroma, Continent) sort better than rare ones.
2. Turn every colour into a constraint: green = value required, red = value excluded, orange = at least one value shared.
3. Combine the constraints from all your guesses, not just the latest one. The combination is what narrows the list.
4. Use the suggestion list: under each name it shows the category and role, which lets you rule out incompatible characters very quickly.
5. When few candidates remain, play one that fits: it can win on the spot.

Traps to avoid

• Looking for an ordinary mob in Classic mode: Lancelier and Petank are not in it, but their chromatic variants are.
• Mixing up a base form and its variant: same name, different role, and often a different zone.
• Over-reading an orange Combat after a chromatic guess: "Chroma" is shared by most of the mode.
• Forgetting that every Nevron has the "Unknown" gender: a green there proves almost nothing.

To revise every character's clues, the character codex lists them all. And to practise without pressure, the free mode on the Classic page gives you as many games as you like.