TL;DR
Agility is the best long-term attribute for almost every character in Expedition 33, but you do not pour into it from level 1. Run a three-phase plan: stack Might and Luck early for raw damage and crit chance, switch to your weapon's two scaling attributes through the mid game, then dump everything into Agility once those are maxed. Each character caps an attribute at 99 points, and you earn 3 attribute points per level. Nothing you spend is permanent, so the cost of a wrong call is a single Recoat item, not a ruined run.
How attributes work
Every level up grants 3 attribute points and 1 skill point, and you spend the attribute points at Expedition Flags. There are five attributes, and each one feeds either one or two combat stats. Which stat each attribute drives decides where your points belong.
| Attribute | What it raises |
|---|---|
| Vitality | Health (primary), plus Attack Power |
| Might | Attack Power only |
| Agility | Speed (primary), plus Defense |
| Defense | Defense (primary), plus Critical Rate |
| Luck | Critical Rate, plus Speed |
Two of these stand out. Vitality is the only attribute that touches both survival and offense, which makes it the safe early pick when a fight keeps one-shotting you. Agility raises Speed and Defense at once, and Speed is the single most valuable stat in a turn-based game where acting first and acting often wins encounters. That dual payoff is why Agility becomes the universal endgame target.
A note on crit. Critical hits deal 50 percent more damage, a flat 1.5x multiplier. Your Critical Rate caps at 100 percent, and there is no benefit past it. Once a build hits that ceiling, any further Defense or Luck points only deliver their secondary stat, so you stop investing in crit and route those points into Speed or Attack Power instead. Plan to reach 100 percent crit, then leave it.
The three-phase allocation plan
Weapon scaling is the hinge the whole plan turns on. At low weapon levels the scaling letters barely move the needle, so flat damage and crit chance win. As your weapon climbs toward level 20 and beyond, the scaling attributes start beating raw Might by a wide margin. Your point spend should follow that curve.
Early game (roughly levels 1 to 15): Might and Luck
Your weapon is weak, so make every hit count and make more of them crit. Pour into Might for straight Attack Power and Luck for cheap Critical Rate. A clean low-investment line is about 2 points in Defense and 15 in Luck, which buys most of your early crit chance for very few points. Then push Vitality into the mid 20s so you survive on Expert difficulty rather than getting deleted in two turns. This phase is about staying alive while your damage ramps.
Mid game (roughly levels 15 to 30): your weapon's two scaling attributes
Check your main weapon's scaling letters and start feeding the two attributes it scales with. Around weapon level 20 the scaling math overtakes flat Might, and from here the difference compounds every level. This is the point where character builds diverge, because each weapon scales differently.
Late game (levels 30 to 60 and up): finish the scaling attributes, then go all-in on Agility
Drive your weapon's two scaling attributes to 99 each, then dump everything else into Agility. Endgame builds commonly run Agility in the 180 to 200 range across the whole spread, and the payoff is more than a defense bump. High enough Speed lets a character act twice in a single party turn, which doubles your effective damage output without touching a damage stat. Agility is the strongest attribute in the back half of the game by a clear margin, and it is the correct fallback for any point you are not sure where to spend.
Per-character allocation
The per-character answer is the same rule applied to six different weapons: find your best weapon's two scaling attributes, max both toward 99, then fall back to Agility. The weapon decides the spread, not the character.
item:maelle has the most settled build in the community because of item:medalum, which scales S in Defense. That makes Defense pull double duty for her, raising both her damage and her Critical Rate, which is why her scaling attribute is also a crit engine. The widely run target is 99 Agility and 81 Defense, a spread that maxes her turn economy while pushing Medalum's S-grade Defense scaling. The full point-by-point spread and rotation live in the Maelle Stendhal build guide.
[[build:XJKN4A]]
For item:lune, item:sciel, item:verso, item:monoco, and item:gustave, run the same logic against each one's best-in-slot weapon. Identify the two attributes that weapon scales with, take both as high as 99, and spend the rest on Agility for extra turns. A weapon that scales in Might and Agility wants those two; a weapon that scales in Vitality and Defense wants those. The structure never changes, only the two letters you are chasing. If you are still deciding who to build around first, the character tier list ranks each one for Expert clears.
Respec freely with Recoat
The reason none of this should make you nervous: Recoat refunds every attribute point you have spent on one character. You use it from the attributes menu at any Expedition Flag, and it lets you rebuild a character's entire spread from scratch. Supply is limited but available throughout the run, so respeccing is a real option whenever you find a better weapon or pivot a character's role. Lumina assignments come off freely with no item at all, so the only thing worth a moment's thought is your attribute spread, and even that is reversible. The Pictos and Lumina system guide covers how those slots interact with your stat plan.
Spend boldly early, switch to your weapon's scaling attributes when they come online, and let Agility soak up the rest. Keep a Recoat in your pocket and the worst-case cost of any choice is one item and five minutes at a flag.