When you meet the Death Knight in Fire Emblem: Three Houses it represents a significant jump in difficulty. You’ll run into the Death Knight in several chapters, and each time he’ll push you to the limits if you choose to confront him. Fortunately, there are a few easy ways to beat him, but depending on whether you’re playing the game on Classic Mode or Casual Mode, you’ll want to alter your approach.
Furthermore, the Death Knight holds a powerful item that can unlock two hidden classes in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Below, we’ll show you how to beat him outright and claim the Dark Seal each time you fight him.
ALSO: More Fire Emblem: Three Houses guides.
Which chapters do you face the Death Knight in Fire Emblem: Three Houses
The Death Knight shows up during the following missions:
- Chapter 4: The Goddess’s Rite of Rebirth (Month 6) | Assault at the Rite of Rebirth
- Chapter 6: Rumors of a Reaper (Month 9) | The Underground Chamber
- Chapter 8: The Flame in the Darkness (Month 11) | The Remire Calamity
According to Nintendo Insider, the Death Knight also appears during The Battle of Garreg Mach mission. This will be found in Chapter 12: To War. In total, this means that there are at least four Dark Seals to be found and won in Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
How to defeat the Death Knight in Fire Emblem: Three Houses
To get yourself a Dark Seal or two, you will need to either defeat or steal from the Death Knight. This won’t be easy. The Death Knight is a powerful enemy, and is more often than not capable of defeating your units in one hit. To make matters worse, the Death Knight will counter any attack at any range. Therefore, In order to defeat the Death Knight you will need to plan carefully.
We’d recommend gathering together units with abilities, skills, and weapons that deal extra damage to enemies on horseback. The Knightkneeler Combat Art is a good one here. You can pick it up rather easily, which helps. Avoid using any allies that have low defense and health, too. A tank-like character might do well here, with high defense and health stats perfect for dealing some damage and taking some of their own. We’d also suggest you attack with Battalions. Since enemies can’t counterattack Gambits, this effectively cancels the Death Knight’s greatest strength. Gambit Boost should help you out, too. Using Gambit Boost will help to maximize your hit percentage chance, which should prove helpful.
On Casual Mode, beating the Death Knight isn’t too tough, regardless of which encounter you’re in. Since you don’t have to worry about permadeath, you can get a little wreckless, which means you can overwhelm him. The key is use units with high movement, like Cavaliers or Pegasus Knights, and get just close enough that he won’t attack you on the next turn. After the enemy moves, you can then encircle him with your highly mobile units. If you planned carefully, you should be able to take him out with two or three Gambits and he won’t even have a chance to respond. On the off chance that he lives until the next turn, you’ll likely lose one unit, but he’ll be weak enough to finish off the next time you regain control.
Despite these tips, taking the Death Knight on is a daunting prospect. We’d, therefore, recommend you try and steal the Dark Seal from him if you’re playing on Classic Mode as one wrong move could mean losing a character for the rest of the game. This can only be done if you have a Thief class character or have another character who can use the Steal ability (likely a character who has mastered the Thief class). To make things easier for you, make sure the character you turn into a thief has a speed stat of at least 20.
To steal from the Death Knight, make sure you have first killed almost everyone else in the map. In several maps with the Death Knight the win conditions are to eliminate him or every other enemy unit, so make sure you don’t accidentally kill everyone but the Death Knight or you’ll obtain victory in the scenario without having the chance to gain the Dark Seal. Place your Thief nearby the Death Knight (but not on a square next to him). Make sure your other characters are near enough to the other enemy in order to kill it after you steal the Dark Seal. Steal the Dark Seal and use the rest of your characters to kill the other remaining enemy or the Death Knight himself to complete the scenario.
