At the moment, what we consider to be the greatest challenge in Fire Emblem Three Houses in terms of difficulty is to defeat the Death Knight the first time you meet him, in the mission The Disturbed Ceremony in the Sacred Mausoleum, in the month following the death threat targeting Rhea. But this will not be your only opportunity. Here are some explanations.
Death Knight: interest and rewards
At the risk of spoiling a minor detail of the story, you will meet the Death Knight several times (even if you beat him at his first meeting). This has no significant influence on the story, you can relax. On the other hand, it will always be an opportunity to obtain a precious Dark Seal, which is mandatory to unlock certain classes. He is the only source of Dark Seals. Do not expect to be able to have the classes concerned adopted by more than one or two characters.
How to kill Death Knight? Best strategy
If you play in Normal difficulty and/or with the Beginner mode activated, it will not be excessively complicated to kill it. The advantage of the Beginner mode is that you can accept to lose several characters to kill him in return, so you can take several turns to reduce his life as he chases and decimates your most vulnerable characters. On the other hand, if you play in Difficult, and with the Classic Death System, your first encounter will be almost impossible to win. The power difference being too large, unless you are in NG+ or agree to permanently lose characters. With luck and optimized composition, it is not impossible to overcome it, but it will not be within the reach of the first newcomer. If it is any consolation, defeating him the second time, and especially the third time, is much more feasible.
If you play in Normal mode and you're not already in front of him, scratching your head to find a solution, the easiest but least fun is to loop through the optional missions in order to accumulate a large amount of experience on your characters, and thus be able to beat him with brute force, even if it's not very glorious. In all other cases, you should at least go back to the beginning of the mission and optimize your characters. As you have probably learned in pain, what makes the Macabre Knight's strength is his ability to counterattack twice at any distance when attacked. Even an archer who uses his shot from 4 squares away will be killed instantly. This will therefore limit the approaches available.
You must entrust a squad with offensive power to as many of your characters as possible. Give a squad with such remotely usable power to your mages and archers too. There are only four places in the melee after all. Have them also equip the Authority capability to increase the damage of Combat Tactics. Surround the Knight with your characters as on the screenshot, having them equip remote weapons so that they are considered within attack range. The next turn, use each of your characters one by one to attack with their Tactics. If you have given them a lot of experience and/or an assistant capable of blocking an attack, Byleth and the leader of your house may do better to attack the Death Knight directly, if they are able to survive his counterattack. Use your best weapons and some special anti-cavalry or anti-armor skills, such as the Axe Helmet Breaker technique. Be careful though, take into account the accuracy, the Death Knight is difficult to touch, you may have to use your ability to go back in time if something fails. Before taking action, it may be wise to do a calculation of the damage the Knight will receive in theory, to see if you can kill him during your turn, as it is almost certain that he will kill someone during his game turn afterwards.
Use the same method the next time you meet the Death Knight. From the third time on, your protagonist should be powerful enough to tank it and get around it with a little assistance.
A good alternative: theft
By having a character in the thief class, with a high speed score (probably Byleth) it is possible to steal the Dark Seal from the knight without having to face him. However, since your character will then be in his attack zone, he will be attacked or even killed the next turn. You will have to position the group near the front boss, to kill him as soon as you have made the pockets of the Death Knight.
Written by Robin "Raiden" Bouquet. Translated from French by Millenium.us.org
As is often the case in Fire Emblem, you will have to choose a side. Discover the noble houses of the Officers' Academy, the Black Eagles, the Blue Lions and the Golden Deer (fortunately there is no Slytherin), their bonuses, specificities and the characters who are affiliated with them.
