While most characters in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the 16th game in the legendary Fire Emblem franchise, need the plentiful Beginner Seals, Intermediate Seals, or Advanced Seals to get promoted, there are a few special classes that can only be attained by utilizing a rare Dark Seal.
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Players seeking to add a Dark Mage or a Dark Bishop to their ranks will definitely need this promotional item, as the Dark Seal is the only way to promote a character to these powerful dark magic classes. It should be mentioned, however, that only male characters can become a Dark Mage or a Dark Bishop, with Hubert of the Black Eagles house being the best candidate in the entire game for these classes.
There will be no easy way of obtaining Dark Seals for the first part of the game, as the only way to get them is to face the Death Knight. This powerful foe is very difficult to take down at the early parts of the game where one will want Dark Seals the most, but they thankfully appear pretty often.
- Chapter 2 (Cindered Shadows DLC)
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 17 (Silver Snow path)
- Chapter 18 (Silver Snow path & Verdant Wind path)
- Chapter 19 (Verdant Wind path)
- The Face Beneath (the paralogue battle for Caspar & Mercedes)
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By Chapter 8, players should have strong enough units and sound enough tactics to defeat the Death Knight in a fair fight, though it is not recommended to take on the Death Knight in Chapter 4 or Chapter 6 unless one is extremely confidant in their strategies.
The ideal units to pit against the Death Knight as those with high Defense, Speed, and Luck stats. The high defense will allow one to last a round against the powerful foe's attacks, the high Speed will prevent the armored adversary from striking twice, and the high Luck will decrease the Death Knight's chances of unleashing a critical hit, which often makes his attacks fatal to any unit.
A far less risky method of acquiring Dark Seals is to steal them from the intimidating enemy by implementing a Thief with a Speed stat higher than the Death Knight's (who has a base speed of 16). This should not be too difficult, as there are plenty of great candidates for this Intermediate class, and Thieves also have a high growth rate for Speed. Simply have one's Thief unit walk up to the Death Knight and pilfer the Dark Seal before getting them out of there by any means necessary.
To promote a character with a Dark Seal into a Dark Mage or a Dark Bishop, they will need a sufficiently high Reason skill in order to pass the Certification Exam for these classes. For the Dark Mage class (an Intermediate class), the character will need to be male and possess a Reason skill of C or higher.
The Dark Bishop class (an Advanced class) is a bit trickier to get to, as the desired unit will need to be a Dark Mage and possess a Reason skill of A or higher. However, this class is incredibly powerful and can be a devastating magical force on the battlefield that can eclipse all other magic-using units in terms of damage output.