Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Cindered Shadows - Chapter 7 Boss (Hard/Classic)

Here is a demonstration video how to tackle the chapter 7 boss in Fire Emblem: Three Houses DLC and here is a small text guide for those who are struggling with the boss (copied straight from my Reddit post):


I finished the DLC on Hard/Classic without losing any units and had 19,972 G in savings going into the last battle so that obviously affected the way I approached things but most of the tips should be useful even with less resources if you just tweak them a bit or prolong the fight a bit.

First of all, I'd suggest on using your money to buy Killing Sword for Byleth and Killing Lance for Dimitri if you've got the money to spare as they at least for me were the guys who dealt the most damage. Next up I'd personally suggest in investing Silver Bow for Claude as his Monster Blast is also a great damage dealer. If you still have some funds left then Hilda/Edelgard/Ashe all obviously also appreciate silver weapons but they were in less crucial role for me personally. Balthus does just fine with his Vajra-Mushti if you still have any charges left in it so I'd say he is the lowest priority to invest money into out of the damage dealers (also remember to equip his Healing Focus combat art, it will be useful here). Yuri was mostly just a support unit for me so investing in his weapons wasn't really necessary and mages don't need any weapons. Obviously if you have lost some units during your playthrough, you might need to shuffle the roles around a bit with your units.

One thing I recommend doing as fast as possible is to break the boss's barrier (it won't regenerate during the fight if you break it one go but if you break it only partially then it will regenerate). Yuri and Edelgard both have access to Blaze gambit which is great way to damage multiple parts of the boss's shield and Byleth and Dimitri have Assault Troop gambit which also can hit one row of shields in one hit and then use the remaining characters to break the remaining shields. With Yuri's high mobility it's quite easy to get him to take position behind the boss where he can effectively use his Blaze and then Edelgard can use hers either on the front or one of the sides. Byleth and Dimitri can be positioned on the opposite sites of the boss for maximum coverage of gambit hits. I recommend doing this very early on but take time to position your characters properly first 'cause Blaze only has one charge and you don't want to waste them.

If the damage difference between weapons was quite minimal, I usually went with the weapon/attack that had the higher crit chance.

All my mages were so squishy that the boss could one hit ko them so I either kept them out of his range or used gambit to attract the boss's attention to one of the tankier characters if I couldn't get the mages out of the boss's range.

Always take out the boss's spawns as soon as they spawn. Early on Yuri could kill them for me but they get tougher as the fight progresses and later on Edelgard, Hilda, Balthus and Byleth were responsible of disposing them (I never wanted to waste two characters to take out one spawn).

When you see the boss charging up his AOE special, don't attack him but rather use that turn to heal everyone up. The turn after launching his AOE, the boss won't be able to counterattack and your crit rate against him will go up for a turn so that's the perfect time to attack him with full force and you don't want to waste that turn on healing your units up (thus heal them in the turn before that, they'll take 10-20 damage from the AOE special). Remember though that the boss can attack on his next turn so keep at least one tank at high enough health that they can tank one attack from the boss and don't let your squishes (mages) get killed there either on his turn (so either retreat them after attacking with them or use a gambit with your tank to attract the boss's attention away from them).

After taking down one of the boss's health bars, he'll do his AOE special again (keep the enemy's attack range visible at all times so you'll see when he is preparing his special) and then it's once again time for you to use the turn healing your team up and then just repeat what you've done before until you beat him.