Knight III in Return of the Legion is the damage wall of Anomaly Arbitration’s Version 4.5 rotation. Enemies sit behind a flat 60 percent damage reduction, and the only way to shave it down is to put more than four ally targets on the field at once. That single rule decides which teams clear all three stars and which ones stall out at four or six cycles.
Quick answer: Field at least two memosprites (or other extra ally targets) alongside your four characters to cut the Joint Forces reduction from 60 percent down to 20 percent, kill the Furiae Warriors in wave 1 and the Flame Reaver’s vessels in wave 2, and finish inside 2 cycles with no deaths for the full 3 stars.
Knight 3 stage rules and star conditions
The stage runs two waves and the star targets are cycle-based, so every wasted turn costs a star. Ice and Quantum are the recommended types here, and the roster you use is locked out of the other Knight stages, which is why team planning matters before you press start.
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Enemy trait | Joint Forces: enemy damage taken reduced by 60%; reduced by 20% for each ally target beyond 4 on the field |
| Clear target | Victory within 6 cycles |
| Objective 2 | Victory within 4 cycles |
| Objective 3 | Victory within 2 cycles |
| Objective 4 | No downed characters |
| Recommended types | Quantum, Ice |
Note: the “no downed characters” objective is scored separately from the cycle targets, so a fast clear that loses a unit still leaves a star on the table.
How the Joint Forces damage reduction works
Joint Forces counts ally targets, not characters. A standard four-unit team sits at exactly four targets, so the full 60 percent reduction applies and nothing you do to your relics will fix it. Each additional ally target on the field peels 20 percent off that number.
| Ally targets on field | Enemy DMG reduction |
|---|---|
| 4 (base team) | 60% |
| 5 (one extra target) | 40% |
| 6 (two extra targets) | 20% |
In practice this means memosprites. Two summoned allies on the field at the same time drops the penalty to a workable 20 percent, which is why Remembrance-heavy lineups are the default answer for the stage and why teams without any memosprite access struggle to reach the 2-cycle mark.
Wave 1: Furiae Praetor and Blaze Out of Space
The opening wave puts two Furiae Praetor and two Blaze Out of Space in front of you. The Praetor summons Furiae Warriors during the fight, and if you leave them alive the Praetor absorbs them and swings back with a heavy hit on your team.
| Enemy | Weaknesses |
|---|---|
| Furiae Praetor x2 | Quantum, Lightning, Ice |
| Blaze Out of Space x2 | Quantum, Physical, Ice |
| Furiae Warrior (summon) | Imaginary, Quantum, Lightning |
| Flame Reaver of the Deepest Dark (wave 2) | Quantum, Lightning, Ice |
Wave 2: Flame Reaver of the Deepest Dark and its vessels
Wave 2 is a single boss with a summon loop. The Flame Reaver calls out vessels, and those vessels are the trigger for its heaviest attacks. Killing a vessel also chips the boss directly, so the fastest damage route is also the safest one.
Team options that clear Knight 3
Mono-Remembrance is the cleanest fit because it naturally keeps two memosprites out. Everything else has to compensate with raw damage or borrow a memosprite unit into the support slot.
| Main DPS | Rest of the team |
|---|---|
| Castorice | Evernight, Cyrene, Hyacine |
| Evernight | Cyrene, Robin • Summeretto, Hyacine |
| Aglaea | Cyrene, Robin • Summeretto, Huohuo |
| Ashveil | Mortenax Blade, Robin • Summeretto, Hyacine |
| Archer | Rin Tohsaka, Summeretto, Hyacine |
Workable substitutes exist if those units are locked into another Knight stage. Seele, The Herta and Anaxa cover the DPS slot, Ruan Mei, Sparkle, Sunday, Tribbie, Cerydra and Ice Trailblazer fill support, and Huohuo, Aventurine, Gallagher or Dan Heng • Permansor Terrae handle sustain. The tradeoff is real, though: drop the extra ally targets and you are fighting through the full 60 percent reduction.
Community reaction to this rotation has been blunt about that restriction, with the Flame Reaver’s damage cut singled out as the reason accounts without Remembrance units cannot reach three stars.
A 2-cycle Archer clear and what it took
Knight III is beatable at 2 cycles outside the standard Remembrance shell. One documented run pairs Archer on The Hunt with Sparkle, Rin Tohsaka and a Remembrance unit, closing both waves and the Phase II transition inside the tightest cycle target.
The investment behind it is worth reading as a benchmark rather than a shopping list. Archer runs at E0 with In the Hell Where Ideals Burn, a 4-piece Genius of Brilliant Stars and 2-piece Livestream’s Protean Vistas, sitting at 3,029 ATK, 105 SPD, 93.4 percent CRIT Rate and 153.4 percent CRIT DMG. Sparkle is at E1 with an S5 Dance! Dance! Dance!, 4-piece Eagle of Twilight Line and 2-piece Sprightly Vonwacq, running 151 SPD. Rin Tohsaka carries an S5 Make the World Clamor with Lushaka, the Sunken Seas at 159 SPD, and the Remembrance slot runs Fly Into a Pink Tomorrow with a 4-piece World-Remaking Deliverer.
The takeaway is not the exact numbers. It is that a non-Remembrance DPS needs high speed, near-capped crit rate and a support line that can compress two waves plus a boss phase into two cycles to beat what a memosprite team gets from the Joint Forces reduction alone.
Confirming the 3-star clear
The result screen after the Flame Reaver dies shows “Challenge Completed” and a Consumed Cycles counter. A 2 there, with no character downed during either wave, is the full three stars for the stage. Anything from 3 to 4 cycles gives you two stars, and 5 to 6 gives one.
If a run stalls, the cause is almost always one of three things. The Furiae Warriors were left alive long enough for the Praetor to absorb them, the Flame Reaver’s vessels were ignored while you focused the boss health bar, or the team only had four ally targets on the field and never got the damage reduction below 60 percent.
Anomaly Arbitration resets with each version, and the Version 4.5 cycle runs until the end of the patch on September 29th, 2026. Roster planning across all three Knights matters as much as the individual fight, since characters used on one stage cannot be reused on another.
