During The Fanning Embers main story quest, you will be pitted against two bosses, the first of which is Fafnir of the North. Midnight Raven will the second of two bosses you will be fighting in The Greatwood, although he won’t be alone for the battle. Thankfully, you’re not alone, either, and will have help in the form of Cid and Torgal, who will allow you to concentrate solely on the boss.

How to Beat Midnight Raven in Final Fantasy 16¶

The biggest problem with Midnight Raven is that he moves around a lot, so getting a good bead on connecting attacks is going to be an issue. When the fight begins, you will have other enemies in the battle, so it’s a good idea to take them out before concentrating on the boss. Once they are defeated, you can lock onto Midnight Raven, so you can always keep an eye on him, even though he will be teleporting around the battlefield quite often. It should be noted that Midnight Raven is the first boss that counts towards the You’re Not the Boss of Me trophy.

All Midnight Raven Attacks in Final Fantasy XVI¶

The following will be a list of all attacks that you will see during the boss battle with Midnight Raven in Final Fantasy XVI.

Teleport Combo¶

Midnight Raven will teleport towards you, try a quick strike, then dodge backwards, before running up to you to try another strike. After this, he’ll do another flip, then teleport forward to try one more strike. Since it’s hard to really gauge things, as the boss is dancing around, it’s best to just wait until the final hit to retaliate.

Charge Combo¶

Midnight Raven will just run towards you, then does an upward slash, followed by another strike. Like a lot of other moves that are just “charge + attack,” this one is no different from those, so you could be well versed in how to dodge it.

Raiton¶

You will start seeing this move after the initial introduction to Cinematic Clashes. Midnight Raven will place some markers on the ground, near your position, and after a few seconds, lightning will strike each one. Considering you can see the locations where they hit, you really shouldn’t be getting hit by these.

Katon¶

This move starts appearing after you are introduced to Cinematic Clashes. Midnight Raven will dash up towards your position, then breath a bunch of fire in your face. You might find this move has the largest potential to hit you, but as long as you keep moving, it should never really hit you.

Futon¶

After being introduced to Cinematic Clashes, you will start seeing this maneuver. This is less of an attack and more of a setup for another move. Midnight Raven will basically just disappear, essentially making you try to panic in finding his location again. It’s also mainly used to set up Assassinate.

Assassinate¶

You will almost always find this move being used after Futon, where the boss will disappear for a few seconds. After reappearing, the boss will charge with some kind of electricity, then do a straight dash at you. Should this move hit, then you will take some big damage, but it’s fairly easy to move out of the way, due to the long wind-up of the move, as well as the distance between you and the boss.

Strategy for the Midnight Raven Boss in FFXVI¶

Midnight Raven is a pretty simple boss, that probably has one of the easier movesets to be able to dodge about everything. His special attacks with names should really never hit you, as they all have tells that make them obvious. It’s the other, more basic attacks without names, that might be more difficult to avoid, but that’s mostly because of his movements. Once you have figured out his movements and the attacks directly related to them, you really should have trouble with the boss.

After the first stagger, you will be introduced to Cinematic Clashes, which are another event that can happen during the boss battles. Basically, instead of just a simple button press, you will need to mash the button shown (always when using the default control scheme). You will have a few of these during the entirety of the battle, so be ready to mash whenever you see a clash going to happen during the cutscenes. If you’re looking for a boss to not get hit by, for the You’re Not the Boss of Me trophy, then this could be that one.