For players rolling new characters in this league, you’ll quickly find Sentinels dropping as loot from monsters. Each of these little drones has a color denoting its behavior, a power level and (as always in PoE) a variety of modifiers and perks that change how it behaves. These drones are equipped in special slots with their own hotkeys and can be deployed at almost any time during combat to spice up your current encounter POE currency trade .
A short but rewarding burst of Hard Mode, ideally—or an embarrassingly self-inflicted death if you get cocky.
Red ‘Stalker’ Sentinels hover near you for a minute or so, buffing any enemy they spot, making for a relatively controllable rampage. Blue ‘Pandemonium’ Sentinels go off immediately, buffing every enemy on screen and sometimes beyond. Yellow ‘Apex’ Sentinels behave like red ones, but will only target rare, unique or boss baddies while leaving the fodder alone. Each type of Sentinel can only be deployed once per area, so it’s up to you to pick which fights to spice up.
Sentinels do eventually run out of battery power after multiple uses, and because Apple have apparently taken hold of Wraeclast too, there’s no easy way to recharge them. A new crafting item called a Power Core will let you scrap two drained Sentinels to create a new one with a full battery and hybrid perks from its two ‘parents’. There are several types of core, changing how the robo-splicing procedure will work. There are also rare ‘recombinator’ items that let you perform this splicing process on unwanted equipment of the same type.
The really juicy customization comes from the Sentinel Controller panel. It's a circuit grid of buffs and modifiers that will apply to all your Sentinels, assuming their color type is hooked up to the grid. You just need power, which is gained by killing Sentinel-buffed monsters. You can reconfigure your Sentinel grid at will, removing or placing wires as many times as you like, but you’ll never have enough power to completely max out everything. As with all things PoE, you get to pick your poison buy Path of exile currency .
