Monster-buffing drones run amuck in Wraeclast as the Sentinel League kicks off.
With its appeal as the spiritual successor of Blizzard’s Diablo 2, Path of Exile is one of the most popular ARPGs. This popularity mainly rides on Grinding Gear Games’ record being stellar, receiving a positive reception from their community and casual players alike as one of the best developers in the gaming industry.
They’ve just released the latest expansion and its own league on PC, known as Sentinel (May 13). Meanwhile, console players have to wait longer (May 18). We’ll be explaining all there is to know about the mechanics and gameplay of the Sentinel League and how it might affect the usual methods that players do for farming PoE currency.
Sentinels Will Buff Enemies
Before you head to a specific location to farm materials from enemies and sell them in the PoE market, you might want to double down on the preparations. Path of Exile is unique because it wants you, the player, to set the terms of your suffering. There are huge, customizable endgame and quarterly events (the double or nothing gamblers arena is a perfect example). There’s a significant focus on choosing how you want to make your life harder in exchange for you. The Sentinel League brings what looks to be a straightforward way to challenge yourself. There’ll be a satchel full of consumables drones that drop at random for this May’s expansion, empowering your enemies while giving them bonus items.
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For those of you who are just starting with new characters, you’ll quickly find out that there will be Sentinels that drop as loot from monsters in the Sentinel League. Each drone has a color that denotes its behavior, a slew of perks and modifiers, and a power level. These drones can be deployed any time during combat and are equipped with special slots that have hotkeys. This will surely spice up your enemy encounters; think of it as having short but rewarding bursts of Path of Exile in Hard Mode. Either that or an embarrassingly self-served death if you get too lofty.
Different Types of Sentinels
You’ll find three types of Sentinels scattered around Wraeclast when doing the Sentinels Challenge League. Blue Sentinels called Pandemoniums go off immediately and buff every enemy that you see on your screen and sometimes even beyond. Then there’s the Red Sentinels, otherwise known as Stalkers, which will consistently fire buffs to any enemy they spot as they hover around you for a minute or so. Finally, the Yellow ‘Apex’ Sentinels behave similarly to Stalkers but will only target unique, rare, or boss enemies.
Fear not if you think the Sentinels will be the bane of your existence in Path of Exile. They eventually run out of steam after multiple uses, but don’t throw them away just yet! Depleted Sentinels can be fused with a Power Core (a new crafting item) to create a Sentinel that takes on the traits from each Sentinel husk used in the construction.
There are different core types, thereby changing how the construction will work. There are also rare ‘recombinator’ items that let players perform the splicing process on any unwanted equipment of the same type.
To tweak the behavior of your Sentinels even further, you can use the Sentinel Controller panel. It’s a circuit grid of modifiers and buffs that’ll apply to all of your Sentinels – assuming their color type is hooked up to the grid. All you need to use is power, which you can gain by killing monsters that Sentinels buffed. The best part is that you can reconfigure your Sentinel grid and remove or place wires many times. It’s very much true to Path of Exile’s nature, where you get to pick your poison.
Occasionally, you might get Unique Sentinels from crafting a combination of two used husks or even obtain them from empowered bosses and enemies, making them more common to encounter in PoE’s endgame.
These are extremely powerful and intended to have unique applications; they can’t be disassembled when depleted. Even Unique Sentinels can alter the way people do the endgame content. The Hollow-Eyed Skull is a prime example – a Stalker type Sentinel that allows players to get the modifiers of rare monsters they slay.
Sentinels Offer A Challenge Compared to Other Leagues
Besides these drone-like machines, the Sentinel League also adds 20 new keystone passives to the Atlas tree, letting players have more control over Path of Exile’s endgame. According to Grinding Gear Games, Sentinels is the most challenging content that’s been added to the game ever, with the power of the Recombinators giving the top crafters a run for their money. It won’t be long before we see Sentinel husks and other items becoming in demand in the PoE market soon.
