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The Path of Exile Sentinel League is finally upon us. Here's everything you need to know about Path of Exile's next League.
Path of Exile is currently one of the most popular ARPGs of recent years, thanks to its seasonal major content updates, and its adherence to its appeal as being the spiritual successor of Diablo 2. Coming this May, Grinding Gear Games will be releasing its latest expansion along with its own challenge league, known as Sentinel.
Path of Exile Sentinel League Release Date: May 13, 2022
This update will be available on PC on May 13 PDT, and on console on May 18 PDT. In this article, we will be explaining the gameplay and mechanics of the Sentinel League, and how they might affect the experience of Path of Exile’s regular player base.
Sentinel Introduction, Classes, and Mechanics
Every league of Path of Exile introduces a new gameplay mechanic that significantly changes how players build characters, obtain currency, and manage the ever-expanding endgame. In Sentinel league, players will have new mechanical buddies going alongside them in Wraeclast. These floating wardens are called Sentinels, and they can be found throughout the campaign and the endgame.
The Sentinel’s main goal is to empower enemies upon the player’s command, which greatly increases the difficulty of the encounter, but also increases the potential rewards they drop.
There are three classes of Sentinels, with each one suited for a different situation that players will stumble upon. Stalker Sentinels are red in appearance and are able to sequentially empower foes as players move from one pack to another. Pandemonium Sentinels are blue in color and can chain-empower huge swaths of enemies, though can only be used once per map. Apex Sentinels are yellow in color and can selectively empower rare and unique enemies, and makes them drop even greater rewards than usual.
At the start of the league, there will only be one available slot for a Sentinel that a player can actively use, but you can unlock two more slots as you go through the campaign.
The Sentinel Controller
In perfect Path of Exile fashion, the Sentinel mechanic adds another layer of extreme complexity in the form of the Sentinel Controller. To put it simply, the Controller is a specialized passive skill tree that affects how Sentinels behave, which often leads to significantly greater rewards overall. Unlike other trees, however, the Controller is very friendly for experimentation and dynamic strategies, as completely changing the tree does not cost any currency or any resource whatsoever.
You can reach different nodes on the Controller by connecting filaments between any two nodes, while one’s power units can activate a continuous line of filaments to activate a series of nodes. You start off with only a few power units that can only power a small number of nodes, but this can keep increasing as you progress throughout the game.
Sentinel Power Core and Assembly
As powerful as Sentinels are, they don’t last for very long. Every Sentinel can only be used a certain amount of times, and they will be useless in combat once they are depleted. However, you will occasionally pick up Power Cores, which are league items used to assemble new fully-charged Sentinels from the dried husks of other Sentinels.
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By right-clicking a Power Core, an interface will appear where you can disassemble two depleted Sentinels of any type (except Unique Sentinels), to create a new fully-charged hybrid of the previous two. Certain mods from the two disassembled Sentinels can carry over to the new one, but new mods can also appear unpredictably, making each crafting process unique and exciting.
Thankfully, GGG has learned from the inventory clutter that has horribly plagued older leagues from days past. Similar to Heist and Archnemesis league, Sentinel league also has its own separate locker where you can keep numerous stacks of Sentinels, without having to take up space in your personal stashes.
Unique Sentinels
Occasionally, you may obtain Unique Sentinels from crafting a lucky combination of two used husks. These Unique Sentinels are extremely powerful but are intended to have specialized applications, and can’t be disassembled when depleted. This makes them quite valuable, and requires more thought in optimizing their way of use. You can also obtain Unique Sentinels from empowered enemies and bosses, which makes them more common to encounter in the endgame.
Some Unique Sentinels can substantially alter the way people do endgame content. One example is The Hollow-Eyed Skull, which is a Stalker-type sentinel that allows players to obtain the modifiers of Rare monsters they kill. This will be interesting for players who want to try the effects of a Headhunter, without having to obtain the very expensive Headhunter belt.
Sentinel Crafting
By defeating certain empowered bosses with the right setup, players will find Recombinators, which are essentially the opposite of a split craft. These Recombinators introduce the highest end of crafting, by allowing mods from wildly different base types to merge into one item. Along with the current meta crafting state of the game, this addition will eventually give birth to powerful items never seen before in the history of the game.
Afterthoughts
Path of Exile: Sentinel is a league that can be enjoyed by different types of players. The mechanics are not intrusive during combat and are smooth to play with, which is a delight for speed mappers. The complexity of assembling Sentinels and the Controller itself will certainly be enjoyed by people who want to optimize their currency yield. And finally, the crafting potential of Recombinators will definitely give the top crafters a run for their money, which is ultimately good for the economy of the league.
And that's everything you need to know about Path of Exile Sentinel League. For the full patch notes, check it out here.
