Grinding Gear Games unveils the latest Path of Exile expansion, titled Sentinel, featuring new gameplay systems, quality of life tweaks, and a new challenge league.
The Sentinel expansion centers around the titular Sentinels, small drone-like creatures that players can deploy to make encounters with enemies even more difficult, increasing the associated reward. Sentinels can be found by killing enemies and each has a color that indicates what kind of power they possess, as well as some randomly generated stats and perks.
Red ‘Stalker’ Sentinels will continue to fly near the player and temporarily increase the stats of enemies they spot. Blue “Pandemonium” Sentinels instantly buff all enemies in the area. Yellow ‘Apex’ Sentinels work just like the red ones, but only focus on weird, unique, or boss enemies. Each Sentinel type can be deployed once per area.
After being used a few times, a Sentinel’s battery will run out, and two of these spent Sentinels can be combined with a Power Core into a new, fully charged Sentinel, with some powers from both ‘parents’. The Sentinel Controller Panel allows players to select some buffs and benefits that apply to all of their Sentinels.
The Sentinel expansion adds 20 new keystone nodes to the Atlas skill tree, allowing players to further personalize their characters. There will also be ‘uber’ versions of six bosses coming to the game, which can have new Jewels as rewards, as well as a slew of quality of life tweaks and UI tweaks.
During the livestream revealing the Sentinel expansion, Grinding Gear Games co-founder Chris Wilson discussed controller support for the PC version. After some beta testing, feedback and suggestions from the players have been incorporated, which means that controller support will now “officially launch”. That means that the game can also be played on the Steam Deck from the new update.
Path of Exile’s Sentinel expansion will be available for free starting May 13.