Preview: Path Of Exile Reveals Sentinel Expansion, And You Just Became The Master Of Your Difficulty Setting

Today, Grinding Gear Games revealed the next expansion for Path of Exile. Appropriately titled “Sentinel” the upcoming expansion introduces ancient constructs of the same name. These have been found scattered across Wraeclast and are waiting for players to collect them in order to make use of their power. Of course, this is a risky affair, as while using a Sentinel will result in great rewards, it will come at the cost of the Sentinel making monsters more powerful.

There are three classes of Sentinels available to players and they will be uncovered by killing monsters. These include the Stalker Sentinel, Pandemonium Sentinels, and the Apex Sentinels. Stalkers follow a player for 30 seconds and empower dozens of monsters at once. The upside is that players can deploy the Sentinel when they find a group of monsters they would like to power up. Pandaemonium Sentinels do a mass AoE that chains between monsters to empower a lot of them at once. Finally, Apex Sentinels only empower rare or unique monsters and have a bigger effect on difficulty and rewards.

When the expansion begins, players will have one slot available to equip a Sentinel – and that will be a Stalker Sentinel. Eventually, they’ll be able to unlock two more, meaning they can have one of each type on them at all times.

While Sentinel’s can’t be harmed by attacks, they do eventually just run out of steam. These can be found scattered about Wraeclast as well and are useful in creating more Sentinels. Since the process requires pairing two depleted Sentinels to get a new one, what the new one will be can be a bit of a surprise. The results can either have traits of one or the other parent husks or just be something completely new.

Some Sentinels will even have mods on them. These beef up the properties of the base Sentinel doing things like extending its duration or increasing the number of monsters it can empower. Some mods also add drops like currency items or unique items. Even more rare are Sentinels with more than two mods. Obviously, these are more powerful, provided they have the correct combination of mods.

As with all things in Path of Exile, Sentinels will become better as players explore. Some high-powered ones players will find in the wild, but others will be improved using a Sentinel Controller. This device allows players to customize the properties of the Sentinel in question and dictate their behavior. The process for this is described in the video below.

An important thing to note is that players can deploy Sentinels while doing other league content. This means that there will always be an opportunity for higher risk and better rewards.

As for the rest of the new content, Grinding Gear Games is working to improve the endgame, particularly the atlas-wise passive tree and pinnacle boss fights. Of note is the addition of 20 keystone passives – all of which can change Path of Exile’s endgame to fit different playstyles. Of course, players can also expect new items and updated monster modifiers as well as quality of life improvements. There are some additional unexpected changes – and not changes – as well. For instance, after 21 leagues, the challenge system is getting some love to make challenges more sustainable for endgame players.

Perhaps more interesting, however, is what they are not doing. For the first time, the developers are intentionally making no changes to character power in an update. No buffs, no nerfs, no nothing. This is a bit of an experiment and, at least during this league, every build in the game will work just as it did before. That said, players will have to figure out how to work around the Sentinels themselves.