A Beginner's Guide to Dealing With 'No Man's Sky' Sentinels
You can run. You can hide. In fact, you can do both.
Across the galaxy in Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky for the PlayStation 4 and PC, armed drones known as Sentinels patrol certain planets to ensure explorers (like you) aren’t disrupting the fauna too much. Not every planet has a strong Sentinel presence, but it’s important to be aware wherever you traverse. These drones are just doing what Big Brother (or whoever is at the center of the universe) is telling them to, but they make your survival and means to explore all the more difficult.
Should you mine too many resources or slaughter too many animals, Sentinels will hone in on your location and punish you with force equal to your “Wanted” level (similar to Grand Theft Auto). But unlike San Andreas, you can’t hijack a helicopter to get away. Sentinels will pursue you all the way to the stars and beyond — but you can still get them off your tail. Here’s how.
Hide!
Naturally, you’re going to want to hide, but just hiding isn’t a smart strategy, nor does it actually shake off Sentinels. No: The real solution to getting rid of Sentinels is to look for colonial outposts.
These small planetary stations — indicated by a small building, sometimes with a landing pad, and a few scattered debris — automatically remove the heat, letting you explore freely afterwards once again. Drones aren’t smart enough to go in and take you down.
Some colonial outposts require you to break the door down, however. That’s straight up breaking and entering, which means even more Sentinels may come flying in before things cool down. Steel doors can only be shattered by firing at them with your gun, not the Mining Beam. You should be upgraded to the Boltcaster the first time you’re asked to break down a door.
Shoot them!
You can also fight fire with fire. If you’re properly armed, you have a chance at shooting down a few Sentinels, which can make running and hiding just a little easier (or even harder, given your heat level). Like Grand Theft Auto, the more Sentinels you destroy the more severe your “heat” or “Wanted” level goes up, so be cautious if you really want to take them on.
Something we’re still trying out…
For whatever reason this has been hard to pull off, but no one playing the game at Inverse has managed to attract a severe wanted level and attempted a hyperdrive jump to another star system. We’re curious if that could also take off the heat, in effect sparing the annoyance of needing to dive into a cave or break into an outpost. If anyone manages to pull it off, bug one of us on Twitter.
