The Floating Nut Sack of Suckiness

The Floating Nutsack of Suckiness is probably one of the most useful things around. It happily floats behind you, sucking loot towards you and minding its own business. Give it a shotgun and it will shoot things. Give it more shields and it’ll buff you when your shield runs out. Give it an ammo case and it will convert dropped ammo you can’t use into dropped ammo you can’t use. Let it die in a fiery explosion and it has a chance of giving you rare items.

I’m of course talking about the Carrier. The Carrier is one of a collection of robotic followers – Sentinels, that follow you around in Warframe. Unlike their pet counterparts – the Kubrow (i.e. weird dog), the Kavat (i.e. weird cat) and the new Helminth Charger (i.e. weird dog with an infection that turns it into some sort of mutated Grineer thing) – Sentinels float just above you at all times, as if held in place by a piece of wire. Much like flying companion cosmetics in Team Fortress 2, but more useful. Oh, and Sentinels don’t require constant maintenance, just the original 100k and resource costs, plus Endo/Credits for upgrading the mods they use. Pets need constant DNA stabilizers and routine care. My space ninjas have no time for that.

Each Sentinel costs about 100k credits to build and has a specific ability and a specific weapon. They can be leveled to a maximum of 30 and have the same number of slots that a Warframe has. They also have polarities and can accept Orokin Reactors and Formas. On top of their specific abilities (which come in the form of mods), Sentinels also have Precept Mods, which allow you to somewhat control what they do – for example, you can give them the Sanctuary Precept mod, which creates a shield around you while you revive someone.  The order you put the mods in is the order that a Sentinel will prioritise those precept abilities.

In the case of the Carrier, originally, the Carrier was the most popular Sentinel by a mile. Why? Because its default precept ability was Vacuum – any loot on the ground would be sucked towards the player for easy collecting. Earlier last year, this was changed so that any Sentinel could use the Vacuum precept, and the Carrier’s usage dropped like a stone. It’s still among the most popular Sentinels, and it still looks like a floating nut sack with a torch in it, but the Helios sentinel automatically scans enemies for you (so you can use them in the testing area and learn their weaknesses) and the Shade makes you invisible for a bit.

Each sentinel’s weapons can also be modded the same way that your own weapons can, but a Sentinel will only attack if it’s given a Precept mod that lets it attack.

Still, Carrier is incredibly useful for me. As you all know, I have awful aim and waste ammo like it’s going out of fashion. So when I found out that Carrier’s new precept ability was Ammo Case, I was thrilled. Ammo Case converts unused ammo that doesn’t match your weapon into ammo that DOES match your weapon. This is perfect, and it means that I never run out of ammo. There’s also a second precept mod (that I don’t own yet) that allows my Carrier to shoot loot containers for even more ammo. In fact, the only times I DO run out of ammo are when my poor Carrier has sadly exploded.

You see, that’s the only real downside to Sentinels. Unlike Kubrows and Kavats, you can’t revive a Sentinel once it’s killed. You can use the Regen mod, which will respawn your Sentinel once with some of its health, but often they’ll just die again straight away, sometimes to the same thing that killed them in the first place.

That’s fine though. I don’t mind. I’ve given my Carrier plenty of mods to increase its chance of survival. I’ve disabled its shotgun weapon, and given it lots of utility stuff. Because that’s what sentinels do best – provide utility. Carrier does his job and I’m very happy I spent 100k to build him.

Thanks, floating nut sack of suckiness.