FEATURE DEEP-DIVE

Drones

Three autonomous gun platforms fly your flanks: an Electric striker, a Reflect bodyguard and a Burning arsonist. Behind them sits the game's purest slot machine — a refresh-shop gacha, a 35-star ladder that eats 47 duplicate drones, and a passive-skill recast with a 0.42% jackpot.

What a drone actually is

Drones are the fourth and newest companion collection (the client still carries the compensation mail from when the old drone system was ripped out: "a brand new drone system is online… your old drones will be removed"). Unlocked at player level 45, they are autonomous units that fight alongside your fighter: each fires a normal attack on its own and cycles an active skill every 3 seconds of charge.

You field three drones at once, one per deploy slot. Their contribution is split evenly — each slot carries 33% of total drone attack weight (atk_weight [0.33, 0.33, 0.33]).

Crucially, drones are not independent stat blocks: the in-game manual says "Drone attacks and HP will give bonus attributes in proportion to the selected fighter", and "the drone's damage type (physical or energy) is always the same as that of the selected fighter." A drone is best read as a multiplier bolted onto your fighter, with its own leveling economy.

Tuning constants from drone_conf: drone normal attacks hit for 50% of drone ATK (normal_atk_ratio 0.5), drone crits deal ×2 damage (critDamage 2), and drone HP transfers at full rate (fight_hp_ratio 1).
27
Drones · 9 per grade
3
Elements & deploy slots
35
Star (Evolution) levels
23
Passive skill families
200
Level cap per drone
0.42%
Orange passive roll
Split-mode balancing again: a drone's damage output ratio is ×1.0 in PvE but ×0.025 in PvP — the same trick used on Sentinels, letting the developer tune both arenas without touching the unit.

Three elements, three battle stations

Every drone belongs to one of three types. The types are hard-wired deep into the system: actives, status effects and even which passives a drone is allowed to roll are type-gated ("The skill is exclusive to a different drone type, cannot be selected").

Slot 1 · Left-flank
⚡ Electric

Burst damage. Actives deal electric damage, stack Electric Shock, buff electric damage/crit of all deployed drones.

Slot 2 · Defender
⛨ Reflect

The bodyguard. Actives raise Recoil (reflects enemy drone skill damage), physical/energy shields, max-HP buffs.

Slot 3 · Right-flank
🔥 Burning

Damage over time. Actives stack Burning (up to 6 stacks), strip enemy shields, cut all drone cooldowns.

Slot names from the UI strings (uav_p_1..3: "Left-flank / Defender / Right-flank"). The one-type-per-slot pairing shown here follows the config ordering and the Reflect kit's obvious bodyguard role.

The status-effect glossary

The drone battle layer runs its own buff system — 11 effects, and note how many only interact with enemy drones. This whole subsystem is largely drones-versus-drones, which is why PvP is where it matters most despite the 0.025 output scalar (drone-vs-drone reflect damage is its own channel).


The roster — 27 drones

Nine drones per grade, three per element. In the live game drones grade as N / R / SR (blue / purple / orange) — a deliberately compressed ladder compared to the fighters' N→UR+ scale. Naming has a scheme: SR drones are constellations (Draco, Orion, Aquila…), R drones are monsters (Hydra, Medusa, Cerberus…), N drones are soldiers (Hunter, Sentry, Ninja…).


Active skills — one signature move each

Each drone owns a unique active skill with 8 levels. The skill's damage multiplier is the real payload: an SR active opens at 200% drone ATK and closes at 300%; R runs 170%→255%; N runs 120%→180%. All actives share the 3-second charge cycle — the differentiation is entirely in the rider effects.

You don't level actives directly: the active gains a level at every 5th star of Evolution (stars 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35). A max-level active therefore implies a max-starred drone.


Progression ① — Leveling (Batteries & Stars)

Levels 1→200 buy flat HP/ATK, paid in Batteries (the drone-specific material) plus Stars (the universal upgrade currency). Each grade runs its own curve — an SR drone costs exactly an R and an N to level, but delivers only 1.25× / 1.67× their ATK (1.9× / 2.5× their HP). Higher grades pay superlinearly for their headroom.

Totals to hit level 200: SR 290,530 Batteries + 12.95M Stars · R 145,265 + 6.47M · N 72,635 + 3.24M.

Made a mistake? A leveled drone can be reset to level 1 for 200 Diamonds with all materials refunded — unusually forgiving for this genre, and a hint that the designers expect you to re-target your investment as better drones drop.

The full 200-level curve for each grade — per-level stats, per-level cost, and the running total:


Progression ② — Evolution: the 35-star ladder

Evolution ("star-up") is where the system shows its teeth. Every star consumes 1-star duplicate copies of the same drone — 1 copy per star through ★24, then 2, then 3. Reaching ★35 devours 47 duplicates (48 copies of the drone in total). Each star also adds +10% HP & ATK, compounding to +340% at cap.

47
Duplicates to hit ★35
+340%
HP/ATK at ★35
5
Passive cells (by ★5)
188,700
Star power, SR @ ★35

Stars also drive everything else:

Do the duplicate math: 47 feeder copies of a specific SR drone, each appearing at 0.167% per shop slot. Evolution is the single deepest sink in the game per unit — deeper than any fighter's star ladder — and it's per-drone, times three deploy slots.

Progression ③ — Passives & the Recast slot machine

The passive layer is a library of 23 skill families, each existing in four grades — Green Blue Purple Orange — and 7 levels within each grade. When a star-up rolls a passive, the grade odds are published in-game and match the game's weight table exactly:

62.48%
Green grade
35%
Blue grade
2.1%
Purple grade
0.42%
Orange grade

Three families are type-exclusive (Skill Boost → Electric, Reflect Boost → Reflect, Burning Boost → Burning — each type's library simply zero-weights the other two). The rest are shared: crit, attack rate, extra trajectories, piercing, ricochet, boss damage, an extra-life "Cheating Death", and more. Duplicate-effect rule: only the highest-grade copy of an effect works.

Recast — reroll until it hurts

Recast rerolls all unlocked passives on a drone for 30 Modified Chips, preserving each slot's level but rerolling what the skill is. You preview the result and choose keep-or-restore — but the chips are spent either way.

You can lock passives you want to keep before recasting: locking 1/2/3/4 skills escalates the cost (lock-cost tiers 2/3/4/5 from drone_refine_skill) — protecting three good rolls while fishing for the fourth is where the chips really burn.

Two mercy valves exist: every 30 Modified Chips spent mints 1 Universal Modified Chip, which buys a chosen passive (Blue, Purple or Orange — higher grades cost more chips) via the Selection feature. And two drones at ★5+ can Transpose — swap their entire passive loadouts — for 300 Diamonds.

P(specific Orange passive) = 0.42% ÷ 20 families 0.021% per roll
→ ≈ 4,760 recasts · 142,800 chips expected for one exact Orange skill
but 142,800 chips 4,760 Universal Chips along the way — the pity currency is the real path.
The recast UI even warns you before you reroll away quality: "A high-quality passive skill for drones has appeared. Continue recast?" — the same anti-regret pattern the summon shop uses.

Combination — the set-bonus layer

The 27 drones form 9 fixed trios (the three same-grade drones of each element). Owning all three activates the set; the bonus then levels up with the trio's stars — combination level N requires all three drones at ★N, up to level 35. SR and R sets add a third, set-specific stat: Electric sets give damage reduction, Reflect sets give fighter Physical DEF, Burning sets give fighter Energy DEF.

Kind detail: selling a drone does not deactivate an already-activated combination — the set remembers. Combines are also why "useless" N drones aren't vendor trash: their trio is a permanent account-wide stat block.

Acquisition — the Rhenite refresh shop

Drones don't use the crate-and-key engine. They get a bespoke storefront: a 3-slot refresh shop. Each refresh deals three random drones; you buy the ones you want at list price — N 100 · R 300 · SR 1,000 Rhenite — and refresh again (10 Rhenite, with 3 free refreshes daily). Sell-back returns a flat 80%.

The published per-slot odds (store table 260) are brutal at the top: SR 1.5% — and a specific SR drone is 0.167%. The pity floor (jackpot_times): a guaranteed R-or-SR every 20 refreshes.

There's even an auto-refresh mode — "Stop when SR drone appears" — the client will happily burn your Rhenite stack for you. Inventory caps at 300 drones.

The side door is shards: every drone can be assembled from 20 / 30 / 40 shards (N/R/SR), which flow from selectable shard chests in events and packs.

Expected refreshes for a specific SR
1 ÷ (3 slots × 0.00167) 200 refreshes 2,000 Rhenite + 1,000 to buy it
★35 needs 48 copies ≈144,000 Rhenite per maxed SR (before shards/pity)

The money

Drone materials have a dedicated monetization lane. The weekly rotation sells Rhenite, Batteries and Modified Chips in escalating bundles — plus one-time "drone bean" bundles ($19.99–$49.99) that simply include a specific SR drone. A small drone fund pays 150 Rhenite free at the trigger level, and daily-mission point chests drip Batteries.

Reference math from above: ≈144k Rhenite for one maxed SR drone. The $99.99 Super Drone Pack carries 1,700 Rhenite and can be bought 5×/week (8,500/week). That prices a single ★35 SR drone at roughly 17 weeks of maximum whale spend (~$8,500) — times three if you want a full maxed SR row. Drone evolution is arguably the single most expensive progression lane in the game.

Sources & caveats

← Pilots Sentinels →