Caretaker Class Drone

!	This is a rare creature/object. It may only be scanned in one or few encounters.

Caretaker Class Drone
Featured in	Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Location	Main Research, Sanctuary Fortress
Attacks	Electrical shocks through the floor Uses cleaners for physical harm
Weakness	Morph Ball Bombs Boost Jump
Battle Music	Short Battle
Reward(s)	Access to Central Area Transport West

The Caretaker Class Drone is the largest stationary mechanoid that Samus encounters in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. It is used by the Luminoth to maintain and protect the experimental energy chamber that the Luminoth used in the Main Research facility in the Sanctuary Fortress on Aether. Samus only encounters one Caretaker Class Drone, and she must destroy it before she is able to reach the path to the Screw Attack.

The Caretaker Class Drone uses mechanical limbs to clean and keep the chamber under maintenance. Like most technology the Luminoth created, its second duty is to fight Ing. Thus, the Caretaker Class Drone will use its limbs to fight away any enemies.

The battle involves Samus performing the Boost Jump back and forth between the Spider Ball Tracks, avoiding the harmful cleaning arms while attempting to hit its sensor orbs and expose its control core. This is more difficult than it seems: although the sensor orbs remain extended relatively long, the control core is only vulnerable to damage for barely half of a second. Also, the Spider ball Tracks will divide, showing gaps between them that Samus can not cross while attached. In the lowest part of the tube, there is an uninterrupted ring, while in the second part are two, and in the highest part are three parts of Spider Ball Track.

When Samus has hit the control core three times, the Caretaker Class Drone will explode and reveal a Spider Ball Track leading up and out of the tube.

Official data

Logbook entry

Caretaker Class Drone

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Temporary scan

Mechanism: "Caretaker" Class Drone
Rogue maintenance drone.
Drone designed to protect a magnetic rail chamber. Chamber's rails are a Boost Jump apart; perhaps the Luminoth were experimenting with Boost technology.

Logbook entry

The Caretaker drone was designed to protect and maintain an experimental energy chamber. It uses electrically charged limbs to perform its duties. The drone requires sensor updates to fight: a vulnerable detection unit will extend periodically to search for targets. Destroying this unit would weaken its combat ability.

Development notes

Zoid Kirsch worked on the Caretaker Class Drone encounter. The camera system used during the battle, which Kirsch calls a "spindle camera" since it rotates around the cylindrical tank, was created by Mark Haigh-Hutchinson.

Datamining of the demo of Echoes has revealed a mechanism similar to the Caretaker Class Drone, called the Ingkiller. Its Logbook entry can be read via hacking the Metroid Prime 2: Echoes Bonus Disc, where a Chozo Artifact is used as a placeholder model for this mechanism.

Ingkiller

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Temporary scan

Mechanism: Ingkiller
Rogue Termination drone.
Powerful security unit armed with beam weapons. Target limbs to disable them and damage the unit.

Logbook entry

The Ingkiller was designed to protect points of entry within the Luminoth Fortress from the Ing; it now seeks to eliminate all living things.
Its four attack limbs can be disabled, forcing it to use a secondary beam attack to defend itself.
The beam system requires sensor updates to function; a vulnerable detection unit will extend periodically to search for targets.
Destroy it to take the beam offline.

Trivia

• The Caretaker Class Drone is one of four bosses in the Metroid Prime trilogy that requires the use of the Spider Ball to fight it. The other three are the Power Bomb Guardian, the Quadraxis, and the Emperor Ing.
  • Interestingly, all these bosses are fought in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.
• The Caretaker Class Drone is one of the five bosses in the Metroid Prime trilogy that can be scanned before the battle.
  • The other four are the Omega Pirate, the Alpha Blogg, the Spider Guardian, and the Power Bomb Guardian. Much like the Spider Guardian, it is one of only two bosses that has to be scanned before the battle, due to the circumstances of the fight.
  • The Caretaker Class Drone is somewhat similar to the Spider Guardian in another respect; both battles are fought entirely in Morph Ball mode.
• The Caretaker Class Drone is the only Echoes boss that does not display a health bar of any kind.

• While a generic boss theme plays during the battle against the Caretaker Class Drone, Samus is not rewarded with a Bonus Credit usually given to her whenever she defeats a boss in the Metroid Prime Trilogy pack.

• Curiously, the electrical floor will cause Samus to flinch in her bipedal form. This can be seen if a Moon Jump is used to enter the boss arena in bipedal form. The boss is immune to all of Samus's weaponry, except for Morph Ball-related damage. If Samus extends higher in the battle earlier than intended, the floor will curiously also rise, but not the drone, with the platform passing through the drone itself.

Gallery

Logbook

Samus doing battle with the Caretaker Class Drone

Close-up of one of its small sensors.