Sentries in Terraria have always been bolted to the ground. You plant one, it shoots whatever wanders into range, and the moment you move on, it stops mattering. The Heavy Sling, added in the 1.4.5.7 update on August 19th, 2026, changes that: equip it, walk into your own sentry, and it clamps onto your character and keeps attacking while you run, mine, fly, or fight a boss.
Quick answer: Kill Ice Mimics in the Hardmode Snow biome until a Heavy Sling drops (a 23.75% chance per Mimic), equip it in an accessory slot, summon a sentry, then walk into the sentry to pick it up.
Where the Heavy Sling drops
The Heavy Sling comes from Ice Mimics, the Hardmode variant found in the frozen underground. Each kill has a 19 in 80 chance of dropping one, which works out to 23.75%, so a handful of Mimics is usually enough. It sells for 1 gold and sits at Pink rarity, and the tooltip is a single line: Walk past a sentry to carry it.
There is one exception to the Hardmode gate. On worlds generated with the Remix and/or Skyblock secret seeds, the accessory can be obtained before Hardmode. That is deliberate, not a bug.
How carrying a sentry works
With the Heavy Sling equipped, pickup happens on contact. Summon a sentry as normal, then simply touch it. It attaches to your character and travels with you, still running its usual attack pattern. Where it sits depends on the sentry, and the visuals differ from one to the next: some perch on a shoulder or on your head, the Barnacle latches onto your back, and the Explosive Trap sets off its blasts as enemies get close.
Every sentry type is eligible, from the pre-Hardmode Houndius Shootius up through the Lunar Portal Staff and Rainbow Crystal Staff. The Tavernkeep’s Ballista, Explosive Trap, Lightning Aura, and Flameburst lines work too, as do the Queen Spider Staff and Barnacle Staff.
A carried sentry also behaves better than you would expect in awkward situations. It passes through blocks, stays attached after you teleport, and if you die it hangs around at the spot where you fell, then teleports back and reattaches when you respawn.
How to know it worked
Confirmation is entirely visual. The sentry sprite stops sitting on the ground and starts riding your character, moving frame for frame with you, and its projectiles now originate from wherever it is mounted. If the sentry stays put when you walk into it, the accessory is not equipped in an active slot.
How to put a carried sentry down
You cannot set a carried sentry back on the ground. Once it is on you, the only options are to get rid of it, and 1.4.5.7 also added right-click dismissal for sentries generally, which is the fastest route.
- Use
⚷ Open / Activateon the sentry to despawn it. - Unequip the Heavy Sling, which also despawns it.
- Summon a different sentry while you are at your sentry cap.
- Wait it out, since the standard 10-minute sentry timer still applies from the moment it was summoned.
Heavy Sling upgrades at the Tinkerer’s Workshop
The Heavy Sling doubles as a crafting material. Three combinations at the Tinkerer’s Workshop keep the pickup effect and add a bonus on top, so there is no reason to walk around with the base version once you have the second ingredient.
| Result | Second ingredient | Added effect |
|---|---|---|
| Royal Guard’s Harness | Cobalt Shield | Knockback immunity, +2 defense |
| Scout’s Sling | Putrid Scent | +5% damage, enemies less likely to target you |
| Templar’s Sling | Eye of the Golem | +10% sentry critical strike chance |
Note: the three variants cannot be combined with each other, so pick the one that matches your build. The Templar’s Sling is the damage-focused choice for a summoner, the Scout’s Sling is the general-purpose option, and the Royal Guard’s Harness leans defensive.
Limits and the reasons pickup fails
The restrictions are short but strict, and most of the confusion around the accessory comes from one of them.
| Limit | What it means in play |
|---|---|
| One sentry carried at a time | Extra sentry slots let you place more, but only a single one rides on you |
| Slings do not stack | Equipping two versions gives no additional pickup |
| Your own sentries only | In multiplayer, you cannot pick up another player’s sentry |
| 10-minute duration | The timer keeps running while carried, then the sentry vanishes |
Because a player has a single sentry slot by default, that base slot is now genuinely useful outside of arenas. Bringing one sentry along while exploring caves or kiting a boss removes the usual trade-off between placing a turret and staying mobile, and it makes the low-slot sentry setups most summoners actually run worth using.
