Power drain

The Power Drainer is a short-range magnetic offensive weapon featured in Halo 3.

Function
The power drainer creates a short-range magnetic induction effect which causes disastrous failure of powered field systems within a set radius, and is designed primarily to interfere with common varieties of field-based shielding, vehicle and power generation. It also has a damaging effect on biological systems and can wound or kill most bipeds in its resulting explosion. Essentially, the Power Drainer is like a reverse Regenerator; instead of energizing a player's shields, it causes any player's shields within the area of effect to drain away, making them vulnerable to harm. Plus, if you stand near it for long enough, it will kill you. If a Regenerator and Power Drainer are deployed in close proximity, the fields will cancel each other out.

It is a deployable device that has been confirmed to be in the finalized game. The Power Drainer, like the Bubble Shield, Trip Mine, Radar Jammer and the Portable Gravity Lift, are all in the category of equipment and can be deployed using the "X" Button. It is activated immediately when deployed.

Many fans are quite critical of the weapons' countdown fuse, and argue that it does not allow the user enough time to escape to a safe distance before it activates and completely drains their shield. However, this has long since been fixed by causing the Power Drainer to have a longer throwing distance.

In the Multiplayer Beta, the players got the Power Drainer and the Bubble Shield mixed up and ended up dying or shielding the enemy player.

The power drainer can even disable non drivable vehicles like the scarab as seen in TGS Demo Part 2 link. In fact it will affect any device that runs on any type of electrical energy within its radius in game.



Spawns
High Ground The power drainer can be found on a small metal ledge inside the main compound of the High Ground base. The ledge is within jumping distance of the flag spot.

Snowbound The power drainer spawns inside "Low Base" on Snowbound.

Valhalla The power drainer spawns at the nose of the pelican on Valhalla.

Its spawn location has also been seen on Last Resort in the leaked internal beta video.


 * All spawn locations are referring to the Halo 3 Multiplayer Public Beta.

Trivia

 * It shares many physical similarities with the Radar Jammer.
 * It is also be capable of draining vehicle power as well, causing the vehicle to stop in its tracks or malfunction. If a vehicle got in the drainer's radius for a brief second they would lose control of the vehicle for a short time. A Bungie employee remarked that "the guy [he] just boarded used the Power Drainer to once again disable [the Banshee]."