Charm Foes

Thanks, guys. Even after converting all of my remaining alchemical herbs into knowledge brews, I still couldn't jack up my tool use to the point where it made any difference in the sentinel panels. The way I ended up doing it and beating the game was just to run faster than Monoaha-Tel's goons and let them hang back and mop up the golems. The Vahnatai Lord and his minions eventually fell to multiple arcane blows and the awesome power of the Heartstriker Bow. The Mindreaper Lich and his undead fell pretty quickly to the same offense.

I'm resurrecting this thread instead of posting a new one. Just to be perfectly clear - there are three control panels that corespond to the three sentinel generators, correct? I've gotten to each of them and tried turning them off. The message I get is that they smoke and hiss for a while before going silent. Does that mean that I've turned them off? Or do I need some higher level of arcane lore or tool use? In tandem with the Vahnatai Lord, the sentinels that are generated every couple of turns by the last machine are tearing me apart, and I'd really like to figure out how to make them go away.