TAKE THE VAULT

HOW TO PLAY TAKE THE VAULT SLOTS

The game uses a relatively large grid with 5 reels and 4 rows. The basic rules are fairly standard as far as online slot machines go. You just set your stake using the buttons at the bottom and hit spin. Wagers range from $0.20 to $300, or the equivalent in other currencies. If you hit three or more matching symbols along one or more of the active paylines, you win a payout based on the number and value of the winning symbols.

Speaking of paylines, this is where things get slightly interesting. With no less than 75 ways to win, Take the Vault certainly offers a lot of flexibility in how you can reach results. That said, although 75 ways to win seems like a lot for a 5×4 slot, it’s still a fairly volatile game. According to Betsoft’s info, the base game boasts a hit rate of just under 27%.

Where things get much more interesting, however, is with the Bandit and TNT symbols. Essentially, the Take the Vault slot works on a 10-round loop.

Every time a Bandit symbol hits, it leaves behind a small TNT icon. This always happens, regardless of whether the Bandit symbol wins or not. These TNT icons remain in the same position for up to 10 turns. Once you finish 10 turns, all of the TNT icons explode and leave a Wild symbol in their position. You can see the number of spins needed for this to happen in the bottom right.

Hold & Win

The full name of the game is Take the Vault: Hold & Win. Needless to say, it prominently features the Hold & Win feature that Betsoft is famous for.

To trigger it, you need to six or more golden BONUS symbols. They look like little safes and sometimes appear with numbers. You can hit 6 anywhere on the grid, so they also act as Scatters during the base game.

During the Hold & Win bonus round in Take the Vault, the Bonus symbols are locked into place. Every position on the grid essentially turns into its own reel. Every such reel can spin to reveal nothing, a bonus prize, or a jackpot. If you hit a prize or jackpot, it sticks to its position and remains there until the end of the round.

The goal is to just keep spinning and hope you collect as many such symbols as possible. If you hit three spins in a row without hitting a single symbol anywhere on the grid, the bonus round ends immediately. Alternatively, it also ends if you fill all 20 positions with various symbols. Once it’s over, all of the locked-in symbols are summed up and paid out as one big prize.

If you’re not quite sure how it works, you can find out more in our guide to Hold & Win features in slots.

The regular bonus symbols range from 2x to 35x. Each instance of the Mini, Minor, Major, or Grand jackpot pays 50x, 100x, 500x, and 1,000x, respectively.

Take the Vault Free Spins

On top of all that, Betsoft also opted to include free spins. Hitting three brown Bonus symbols that look like saloon doors will net you 15 free spins. However, these symbols can only appear on reels 2, 3, or 4.

During free spins, 4, 7, or 10 Wilds are randomly scattered across the board. They move around randomly every time you hit spin. Obviously, this massively increases your chances of winning. However, the whole Detonator feature with Bandits, TNT, and Wilds does not work during free spins.

You can buy free spins in Take the Vault slots for 100x the bet.

Casino Bloke Best tips for Take the Vault Slot

• 1We strongly suggest always finishing the TNT countdown before you stop playing. It’s a powerful feature that pretty much guarantees a sizable payout on every 10th spin, so why not user it?
• 2The rowing Wilds in Free Spins increase the hit rate of the game during free spins to just under 75%. Obviously, better-paying combinations are also much easier to make.

PAYOUTS & RTP

No less than 12 regular symbols exist in this game. The usual card values act as low pays, ranging from 9 to Aces. They’re also grouped in pairs in terms of value. For instance, 9 and 10 pay from 0.05x to 0.25x (yikes.) Kings and Aces, on the other hand, pay 0.25x to 0.60x. Money, gold, and the bottle are medium-paying results, if you could call them that. Five of these is (finally) enough to give you a 1x return. Diamonds, Guns, and Safes are supposedly high-paying, but they still need 5 symbols in a line to actually turn a profit.

In other words, very few combinations in the base game can turn a profit on their own. We’re guessing that’s the reason for its high volatility, which might turn many players away.

That said, the statistics are on Betsoft’s side. Take the Vault RTP is a more-than-respectable 96.21%. Although the wins are tiny, you can still get decent results in the long run.

TAKE THE VAULT BY BETSOFT – CASINO BLOKE’S VERDICT

Our review of Take the Vault produced mixed results. On one hand, we truly enjoyed its creative special features. The Dynamite feature gives the whole experience a kind of continuity that we’re not used to setting in online slot machines. Moreover, the random Wilds during free spins turbocharge the game’s hit rate with spectacular results.

On the other hand, the base payouts are so tiny that they’ll turn away most players. We’re used to seeing small base payouts in modern hyper-volatile slot games. However, there are only 3 combinations in the entire game that actually pay more than your stake, and all of them involve hitting 3 very rare symbols in a single line. Also, seeing a 0.06x return is almost insulting. You would think the game’s decent RTP would negate this, but a 1,327x maximum payout is also nothing to write home about.

All in all, Betsoft Take the Vault is filled with interesting ideas. However, the actual experience of playing it is not nearly as grand. If you can deal with miserable winnings and focus on the long term, you might enjoy it. Almost everyone else won’t exactly be thrilled.