Warlords: Crystals of Power Slot – Free Demo

Three warlords, three colours of Scatter

NetEnt's crystal fuelled slot is Warlords: Crystals of Power. For this review it was played for 300 spins at a 1.50 stake from a balance of 1,000.00. A Samurai, a Priestess and a Barbarian are its warlords. Each has a scatter, a free spins round and a random wild overlay of its own.

Up front are the five reels filling the screen. Wins pay for 3 or more matching symbols on a payline, left to right from the leftmost reel. Each one is 3 symbols tall, and during ordinary play, available from 0.15 to 150 per spin, the reels pay across 30 locked paylines. Only the highest win on each payline is paid.

Mathematically, in this specific instance RTP is a solid 96.89% while volatility is low to medium. The logged session returned 66.4% of the 450.00 wagered, finishing on a balance of 848.65.

Having a glance at the paytable shows 3 low pay masks and 6 high pays, which comprise Wolf, Black Panther and Warthog symbols. The masks belong to the Samurai, Priestess and Barbarian, and each pays 0.2x the stake for three of a kind. These are capped by the Samurai, Priestess and Barbarian, and the Samurai is valued 20x for five of a kind. The Priestess pays 13.33x the stake for five, the Barbarian 10x and a line of five wilds 20x.

To help draw together winners, Warlords: Crystals of Power offers a triple-crystal wild that stands in for any symbol except the scatters. Dead or Alive and Koi Princess are two more NetEnt slots.

Re-Spins, a battle and a Final Chance

Random Overlay Wilds, Re-Spins, and free spins are what the mechanics list contains. Two more features sit alongside them, the Battle Feature and Final Chance.

Core to the slot are the scatters, and each one belongs to a warlord. Blue is for the Barbarian. Green is for the Priestess and red for the Samurai. When scatters of different types land, a battle changes one at random so that all of them match, and a matching pair beats a single odd scatter 75% of the time.

Now, whenever you hit 2 or more scatters, they lock in place and the remaining positions spin again, so for instance, if you hit 3 red scatters, the Samurai free spins begin. If Re-Spins with 2 scatters end without a third, Final Chance awards either a coin win of 3x to 100x the stake or a scatter placed at random that completes the trigger. Scatters appear on reels 2 to 4 solely during the base game. In free spins they can land on all reels.

Keep a lookout out for the Random Overlay Wilds, which activate at random in the base game. The Barbarian Hammer places a 2x2 cluster of 4 wilds on reels 1 to 4, and the Samurai Sword 2 to 5 wilds on reels 1 to 4. Furthermore, the Priestess Arrow places 2 to 5 wilds on reels 1 to 5.

Free spins in this slot are activated when 3 identical scatters appear, and the Samurai grants 5 free spins. Each free spins mode uses its own reel set, and the only scatter on it is the one that triggered the round. The Priestess grants 7 and the Barbarian 9. For each Barbarian scatter in the Barbarian round, 3 additional spins are granted. Priestess and Samurai scatters add no extra spins in their rounds.

The Barbarian round, once in it, is run with no low symbols on the reels. No Barbarian round was triggered in the 300 logged spins.

If scatters appear in the Samurai round, then they transform into Sticky Wilds, and each Priestess scatter in the Priestess round raises the win multiplier by x1. The Sticky Wilds stay in place until the Samurai free spins end.

Minty’s Closing Thought: Of the 298.65 credits my 300 spins won back, 75.00 came from the two free spins rounds, so a quarter of the return rode on two triggers. The Barbarian never turned up, which leaves his extra-spin Scatters untested by me.

Spin 143 and spin 195

No one likes to get weary in a base game while awaiting free spins to activate though, so to offset this, the hit rate is 33%, and roughly one spin in three passes by with a win. In the logged session, 105 of the 300 spins paid, which is 35%.

Naturally, most of the time, these token wins are fairly trivial owing to the low symbol values, yet they do fight the base game doldrums. Of those 105 paying spins, 63 returned less than the 1.50 stake.

Warlords: Crystals of Power can be rather volatile, even as a low to medium volatility slot. The longest run without a win lasted 16 spins and ended on spin 78. During testing, the bonus game activated on spin 143. That meant 5 Samurai free spins paying a modest 12x the stake. The round took the balance from 891.85 to 908.35.

The following bonus game did activate 52 spins afterwards. It landed on spin 195 and brought 7 Priestess free spins. When it did, the Priestess round paid 38x the stake, and the cap sits at 1,500 times the stake.