Fire in the Hole

Theme and Design

Brilliant Atmosphere Created By Animations and BOOM Of The xBomb Wilds

Fire In The Hole is a mining slot … NLC style! That means drama, darkness, explosions, and the chance of chugging a beer at the end of it all with a mad, red-bearded dwarf. What more could you want? The action takes place in deep mine shaft with the glow of flaming torches in the background lighting up a wooden frame set that houses the reels. It’s quite arcane, with old skool mining tools on the paytable too. But what makes it for me is the plodding music with marching beat and brass sounds, and the relentless BOOM of explosive wilds going off every few spins. It’s ominous and you’ll remember it a long time after you’ve played the game.

RTP and Variance

Fire in the Hole xBomb has two RTP settings: 96.06% or 94.11%. It is at the discretion of your slot site which rate they run the game at. You can check for yourself wherever you play by browsing the game rules page once you’ve loaded up Fire In The Hole. I recommend playing at MrQ from Lindar Media which runs this slot at 96.06%.

In terms of volatility, Nolimit City label this one as ‘Extreme’. And they aren’t kidding! It can get rough and burn down your balance fast, but it possesses some powerful features too, as we will get onto in a minute. These can trigger huge win sequences, particularly via the Lucky Wagon Spins round. So choose a sensible stake to give yourself a chance.

Maximum Win

NLC games have some of the biggest payout potential in the industry and Fire in the Hole is no exception. The max win on a single spin here is 60,000x your bet. This is big, but there are bigger wins available on other NLC slots. Try Tombstone RIP (300,000x) or San Quentin xWays (150,000x) for example.

Symbols and Paytable

Fire in the Hole starts is a win ways slot. That means wins are triggered by landing 3 or more identical symbols on adjacent reels, regardless of their row position, from left to right starting at the left-most reel.

Each spin starts with 6 reels and 3 active rows in play. That gives you 243 win ways. However, more rows can be opened up after any win, as explained in the next section. At best you can have 6 rows on each reel, giving you a massive 46,656 win ways.

There are 10 symbols in the paytable. The low payers are the cards, 9 through to Ace. Their values are from just 0.2x for 3 9s on a line up to 1.5x for 6 6’s on a line. Premiums are the mining symbols – a pick, a rope, boots, a bag and a lantern. There values are better, with between 1.75x for six picks and 7.5x for six lanterns.

Also look out for the xBomb Wilds which sub for other symbols to create wins, trigger cascades AND increase your progressive multiplier by 1x. And the rare, but extremely valuable ‘S’ bonus symbol is what you need to trigger the free spins round.

Features and Gameplay

Collapsing Mines, xBombs and Multipliers

During the base game, Fire in the Hole is all about the Collapsing Mine feature. This is triggered by either a win, or by explosions caused by xBomb Wilds or Wild Mining. One new row opens up, winning symbols are removed and new symbols drop in to replace them.

It’s a kind of combination of expanding reels and cascading wins. After each collapse, more wins may be created and the process repeats until no more wins are triggered.

If the collapse is caused by an xBomb Wild then when it explodes it also increases a win multiplier that appears above the reels. This multiplier remains throughout the collapse. xBomb Wilds are your friend here – they will trigger on any spins EXCEPT when a Wild Mining event occurs.

Wild Mining

This is a special feature triggered by landing 3, 4 or 5 identical symbols horizontally when there is NO win. These symbols come together to create a 1, 2 or 3 Wilds and cause ALL symbols above them to explode and trigger a new collapse.

Lucky Wagon Free Spins

Those are the basics but things don’t really kick on until you unlock the free spins round, Lucky Wagon Spins. You will need at least THREE ‘S’ symbols to trigger this.

Now the game shifts – your reel set starts the round with 2, 3 or 4 rows depending on whether 3, 4 or 5 bonus symbols triggered the round. And you are looking for Coin symbols to land now, each with a multiplier value.

You start with THREE spins and get THREE more EVERY time another coin lands.

As well as these, your prizes can be improved by a set of enhancers that appear at the top or each reel:

• Coin Value – sets the value of all the coins that land on the reel beneath it.
• Multipliers – apply their multiplier to the value of all coins that land on the reel beneath it.
• Dynamite – Where blockers appear on the reel beneath, it explodes these to remove them so coins can drop in, multiplies coin values by its own count, activates chests appearing beneath it, or adds its count to coin values.
• Bags – collect up the value of all the coins on its reel and add them to the coin that triggered it
• Chest – adds up all reel values and clears all other positions except the dwarf symbol.
• Dwarf – collects total value of all coins on the reel and puts them onto the coin that triggered it.

There is also a Collect Chest event – when dynamite explodes, the value of all coins is collected in the chest that sits at the bottom of a reel on EVERY successive spin.

And if at the end of all that you land that 60,000x top win, it’s BEER TIME! You’ll know that because there will be loud ringing in your ears and the red-bearded dwarf will be chugging on a cold beer!