Valhall Gold

Elk Studios closes its Gold series with Valhall Gold, in which explorer Kane trades his earlier destinations for a Viking setting: fjord-like mountains, two large statues guarding a hall, and a banquet scene with burning braziers and a tree in the background that appears when free drops trigger. The series began with Ecuador Gold in 2019, and the name Valhall is the anglicised Old Norse word for the hall of the slain.

The grid starts each base game spin at 6 reels by 4 rows, giving 4,096 ways to win, and it can grow to 9 rows for 531,441 ways. Avalanches remove winning symbols, drop new ones in and add a row, and consecutive wins can lift the reels to 8 rows, with large symbols able to open a ninth. Twelve regular symbols pay: four runic stone blocks as low pays, four Viking and Celtic designs as mid pays, and four high pays headed by Kane. Six of a kind pays 0.3x for the runes, 0.8x to 1x for the patterned mid symbols and 2x to 5x for the other high pays. Symbols can land at 1x1, 2x2, 3x3 or 4x4 size, and the wild appears in all of them.

Several special symbols modify wins. Odin's Ravens block the grid alone but turn wild when two or more are visible. Loki is a 2x2 blocker whose modifier applies before each win is evaluated: a multiplier of 2x, 3x, 5x or 10x, wins counted both ways, a Spike Storm that adds spike frames to symbols, or an Axe Fury that upgrades several symbols into one type. Spike symbols that take part in a win copy themselves in the direction the spike points, and Thor is a 2x2 wild that stays sticky for one drop.

Scatters trigger the bonus game: 3, 4, 5 or 6 award 10, 15, 20 or 25 free drops. The safety level, the minimum starting height of the reels, starts at 5 rows and rises by one after each winning drop, up to 8. In the bonus, Loki's modifiers can be saved into an inventory and then stay active for the rest of the round. Saved multipliers add together, and the same scatter counts award extra drops as a retrigger.

The X-iter menu lists five modes: Bonus Hunt at 2x the stake with double the bonus chance, Big Block at 5x for a guaranteed large symbol, Trickster Loki at 25x for a guaranteed Loki, Bonus at 100x and Super Bonus at 500x with the inventory fully active.

RTP is 94% in every mode. Volatility is high, stakes run from 0.20 to 100, and the maximum win is 25,000x the stake. Valhall Gold was released on 24 September 2023.