Table of contents
Special Expanding Symbol
A special expanding symbol is one of nine candidates that Lord of the Ocean draws at random before its ten free games begin. Wherever it lands it fills all three positions on that reel. It also pays on reels that sit apart from each other, which the base game never does.
- Game:
- Lord of the Ocean (a Novomatic video slot, distributed online by Greentube)
- Type:
- Slot game
- RTP as published:
- Not one number but a set of versions, and this title documents that better than almost any other because its licensees disagree in public, in writing, inside the same regulated markets.
- Max win:
- Four different ceilings are published for this title, all by named licensed operators, and they do not agree.
Why the Draw Matters More than the Symbol
The draw is the whole story here, and it's the part catalogues skip. Nine candidates sit in the pool: Poseidon, the mermaid, the treasure chest, the statue, A, K, Q, J and the 10. Each one can be chosen. At a 0.01 line bet, five Poseidons on a line return 50.00 while five tens return 1.00. Two rounds of ten free games can therefore differ by a factor of fifty, before a single reel has spun.
That spread is also why a single session tells you so little. We played 150 spins at 0.10 on in the maker's own client and never saw the feature at all, which is unremarkable for a title its maker rates 5 out of 5 for volatility.
What the Client Actually Says
The machine picks the symbol. You watch it happen. That is the rule.
The wording is worth reading in full, because it carries two conditions most summaries drop. The FEATURE screen states that one special expanding symbol is randomly selected at the start of the Free Games. A second clause carries the payout rule. During Free Games and after payout of regular symbols, the special symbol may expand to cover 3 positions on the reel. It pays like the regular symbol but even on non adjacent positions and on all lines played.
The bracket at the end matters: expanding is only triggered if enough symbols for a win are present. So the symbol doesn't widen for decoration. It widens at the moment doing so creates a payout.
The Limit Nobody Prints
Precision matters here, because catalogues routinely describe Poseidon as the symbol that substitutes. The maker's own documentation identifies the gate instead, and that distinction decides which combinations complete.
Here's the catch. The gate cannot stand in for the chosen symbol once the round is running. The client says the special expanding symbol cannot be substituted by a scatter symbol during Free Games. Austria's binding game conditions for this title say the same thing in German.
The match between the two documents deserves emphasis. An Austrian rulebook and a Maltese demo client, written for entirely different purposes, state the same restriction. Confirmation of that kind is rare in slot documentation.
That single restriction is what keeps a full screen rare, and it's missing from almost every page we read about this game. Austria's document adds a second detail: when more free games are won inside the round, the current bonus symbol stays rather than being redrawn. The sibling title Lord of the Ocean Magic behaves the opposite way, adding a new bonus symbol on each re-trigger, up to nine of them in total. Two games that look identical on the shelf differ in exactly that.
