Slot Machine
| Slot Machine | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Mechanic |
The slot machines are the row of red cabinets in the middle of the Casino, and they are the only gambling in the valley that cares about the day's fortune. A spin takes a stake in Qi coins, spins three reels and pays a multiple of the stake when the symbols land on one of the winning lines. Nothing happens if they miss, and the stake is gone. Because coins buy wallpaper, furniture, Rarecrows, warp totems and a Top Hat from the dealer in the corner, and because gold converts into coins at a fixed counter, a good run at the machines turns into real prizes. The clever part is the timing: the forecast on the Television quietly changes the odds, so the machines reward a farmer who gambles on the right morning.
Overview
Getting in needs a Club Card, which arrives at the end of the Mysterious Mr. Qi errand chain, and the bouncer at the back door of the Oasis checks it every visit. Once inside, the machine beside Mr. Qi exchanges gold for coins at a thousand gold for a hundred coins. Coins never convert back, so every coin won at the reels is spending money for the prize counter rather than farm income.
Each cabinet takes one of two stakes, ten coins or a hundred. The reels then settle on one of ten winning combinations or on nothing at all. The common lines are the cheap ones: a single matching symbol roughly doubles the stake, a pair pays about triple, and the first full row pays around five times. From there the table drops away steeply, with the rare rows paying tens and then hundreds of times the stake, and the lines nobody plans for sitting below one chance in a thousand. The hundred-coin cabinet is therefore the sensible one to feed, because the rare lines only pay anything worth having on a large stake.
Luck is where the machines differ from the card tables. The whole payout table is scaled by the day's fortune, and a cheerful forecast lifts every win chance by close to a fifth while a bad one cuts it by the same share. The Special Charm adds a little more on top of that, and each point of luck from food or a ring raises the chances again by a few per cent apiece. A Lucky Lunch eaten on the Casino steps, a Lucky Ring on each hand and a good morning forecast stack into a noticeably different machine from the one a farmer sits at on a grim day.
The practical routine follows from that. The Fortune Teller reports the day's standing before anything else happens, and a day with the spirits showering good fortune is the day to visit the desert. The reels still lose plenty of individual spins, so the sensible approach is a fixed number of coins per session rather than a fixed target, and to walk out when they are spent. The Casino games are tuned to lean slightly towards the farmer rather than the house, which means a patient farmer who only plays on good days comes out ahead across a save, not within a single visit.
The prize counter is the reason to bother at all. Four paintings, a Top Hat, the Alien Rarecrow, a Modern Double Bed, Hardwood Fences, Magnets for fishing rods, Warp Totems for the farm, Fireworks in three colours and the Casino's own wallpaper and flooring are all priced in coins, and the most expensive of them run into six figures. A separate dealer in the corner sells the Statue Of Endless Fortune for a million gold, which is the one Casino purchase gold can make directly.
Notes
The reels are rolled fresh on every pull, so watching a cabinet for patterns tells nothing. The one thing a farmer can genuinely influence is the fortune going in, which makes luck preparation the whole of Slot Machine strategy.
A profitable run depends on the big lines appearing often enough to cover the many spins that pay nothing at all. Across a few dozen pulls the small doubles and triples mostly return the stake, and the day's profit usually comes down to whether one of the rare rows landed. That is why a session is better judged over several lucky days than over one afternoon.
Coins won at the reels and coins won at CalicoJack sit in the same purse, so the usual route to an expensive painting is to build a stake on the cards, where the odds ignore the weather of the day, and then spend the spare coins on the machines when the forecast is good.
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