Wanted Dead or a Wild: the complete guide

At a glance

Released

29 Sep 2021

Grid

5x515 fixed paylines

RTP

96.38%also 94.55, 92.33 and 88.42%

Volatility

High4 of 5 on Hacksaw’s scale

Hit frequency

19.3%about one spin in five

Max win

12,500xthe bet, per round

Bet range

0.20–100as review sites list it

Bonus buys

80x · 200x · 400xnot in the UK

How a spin pays

Five reels, five rows, 15 fixed paylines. A line pays when three or more matching symbols sit on it starting from the leftmost reel. The card ranks, 10 to A, pay 0.1x, 0.5x and 1x the bet for three, four and five. The gun cylinder is the best regular symbol at 2x, 10x and 20x, and five sheriff-badge wilds on a line also pay 20x.

Most spins pay nothing. A hit frequency of 19.3% means about four spins in five come back empty, and because three low symbols pay a tenth of the bet, plenty of the “wins” are smaller than the stake. The game is built around rare, large hits. The paytable guide lists every symbol.

The VS symbol

VS lands like any other symbol, in the base game and in the Duel at Dawn bonus. When at least one VS on the screen would be part of a win once expanded, every VS fills its whole reel and turns wild, and on each one two outlaws fight it out. The survivor’s multiplier, somewhere between 2x and 100x, applies to every win that runs through that reel.

Two or more VS reels in the same win add their multipliers; they do not multiply them. A 7x reel and another 7x reel give 14x, not 49x. That rule keeps most VS hits modest and makes the five-reel full screen the thing streamers chase.

The VS and DuelReels guide lists every multiplier the outlaws can show and checks the sum against four of Roshtein’s full screens.

Three bonus games

Each bonus has its own scatter symbol. Three or more of the same kind trigger it.

Hacksaw calls Duel at Dawn “your best shot at a max win”. Roshtein’s three biggest documented wins all came in Duel at Dawn, according to roshtein.com and VegasSlotsOnline, and all three were VS full screens. Hacksaw’s in-game rules describe no retrigger for any of the three bonuses. The bonus games guide walks through each round with screenshots.

RTP: check your version

Hacksaw supplies the game at four return-to-player settings: 96.38%, 94.55%, 92.33% and 88.42%. The casino picks one, and nothing on the reels tells you which. For every $1,000 bet, the game keeps on average about $36 at 96.38% and about $116 at 88.42%, more than three times as much. Any real $1,000 can end far from either.

The figure your casino chose should be stated in the game’s rules or info screen. If you can’t find it, assume the worst and ask support. More in the RTP guide.

Bonus buy

Where the casino offers it (SlotCatalog says not in the UK), you can pay to skip to a bonus: 80x the bet for The Great Train Robbery, 200x for Duel at Dawn and 400x for Dead Man’s Hand. Their RTPs are 96.27%, 96.33% and 96.43%, from 0.11 points below to 0.05 above the 96.38% version; no source gives buy RTPs for the lower versions. Buying barely changes the long-run price; it changes how fast the money moves. At $1 a spin, one Dead Man’s Hand costs $400. The bonus buy guide has the prices at other stakes.

Max win and the records

The cap is 12,500x the bet, per round. Hacksaw’s rules say it can be reached in the base game, Duel at Dawn and Dead Man’s Hand, and that when it is, the round ends on the spot and any free spins left are discarded. Hacksaw calls Duel at Dawn your best shot at it. The best-documented case: Roshtein, $1,500 a spin, a naturally triggered Duel at Dawn in July 2022. On the last of its 10 spins he hit VS on all five reels (8x, 5x, 8x, 20x and 3x). That spin paid $18,726,900 and the game stopped with “Max win on a single round has been reached”, about $18.7 million in total.

Those bets were placed at a casino that allowed $1,500 spins, far above the 100 maximum review sites list. The biggest wins guide has the full list, with dates, bets and how solid each figure is.

Who it suits, and who it doesn’t

Wanted suits players who are fine with long dry runs for a shot at one large VS hit, on a budget they have already written off. It is a poor fit for anyone who wants their money to last through steady small wins. If that is you, The Great Train Robbery is the gentlest part of the game, and plenty of lower-volatility slots will do the job better.

If the casino runs the 88.42% version, that alone is a reason not to play it there. And if you are chasing what you saw on stream, remember those clips are the hits. The thousands of spins that paid nothing were cut.