What's on a Dragon Link pay table
A Dragon Link pay table has three kinds of symbols, and each pays differently.
- Royals — the card symbols 9, 10, J, Q and K. They land most often and pay least. On Happy & Prosperous and Panda Magic they're removed during free games.
- Picture symbols — the theme: on Autumn Moon, the princess, the moon, the mooncake, the lute and the rabbit. They pay more for three, four or five on a line.
- Specials — the scatter, which pays anywhere on the screen and starts the free games, and the orb, which carries a credit prize or a jackpot and starts Hold & Spin.
Line pays are shown in credits for your current bet, so the figures change when you change the bet. Scatter pays are a multiple of your total bet: Aristocrat's title pages say every Dragon Link game offers "the ability to win up to 250x your bet on a scatter".
What Aristocrat publishes
| Reels | 5 reels, 3 rows |
|---|---|
| Lines | 50, 25 or 5, by version |
| Denominations | 1c, 2c, 5c, 10c, $1 ($2 too in NSW and the ACT) |
| Scatter | Up to 250x your bet; three start the free games |
| Free games | Different on each title — see the games |
| Hold & Spin | Triggered by the orb, in base or free games |
| Jackpots | Grand (linked progressive), Major, Minor, Mini |
| Volatility | Medium-high |
| Return to player | Not published |
What it leaves out: the return
No Dragon Link title has a published return to player — not in Aristocrat's catalogue, not in its Australian specifications, not in the ACT approvals or Victoria's approval data. So a page that gives Dragon Link an exact return to two decimal places is quoting a number nobody has published.
What does exist is each state's floor, from the national gaming standard's appendix:
| State | Minimum return |
|---|---|
| NSW, NT | 85% |
| Queensland | 85%, and no more than 92% in clubs and hotels |
| Victoria | 85% in pubs and clubs, 87% at Crown |
| ACT, Tasmania | 87% |
| South Australia | 87.5% |
| Western Australia | 90% (Crown Perth only) |
The pay table in dollars
Because the minimum return is an average over a very long run, it's easier to feel it as a cost. At 85%, a machine keeps $15 of every $100 bet on average. At a 50c spin — the Autumn Moon screen's bet — 100 spins put $50 through the machine and cost $7.50 on average; at $5 a spin, 100 spins cost $75. Real sessions swing far above and below those figures, which is what medium-high volatility means. The budget check on the home page does this sum for your own bet.
Denominations and the "best" one
The denomination sets the value of a credit, so a 2c machine at 25 lines and 1 credit a line costs the same per spin as a 1c machine at 50 lines. Whether a venue sets a different return for different denominations isn't published for Dragon Link. The state minimum applies to all of them. Dragon Link in Australia has what venues say about their denominations.
