Fire in the Hole 2 Slot Review

Fire in the Hole 2 Slot Review

As someone who loved and feared the first Fire in the Hole in equal measure, Fire in the Hole 2 felt like coming back to a mine that now runs even hotter. Nolimit City has kept the collapsing grid core and cranked up the modifiers, win potential, and overall pace. You still start with a cramped layout, grind through debris, and chase that mythical Elbeerado score while the volatility hammers your balance.

I see Fire in the Hole 2 as a high-risk slot built for players who enjoy long dry spells followed by roaring bonus rounds. It runs on a 6x6 setup with up to 46,656 ways, and stakes from 20p up to £100 per spin, so both cautious testers and high rollers can get involved. The feature set is dense, yet after a session or two the flow made sense.

Slot Theme And Storyline in Fire in the Hole 2

The theme in Fire in the Hole 2 drops you straight back into that rickety underground mine, all splintered beams, flickering lanterns, and the constant threat of TNT. The grizzled dwarf is now chasing a beer-soaked paradise rather than a missing crate, and the whole thing plays out to that bouncy Oompa-style soundtrack. I like how the explosions, dust, and collapsing rows match the audio, keeping every spin noisy and tense.

Fire in the Hole 2 Rules And Gameplay

Base game play in Fire in the Hole 2 starts on five reels with three active rows, giving you 486 ways to win. Any winning combination triggers the Collapsing Mine mechanic, clearing winning symbols and dropping new ones while opening extra rows. You can work up to six rows and the full 46,656 ways. Wins pay left to right on adjacent reels, and detonator wilds can complete lines or improve hits when they land well.

The xBomb wild is the real engine here. When it explodes it removes surrounding symbols except scatters, bumps the win multiplier for the next collapse, and still counts as a wild. Wild Mining triggers when three to six matching symbols land in a straight line without forming a win, blowing them out and planting up to four wilds instead. Dirt tiles hide buried goodies such as wilds, scatters, and xSplit symbols that slice rows in two.

You can crank up the pace using xBet, which costs two and a half times your stake but guarantees a scatter on the lowest inactive row every spin. That pushes the bonus frequency closer while stripping away dirt tiles more often. At first the mix of collapsing rows, xBombs, wild mining patterns and buried symbols felt chaotic, yet after a few hundred spins I found the rhythm oddly natural and quite addictive.

Symbols And Paytable in Fire in the Hole 2

The paytable in Fire in the Hole 2 sticks to simple mining gear and card ranks. Lanterns sit at the top, paying up to 7.5x for six of a kind, followed by bags, maps, boots, and shovels that drop down to 1.75x for a full line. Below that you get K, Q, J, 10, and 9, with six-of-a-kind payouts ranging from 1.5x down to 1x your stake per way.

The detonator wild symbol substitutes for all regular pays and becomes far more than a simple joker once xBomb effects and multipliers kick in. Scatters are marked with an S and are mainly there to trigger Lucky Wagon spins when three or more land. I always check the paytable before spinning, and here it confirms what you feel in play: line wins are modest, so most of the real punch comes from features.

Symbols and Paytable

Symbol	Quantity	Payout
	6	x7.5
	5	x4
	4	x2
	3	x0.75
	6	x3.75
	5	x2
	4	x0.75
	3	x0.5
	6	x2.5
	5	x1.5
	4	x0.6
	3	x0.45
	6	x2
	5	x1.25
	4	x0.55
	3	x0.4
	6	x1.75
	5	x1
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.35
	6	x1.5
	5	x0.8
	4	x0.4
	3	x0.3
	6	x1.25
	5	x0.7
	4	x0.35
	3	x0.25
	6	x1.1
	5	x0.6
	4	x0.3
	3	x0.2
	6	x1.05
	5	x0.6
	4	x0.3
	3	x0.2
	6	x1
	5	x0.6
	4	x0.3
	3	x0.2
	Scatter
	Wild

Fire in the Hole 2 Bonuses And Special Features

The main event in Fire in the Hole 2 is the Lucky Wagon free spins round. Three, four, or five scatters give you different starting rows and launch a Hold and Win style bonus with three spins on the clock. Coin symbols land with values attached; every new coin resets the spin counter. A horizontal track above the grid carries enhancer carts, and if a coin lands beneath one, its effect rains down on that column.

Enhancers include plain coin value adders, column multipliers, dynamite that throws sticks across the mine to double coins and crack dirt, beer that revives old coins, and the dwarf who hoovers up everything in sight. During the bonus you also gain a seventh reel with crystal upgrades. If these touch dynamite, beer, or dwarf enhancers they turn persistent, so their effect repeats on every later spin where they are active, which is where huge boards can appear.

Outside the UK, Nolimit's bonus buy menu lets you jump straight into Lucky Wagon spins for 70x, 200x, or 600x your bet, or gamble on a Lucky Draw entry. xBet sits alongside that, costing 150 percent of stake for a guaranteed scatter. When I play abroad I treat these as high-variance side bets, fun for testing features quickly but brutal if you try to spam them on a cold session.

Fire in the Hole 2 RTP, Volatility, And Max Win

Fire in the Hole 2 runs on a default RTP of 96.07 percent, but the game comes with lower settings such as 94.08, 92.07, and 87.05 percent that operators can pick. That two-point swing between best and worst versions sounds small yet translates to a noticeable change in house edge. I always open the information panel in real money mode and check which value is stated before I commit to any serious session.

Volatility in Fire in the Hole 2 sits at the very top of Nolimit City's own scale, effectively a 10 out of 10 experience. The slot can theoretically hit 65,000x stake, with the studio quoting a hit rate around one in seventeen million spins. In practice that means long stretches of grind punctuated by the odd explosive bonus. I only ever play it with a set budget and small base stakes, then raise bets sparingly.

Review Summary And Verdict on Fire in the Hole 2

For me, Fire in the Hole 2 makes the original feel like a rough sketch. The collapsing mine, xBombs, buried symbols, and Lucky Wagon spins combine into a frantic, entertaining slot that can still chew through a balance frighteningly fast. I enjoy the dark humour, Elbeerado storyline, and sheer potential, yet I treat it as a high-risk treat rather than a regular grinder, and I would only recommend it to seasoned players.

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