What is a bonus buy in slots? Four studio sheets read

A bonus buy in slots is a priced option to start a game’s bonus round, usually its free spins, straight away instead of waiting for the bonus symbols to trigger it. Nolimit City’s game sheets call it “feature buy-in”. On its Mental page, the studio prices those buys at 80x to 1000x the base bet.

This is an evergreen explainer, not a news item. This desk read Nolimit City’s game pages for Mental, San Quentin, Tombstone R.I.P and Fire In The Hole xBomb on 23 October 2026, and the UK Gambling Commission’s 2020 National Strategic Assessment page on the same day. Every figure below is as printed there.

What four Nolimit City sheets print beside the buy

All four sheets flag feature buy-in as Yes, and all four print a separate “Bonus mode” flag, also Yes. The stats blocks read do not define bonus mode, and this piece does not guess at it. The stats blocks print no buy price, but further down, Mental’s page gives feature buys from 80x to 1000x the base bet and Tombstone R.I.P’s from 70x to 3000x. Tombstone R.I.P’s hit frequency appears as 09.08%, which is 9.08%. On Mental’s page the descriptive text beneath the stats block describes a different game, Das xBoot, so only Mental’s stats block is used here.

The four are not new releases. The sheets date San Quentin to 12 January 2021, Fire In The Hole xBomb to 2 March 2021, Mental to 31 August 2021 and Tombstone R.I.P to 11 January 2022. These are established titles in the studio’s catalogue rather than this year’s launches. The min/max bet column is the stake range for an ordinary spin; the two pages that give a buy range state it as a multiple of the base bet.

A Yes on a studio sheet describes the game as the studio lists it. It does not say the option is switched on at every operator or in every market, and the next sections explain why that distinction matters.

What a bonus buy skips

Every one of these games has a natural route into its bonus. The pages describe it plainly: on San Quentin, three, four or five bonus symbols start Lockdown Spins; on Fire In The Hole xBomb, the same counts start Lucky Wagon Spins; on Tombstone R.I.P, three scatters unlock eight Hang ‘em High Freespins, and three scatters with the Boothill scatter unlock ten Boothill Freespins instead.

The free-spins column is the studio’s own statement of how long that route takes on average. “1 in 216” for Mental means that across a very long run of spins, one spin in 216 triggers the round. It is an average, not a schedule: a session can reach the bonus on its third spin or go many hundreds without it. A bonus buy is a single, larger stake that replaces that wait. What it skips is not one spin but the whole base game between triggers.

How does a bonus buy work in slots, game by game?

The table shows something the generic definitions miss. The four natural trigger rates sit close together, between 1 in 194 and 1 in 230, so the buy is a shortcut past a broadly similar distance in all four games. The base games it skips are not similar at all.

Mental and San Quentin pay something on about one spin in three. Tombstone R.I.P pays on about one in eleven, and its page describes xRIP, a rule under which any spin whose total win falls below the base stake pays nothing. Two buys can cut past roughly the same number of spins while cutting past very different experiences of them. This site’s explainer on hit frequency covers why that statistic sits apart from RTP.

Does buying the bonus change the RTP?

Each of the four sheets prints one RTP figure and no separate figure for the bought route. This desk read no return figure for a bonus buy on any of them, so this piece makes no claim in either direction. This site’s guide to finding RTP explains where a game’s own RTP figure is shown.

Other priced ways into a feature

A full buy is not the only priced entry a studio can design. Tombstone R.I.P’s page describes an Enhanced Bet option that raises the stake slightly to guarantee a scatter drop. That changes the cost of each base spin rather than purchasing the round outright, and the page puts its cost at a 10% increase on the basic stake. This site’s report on Eastern Fury’s five priced ways to alter the base game looks at a release built around a menu of such options.

Why a studio sheet’s Yes may not mean a buy at every operator

The UK Gambling Commission’s 2020 National Strategic Assessment carries a case study on exactly this feature. A Commission investigation found six licensees offering feature buy-in on slots-style games, letting customers stake significant amounts to reach the bonus without playing the initial stages. One game charged more than £3,000 to enter the bonus feature.

After considering sections 3A and 14A of its Remote Technical Standards, the Commission instructed the six licensees to remove those products, including games with similar features, and contacted further licensees with the same instruction. Section 3A, as the page quotes it, requires the applicable rules to be easily available before a customer commits to gamble. Section 14A says products must not actively encourage customers to chase losses or increase their stake.

That is what the Commission reported in 2020. This desk did not re-read the technical standards as currently in force for this piece, so it makes no claim about the rule as it stands today. It is enough to show why a studio sheet’s Yes cannot be read as proof that the option is available at every operator.

Bonus buy questions

Are bonus buy slots worth it?

This site gives no verdict on that, because it is a question about play rather than design. What can be said is narrower: none of the four Nolimit City sheets read here prints a separate return figure for the bought route, so the published material alone does not let anyone compare the two routes. Two of the pages give buy prices only as a range across features.

What are bonus buy slots and how do they work?

They are slots that offer a priced option to start the bonus round directly. Normally the round arrives when enough bonus or scatter symbols land; Nolimit City prints that natural rate, 1 in 216 spins for Mental. The buy replaces the wait with one larger stake, and the round then plays under the game’s own rules.

What do bonus buy slots cost?

Two of the four studio pages read for this piece print a range: Mental’s feature buys run from 80x to 1000x the base bet, and Tombstone R.I.P’s from 70x to 3000x. The UK Gambling Commission reported in its 2020 assessment that one game it investigated charged more than £3,000 to enter the bonus feature.

This describes a product feature, not how to play; nothing here was played, bought or recommended. 18+. A bought bonus is still a stake on a game with a built-in house edge, and the game’s own rules govern every session.