The book symbol
The book is both wild and scatter. It substitutes for other symbols on a payline and also triggers the free spins when it lands three or more times.
Book of Dead at Ladbrokes Casino: 96.21% RTP, high volatility, 5,000x max win, expanding free spins and how to practise before you stake.
In short: Book of Dead is a Play'n GO slot with a 96.21% RTP, high volatility and a top win of 5,000x your stake. Its big moments come from the free spins round, where one expanding symbol can fill whole reels. Practise with small stakes or a free-play mode first, then set a budget you can afford.
Book of Dead
Play'n GO
Book of Dead is built around long quiet stretches and a few sharp bursts, so a short session tells you very little. A free-play round is the cheapest way to see that rhythm without risking a cent. If the game page at Ladbrokes Casino shows a free-play option, start there. If it does not, treat your first real-money session as practice: pick the lowest stake available and keep it fixed.
Decide on a figure such as €50 before you spin. Treat it as spent money, not as a target to win back.
Keep the same bet for the whole session. Changing stakes mid-session hides how the game really behaves.
A high volatility slot can go 50 spins or more without a feature. Fewer than 200 spins proves nothing.
Note how many spins it takes to land three book symbols. This shows you how patient you need to be.
Watch which symbol expands and how much it pays. The gap between a weak and strong round is the heart of the game.
Look at how fast your pretend balance fell. If that pace felt uncomfortable, lower the stake.
One thing a demo cannot show you is how a losing run feels with your own money. The maths is identical, but the pressure is not. Use the practice session to decide your stake and your stop point, then stick to both when real euro are on the line.
Provider
Play'n GO
RTP
96.21%
Volatility
High
Layout
5 reels, 3 rows
Paylines
10 fixed lines
Top win
5,000x stake
RTP means return to player. At 96.21%, the game is designed to return €96.21 for every €100 wagered across a very large number of spins. The remaining 3.79% is the house edge. This is a long-run average over millions of spins, not a promise for one evening. Play'n GO can offer a game in more than one RTP setting, so open the in-game help screen and confirm the figure shown there before you rely on it.
| Total wagered | Expected return | Expected cost |
|---|---|---|
| €100 | €96.21 | €3.79 |
| €500 | €481.05 | €18.95 |
| €1,000 | €962.10 | €37.90 |
| €5,000 | €4,810.50 | €189.50 |
Swipe sideways to see every column.
These are averages, not forecasts. In a single session you can finish far above or far below them, and high volatility makes that spread wider than on a low volatility slot.
Volatility describes how the return arrives. Book of Dead is high: many spins pay nothing or less than your stake, and a small number pay a lot. If you like frequent small wins to keep a balance steady, this slot may feel harsh. If you enjoy waiting for a single big feature, it fits. The practical lesson is to size your stake so that your budget covers several hundred spins.
Enter a budget, a stake and a number of spins to see how a typical session can play out at 96.21% RTP and high volatility.
Tip
A simple rule of thumb: choose a stake of about 0.5% of your session budget. With €100, that means roughly €0.50 a spin, which gives you around 200 spins before the money runs out.
The top prize in Book of Dead is 5,000 times your total stake. The prize is calculated on the stake of the spin that produced it, so the euro value depends entirely on how much you bet. It is not a fixed jackpot, and nothing grows over time.
Reaching the cap is very rare. It usually needs a free spins round where a high paying symbol expands on several reels at once, and even then it is far from guaranteed.
Do not plan your session around the maximum. A more useful number is how often a free spins round pays two to ten times your stake, because that is the outcome you will see most often. Treat anything bigger as a pleasant surprise. In Ireland, gambling winnings are not taxed, so what you win is yours to keep, but that does not change the odds of winning it.
Book of Dead is a Play'n GO game, and Play'n GO is one of the studios found in the Ladbrokes gaming lobby alongside names such as Pragmatic Play, NetEnt and Blueprint Gaming. Ladbrokes is an Entain brand and is licensed by the UK Gambling Commission. Irish customers use the shared Ladbrokes site at ladbrokes.com/en, where promotions and stakes are shown in euro.
Ladbrokes also runs rotating promotions, and free spins sometimes appear among them. Each offer has its own list of eligible games, a time limit and wagering terms, so read them to see whether Book of Dead counts. Minimum deposits and payment limits are set by the cashier, so check the figures there rather than relying on any number you saw elsewhere.
The book is both wild and scatter. It substitutes for other symbols on a payline and also triggers the free spins when it lands three or more times.
Three books anywhere on the reels start 10 free spins. This round is where nearly all of the big results in the game come from.
Before the free spins begin, one regular symbol is picked at random. During the round it expands to cover its whole reel and pays regardless of the paylines.
Landing three more books during the round adds 10 more spins. A long round with a good symbol is the best realistic outcome.
After a win you may be able to gamble it on a card pick. It adds risk without adding value, so most careful players skip it.
The chosen expanding symbol matters a great deal. A low paying card symbol can expand on every reel and still return little, while a high paying explorer or relic symbol on just two or three reels can pay many times your stake. That is why two free spins rounds with the same number of spins can end very differently. When you see a free spins offer for this slot, also check whether the spins carry a fixed value per spin, how long you have to use them and whether winnings have wagering attached.
Book of Dead follows Rich Wilde through an Egyptian tomb. The layout is simple: five reels, three rows and ten fixed paylines. Wins pay from left to right on a line, starting from the first reel, and you need at least two or three matching symbols depending on the symbol. The ten lines are always active, so your total stake is the line bet multiplied by ten.
Pick a bet that fits your budget using the stake controls under the reels.
Matching symbols on a payline from the left pay the amount in the paytable.
A book can complete a line as a wild or count towards the three needed for free spins.
After three books, the expanding symbol is revealed and the round begins.
Wins are credited to your balance at the end of the round. Decide your next stake calmly, not straight away.
Gambling should stay entertainment. If it stops being fun, free confidential help is available in Ireland from gamblingcare.ie and problemgambling.ie, and gamblingtherapy.org offers support online.
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Last updated 27 October 2026 · Reviewed by Tom Harris