Chests of Cai Shen 2 Slot Review
A jade-green river threads between karst peaks that dissolve into cloud, wooden boats sit moored among the reeds, and three ornate chests sit on a ledge above the reels, gathering every coin you land. That’s the game’s real wager: the spins themselves matter less than what the chests are quietly doing with them. Chests of Cai Shen 2 is Pragmatic Play‘s follow-up to Chests of Cai Shen, a 2024 release we liked for its respin bonus, and the sequel runs the same idea on friendlier maths.
It’s a 5×3 grid with 25 paylines, medium volatility and a 96.50% RTP, with stakes from 0.25 to 250.00 per spin. The drop from the first game’s High volatility is the notable move: a calmer setting suits a slow-building game better than a chase does. The rest is familiar ground in the studio’s fortune-themed catalogue, alongside 5 Lions Megaways and Dragon Tiger Fortunes.
Base Game & Features
The base game is standard line-pay territory. Wins form left to right across the 25 fixed paylines, with only the highest combination per line counting. The premium symbols lean into the theme: a god of wealth character, a tiger, a panda, a monkey and a crane, with A, K, Q, J and 10 filling out the lower end.
The paytable, as a multiple of your stake per line:
- God/Emperor character: 0.08x for two, 0.2x for three, 0.6x for four, 2x for five
- Tiger: 0.2x for three, 0.4x for four, 2x for five
- Panda, Monkey, A: 0.2x for three, 0.4x for four, 1.2x for five
- Crane: 0.2x for three, 0.2x for four, 1.2x for five
- K, Q, J, 10: 0.08x for three, 0.2x for four, 0.6x for five
There’s a clear split between the tiers. The god character is the only symbol that pays for two of a kind, and five of him returns 2x the line stake, matched only by the tiger. At the bottom end, the royals and the crane pay 0.2x or less for three and four, so the lower half of the paytable is there to keep the balance ticking rather than to deliver anything memorable.
Wilds and Bonus Coins
The wild appears only on reels two, three, four and five, and substitutes for everything except the Bonus Coin and Money symbols. It’s a helper, not a headline.
The Bonus Coins are where the game’s identity sits. Blue, red and purple coins land on the reels and are collected, at the end of each spin, into the matching chest above the grid: FULFILLMENT for blue, DOUBLE for red, LONGEVITY for purple. The coins pay nothing on their own. What they do is fill the chests, and filled chests can randomly fire the respin round.
Because each coin colour is tied to one chest, every spin is quietly telling you which modifier you’re building towards. A run of red coins means the double-grid round is the one getting closer. Which coins arrive is down to the reels, but the collection itself always resolves before the next spin begins, so there’s no unfinished business carrying over between spins beyond what sits in the chests.
Chests of Cai Shen 2 Bonus Features
The Chest Respin is a hold-and-win round with a modifier layer on top. It triggers randomly from coin collection, or can be bought. Once it starts, the normal symbols fade away and only blanks and Money symbols land. You begin with three respins, and every Money symbol that hits resets the count to three. The round runs until the respins run out or the grid fills completely, at which point every Money value on screen is summed and paid.
Money symbols carry values from a set running from 0.6x up to 30x your total bet, or one of the bonus prizes: MINI at 10x, MINOR at 20x and MAJOR at 150x your total bet. Fill all fifteen positions and the GRAND, worth 5,000x your total bet, is awarded on top.
The Three Modifiers
Which chest fired the round decides how it plays, and one, two or all three modifiers can combine in a single trigger. When more than one fires together, the respin round plays with all of the triggered modifiers applied at once:
- MULTIPLIER FULFILLMENT: four randomly delimited zones are drawn over the grid, each carrying a multiplier of 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 10x or 100x, applied to every Money value inside it
- DOUBLE: the round plays out on two 5×3 grids at once, each starting with the collected Bonus Coins already converted to Money symbols
- LONGEVITY: you start with four respins instead of three, and every Money hit resets to four, up to that maximum
The zones are drawn fresh each time, so where the coins land relative to them matters as much as how many you collect. A 100x zone sitting over a cluster of Money symbols is where the round’s real potential lives, and the grid-fill GRAND doesn’t need a multiplier to reach 5,000x on its own. The full ladder of possible Money values, for reference:
- 0.6x, 0.8x, 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, 8x, 10x, 12x, 14x, 16x, 20x, 30x total bet
- MINI 10x, MINOR 20x, MAJOR 150x total bet
- GRAND 5,000x total bet, for a full grid
The LONGEVITY modifier looks modest on paper but changes the shape of a round more than it first appears. An extra respin per Money hit compounds quickly, because each hit both adds a symbol and buys more attempts to add another. On a grid with fifteen positions to fill, those single-respin extensions are often the difference between a cluster of low values and a board that creeps towards the GRAND.
Bonus Buy
There are two buy options. Both skip the collection phase entirely and start the FULFILLMENT round with a random combination of modifiers: Multiplier Fulfillment alone, with Double, with Longevity, or with both.
- Buy Fulfillment: 100x your total bet, random modifier combination
- Buy X100 Fulfillment: 500x your total bet, same random combinations, but one marked zone is guaranteed to carry the 100x multiplier
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7.7/10
This is a game about patience dressed as a game about luck. You pick it because the chests make every spin feel like it counts for something: even a losing spin banks a coin somewhere, and that slow filling is genuinely satisfying in a way the line wins never are.
The strength is that the modifiers are real, not stickers. A double grid or a fourth respin changes what a round can do, and the 100x zones give every trigger a lottery ticket in it. The weakness is everything before the trigger: the paytable is thin, most rounds start from nothing, and plenty of them will end having paid less than a decent base-game hit.
So it’s for builders, not chasers. Someone after brutal volatility and a bigger top end will find the medium maths polite to a fault. Someone who enjoys watching a meter creep towards the good stuff, spin after spin, will feel right at home on this river.
Chests of Cai Shen 2 FAQs
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What is the RTP of Chests of Cai Shen 2?
The RTP is 96.50%, a touch above the usual benchmark for a slot of this type. -
Is Chests of Cai Shen 2 high volatility?
No, it’s a medium volatility slot. That’s a step down from the original Chests of Cai Shen, which ran at high volatility. -
How do you trigger the Chest Respin feature?
Blue, red and purple Bonus Coins are collected into the FULFILLMENT, DOUBLE and LONGEVITY chests above the reels at the end of each spin. The collection can randomly trigger the respin round with one, two or all three corresponding modifiers active. -
What does the DOUBLE modifier do in Chests of Cai Shen 2?
It plays the respin round on two 5×3 grids at the same time, with each grid starting with the previously collected Bonus Coins already converted into Money symbols. -
What does the LONGEVITY modifier do in Chests of Cai Shen 2?
It starts the respin round with four respins instead of three, and every Money symbol that hits resets the count back to four, up to that maximum. That extra respin per hit gives the round more room to fill the grid. -
What is the GRAND prize in Chests of Cai Shen 2?
Fill every position on the grid with Money symbols during the respin round and the GRAND, worth 5,000x your total bet, is awarded on top of the summed Money values. -
Can you buy the bonus on Chests of Cai Shen 2?
Yes. The Buy Fulfillment option costs 100x your total bet and starts the respin round with a random combination of modifiers. The Buy X100 Fulfillment option costs 500x your total bet and guarantees one marked zone carries the 100x multiplier. -
Who makes Chests of Cai Shen 2?
Pragmatic Play. It’s the sequel to Chests of Cai Shen, which the studio released in 2024.
