Wild symbols are probably one of the easiest slot features to understand. They basically substitute for other symbols and help create winning combinations.
Developers decided that wasn’t interesting enough. They started making them move, expand, stick to reels, multiply wins, and pretty much do whatever else they could think of.
Sticky and expanding wilds are two of the most common versions, and our guide below tells you everything you need to know about them.
How Sticky Wilds Work
Sticky wilds land somewhere on the reels and stay there for longer than one spin. You’ll usually see them pop up during bonus rounds or free spins. If a sticky wild lands on reel three during the second free spin, it might stay there for the rest of the feature.
That can be useful because every new spin plays with at least one wild already sitting on the grid. Some games also let you collect more sticky wilds as the feature continues. The important thing is that the wild doesn’t necessarily move or get bigger. It just stays where it landed.
How Expanding Wilds Work
Expanding wilds are different because they’re more about taking up extra space. A normal wild might occupy one symbol position. An expanding wild can grow across more positions or sometimes fill an entire reel, depending on the game. That obviously gives the wild more opportunities to substitute for other symbols on that spin.
Some games take the mechanic even further. Expanding wilds can come with multipliers, trigger respins, or stay expanded during bonus rounds. If you play Pragmatic Play slots online, you’ll probably already know that in Zeus vs Hades – Gods of War, expanding wilds can take over an entire reel and then become sticky during the bonus game.
So you can actually have both mechanics working together there.
How Each Changes Your Win Potential
Sticky wilds are more about repeated opportunities.
If one stays on the reels for five free spins, you’ve potentially got five different chances to use that same wild in a winning combination. If more sticky wilds appear as you go, the grid can become much more interesting towards the end of the feature.
Expanding wilds are almost instant. If one symbol suddenly covers an entire reel, you’ll have more wild positions available for that particular spin or respin.
Neither game mechanic automatically means the slot has a better RTP or that you’re more likely to walk away with a win.
You still have to think about things like:
- RTP
- Volatility
- How often wilds appear
- Where wilds can land
- Whether they carry multipliers
- How long sticky wilds remain
- How far expanding wilds actually expand
Two slots using sticky wilds can still work differently. One might expand across an entire reel every time it lands, and the other only does it during a bonus round or under specific conditions.
If we had to simplify it, sticky wilds give the same useful symbol more chances to matter over multiple spins, while expanding wilds give one wild more space to matter immediately. Which one has more win potential depends entirely on how the rest of the slot has been designed.
