Super Lucky Dice

Super Lucky Dice is a gambling minigame in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. It is somewhat more complex than the similar dice game Lucky Dice, but it is still quite simple by actual casino standards. Betting and prizes are strictly centered on coins.

Rules
Gameplay takes place on an orange wooden table. The object of the game is to throw four dice into the table and hope for matching numbers, then increase your winnings by predicting the results of the next dice throw.

Betting
Betting is a very simple process; the moment you throw dice, the game automatically bets your money for you. The value of the bet is determined by the experience level of your party; the bet is equal to the highest level of any of your party members, multiplied by ten. Therefore, if Felix is level 54 out of a party of level 52 Adepts, your bet would come to 540 coins.

Stage 1
Compared to Lucky Dice, Super Lucky Dice requires more interaction and strategic consideration. The game consists of two stages. In the first stage, the four dice are thrown simultaneously: hope for matching dice values to occur. If two dice match, it is a push, and you get your coins back if you select Cash Out at that point. If three of the dice match, you win back twice the bet you placed. Two Pairs nets you three times your bet, and if it is a rare four-of-a-kind, you win eight times your bet. If none of the above cases occur, you lose your bet and do not proceed to the second stage of the game, and you can play again. Otherwise, stage 2 of the game begins.

Stage 2
Regardless of how much you earned on a successful roll in stage 1, at stage 2 you will be presented with two options; Cash Out, where you can leave with your current winnings, and Double Up. When you select Double Up, you must now predict whether the next roll of the dice will yield total dice values more or less than the total dice value of your previous roll. After predicting, the dice are rolled again; if the dice value correlates to your guess, your current winnings double, and then you get to the Double-Up/Cash Out option screen again. You can repeat this process up to a maximum of five times; being successful each and every time will increase your winnings exponentially. Once you’ve successfully completed the fifth round, you automatically Cash Out.

To demonstrate, this is an example of a hypothetical game of Super Lucky Dice; suppose you are at level 60, so your bet is 600 coins. You roll the four dice in stage 1 and get two 4’s, one 5, and one 1, which is a one pair, so your winnings will become 600 coins (a push). Then at the screen at the start of stage 2, you can either cash out to leave the game just as wealthy as you entered it or Double Up. When you Double Up, and since the total dice value of the previous roll was 14, two meters appear on the upper left; one says “Double Up x2 or 0” while the other says “1 Game”, and you have two new options on screen. You must now guess whether the next roll is 15 or higher or 13 or lower. You guess "higher", then roll; the dice value totals 17, so you successfully double your winnings to 1200, as was indicated by the “x2 or 0” reading of the meter to the upper left; you have just won the “x2” part and not the “0” part. Now the meter reads “x4 of 0”, meaning that if you Double Up again, the possible results of the next round is that either your winnings will be equivalent to four times the value of your original winnings from stage 1 or all your winnings will be lost. You decide to Double Up again, and now “1 Game” becomes “2 Game”. Then you predict that the next roll will be 16 or lower. The dice roll 19; you lost all your winnings, so you leave 600 coins less rich than before you first played Super Lucky Dice.

The potential for winnings is far higher than that of Lucky Dice, but it is much more difficult to reach that extreme amount of luck. Assuming your party’s level is 99, your bet can be 990 coins, and if you get a four-of-a-kind, your winnings will be 7920. Then, if you successfully double up for all of the next five rounds, you will get 32 times 7920; the highest possible amount you can win from a game of Super Lucky Dice is 253,440 coins, which is 256 times the value of your original 990 coin bet and is over ten times the maximum amount of coins you can get from a single game of Lucky Dice.

Strategy
The strategic element to this game manifests itself in the form of being better able to decide which outcome – higher or lower – is more likely to occur. The range of values you can roll range between 4 and 24, with values around 14 being the most often rolled; if a value is significantly higher than 14, such as 19, you are better off guessing 18 or lower. If you roll 14, the higher and lower options are a 50-50 probability, so you may be better off Cashing Out than Doubling Up. Also remember that from time to time there may be cases when neither guessing higher or lower is correct; it can happen that you can roll 15 right after you just rolled another 15, and since that’s neither of your possible choices (14 or lower or 16 or higher), rolling the same value twice in a row is akin to an instant loss. This makes successfully doubling up all five rounds somewhat more difficult.