Block

Each area is built of its own rock: the Mines' brown earth, the Jungle's mossy earth, the Ice Caves' dark blue rock (and Ice), the Temple's stone bricks. Grey stone blocks are mixed in, and around every level runs a border of blocks that can't be destroyed. A block is solid: nothing walks or falls through it. Most break to a Bomb or a Mattock, and as a level is made, each block of rock rolls for a vein of gold or a hidden gem.

In the City of Gold, the Temple stone is gold, and every block of it breaks into three Gold Chunks and a Gold Nugget ^{[22] [23]}. Its stone blocks are drawn gold too, but break without a trace ^[24] (Stone blocks without gold), and some blocks there are Jungle earth all the same (Jungle earth in the City of Gold).

As each block of the Mines', the Jungle's, the Ice Caves' or the Temple's rock is made, it rolls 1 to 100: below 20, a small vein of gold shows in it; from 20 to 29, a big one. A block with neither, if it's in a level and off the level's edge, rolls for a big gem inside it, hidden, then for an item, each roll only once the ones before it fail ^[25]:

Broken, a small vein lets out three Gold Chunks, and a big one three Gold Chunks and a Gold Nugget; a gem or item inside simply drops out ^[29]. The first clip shows it: a Boulder rolls along a corridor of the Mines, breaking the bricks in its way, and the gold-veined ones spill gold ^[30]. Stone blocks, smooth earth and hard blocks hold nothing.

• Bombs break every block their blast touches, unless it's one that can't be destroyed, as long as the blast is near the view (or anywhere in the Tutorial) ^[31] (Explosions break blocks off screen).
• The Mattock breaks a block a swing.
• A Boulder rolling fast enough breaks the blocks in its way ^[32].

Breaking a block of the areas' earth, rock or Temple stone, or smooth earth or the ship's hull, takes Spikes and a Tiki Torch on top of it with it, brings down a lamp hanging under it as a Lamp, and lets water around it drain ^{[33] [34]}. Many other blocks have destroy events of their own that don't run that code, so none of it happens when one breaks: a stone block, a Push Block, Ice, both altars (the idol's Altar and Kali's), Lady Xoc's blocks, the traps' blocks, a Shop Sign and a grave ^{[13] [35]}. A bomb breaking the stone block a Dice House's lamp hangs from leaves the lamp in the air ^[36].

A block marked so ignores bombs and the Mattock: the border around every level ^[37], the block a level's exit stands on ^[38], the ones under the gold door and under the Black Market's hidden door ^{[39] [40]}, and the hard blocks ^[17].

• Shops. A shop's walls, bricks or one time in ten stone blocks, and its smooth floor are marked as the shop's, and breaking one angers its Shopkeeper ^{[41] [42]}, unless it's a stone block, whose own destroy event skips the check ^{[13] [35]}.
• Spectacles and the Udjat Eye draw the treasure hidden in the rock in front of it, so it shows ^[43].
• Crushing. A player whose middle ends up inside a block is crushed, losing every heart ^[44].

• A block showing gold is worth a bomb or a swing of the Mattock: nearly three rock blocks in ten have some.
• The deeper areas hide more gems in their rock: an Ice Caves block is two and a half times as likely to hold a Big Sapphire as a Mines one.

• In custom levels, the level editor's rock tiles set each block's picture back to plain earth after it's made, so no block of a custom level shows or holds gold; its gems and items still roll ^[45].
• One brick in ten in the Mines is drawn with a second picture ^[46].
• The game has an object for the mothership's floor that nothing makes: the floor is hull with the floor's picture ^{[20] [47]}.