Jungle earth in the City of Gold

Verified against the spelunky.ai port v0.1.12 on 28 October 2026.

This page describes a secret.

The City of Gold is a Temple level made of gold: its temple stone, its stone blocks and its push blocks all turn gold there. But the Temple's room script also makes the odd block of the Jungle's earth, and the earth has no check for the City, so the City of Gold has a few blocks of plain green and brown earth among its gold.

The City of Gold loads with the player near its entrance. He walks right along its gold floor and over a block of the Jungle's mossy earth set in it ^[1].

The Temple's room script, which builds the City too, makes the Jungle's earth (oLush) for one of its always-solid tiles in a hundred, before it rolls a stone block or temple stone:

        if (tile == "1" and not collision_point(xpos, ypos, oSolid, 0, 0))
        {
            if (rand(1,100) == 1) instance_create(xpos, ypos, oLush);
            else if (rand(1,10) == 1) instance_create(xpos, ypos, oBlock);
            else instance_create(xpos, ypos, oTemple);
        }

Its side room with two trees, which the City rolls among its side rooms, stands on a row of eight more ^{[2] [3] [4]}. Temple stone turns gold in the City (if (global.cityOfGold) sprite_index = sGTemple;) ^[5], and so do the stone and push blocks, but the earth's create event has no such line: it rolls a gold vein, a gem or an item as the Jungle's earth does ^[6]. Broken, it gives rubble, and gold only from a vein ^{[7] [8]}. It's harmless.

Reach the City of Gold and look for green blocks among the gold; most Cities have some. The replay of the City with seed 9 loads it on frame 6745 with six earth blocks, one at (560, 96), near the entrance ^[9]. The clip, cut from the run on to Olmec, walks over that one ^[10]. Reaching the City of Gold has the way there.

The spelunky.ai port reproduces it exactly: it's in docs/quirks.md's list of the 1.1 source's bugs ^[8], and the oracle's fingerprint of the replay pins the earth blocks. No option turns it off.