Diamond

Verified against the spelunky.ai port v0.1.10 on 28 October 2026.

It's the most valuable gem, worth more than three Big Rubies, and in the Mines as much as a Golden Idol, without having to be carried out. Level generation's rolls never make one: Diamonds come from the Ghost, which turns every big gem it touches into one, and from the Lady Xoc statue in the City of Gold. The player collects one by touching it.

A Diamond's base value is $5,000, and it's worth a quarter of that more for each area past the Mines, the code counting Olmec's Lair as an area of its own ^{[5] [6]}:

A Diamond comes from three things only ^[7]:

• The Ghost. A Big Emerald, Big Sapphire or Big Ruby the Ghost touches is replaced, where it lies, by a Diamond ^{[8] [2] [4]}. The Ghost comes for a player who stays too long on a level, and drifts through walls toward him, so it changes the big gems it passes on the way, those still buried in the rock too: one buried gem becomes a buried Diamond ^[9].
• The Lady Xoc statue, which stands in the City of Gold: the block at its brow drops two Diamonds when it's destroyed ^{[10] [11]}.
• The level editor's 8 tile ^[12].

In the first clip, a Ghost appears at the edge of the screen and drifts toward the player; as it passes over a Big Sapphire lying in a nook, the sapphire becomes a Diamond ^[13].

In the second, the player bombs the top of the Lady Xoc statue, and the block at its brow breaks into two Diamonds ^[14].

The player collects a Diamond by touching it while he isn't stunned or dead; the one he takes is the treasure nearest him, one a step ^[15]. It's made uncollectable, and its own alarm, set to 20 steps (0.67 seconds) when it's made, makes it collectable ^{[16] [17]}: a big gem the Ghost has just turned into a Diamond can't be picked up for that long, even if the gem could have been.

Its value shows under his money and is counted into it after a short pause; whatever is left is counted at once when he leaves the level ^{[18] [19]}. A gem plays its own sound, where gold plays the coin's ^[20], and the screen between levels shows each Diamond collected on the level ^[21].

A loose one falls and comes to rest like other treasure, moving only while it's on the screen; a Web it falls into holds it, and lava it sinks into destroys it ^{[22] [23]}.