Kali's Altar

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

This page describes a secret.

The altar is two blocks of stone under a statue of Kali, in a side room of the level. A body left on it is a Sacrifice, which raises Kali's favour, and her gifts, the Kapala among them, appear on it. Destroying it, by anything, defiles it: the favour falls and Kali punishes the player. A level has one at most, and many have none.

Each area's room script rolls for the altar first when it lays out a side room, before the idol room or any other layout, and stops rolling once the level has one ^[4]:

The City of Gold's side rooms draw from other layouts and never get an altar ^[9]. The Black Market and the Yeti lair are built by room scripts of their own, which have no altar, and Olmec's Lair is a room of its own ^[10]. The other special levels are built by their area's script and keep its side rooms, so they can have one: a sacrifice pit has no altar in the pit, but with seed 43, level 15 is a sacrifice pit with an altar in a side room ^[11].

The altar room is open, with the altar on a low step of blocks in the middle of its floor, and in the Mines, the Jungle and the Temple, but not the Ice Caves, blocks in its top corners, each one time in 2 ^{[12] [13] [14] [15]}. The altar is two solid blocks, a left half and a right half, which the player can stand on ^[16]. Behind it the room draws Kali's stone body, and above it puts her head, one of three faces at random ^{[17] [18]}. Level generation puts no treasure on the altar, and in the Temple no Spear Trap in it ^{[19] [20] [21] [22] [23]}.

The main clip shows a Mines altar room: the player drops a Bomb beside the altar and jumps clear, and the blast destroys it (Hazards) ^[24].

The altar's halves are solid blocks, so what breaks blocks breaks them, but for a half the City of Gold's door stands on (Trivia) ^{[16] [25]}:

• An explosion, a Bomb's or any other, within 16 pixels of the view ^[26].
• A Mattock's swing ^[27].
• A UFO's laser ^[28].
• A Boulder rolling into it at speed ^[29].
• The floor under it taken away: a half with no block under it crumbles as soon as it's within 20 pixels of the view's left and top and 4 of its right and bottom ^[30].

Destroying either half destroys both, and defiles the altar, whatever destroyed it: "YOU DARE DEFILE MY ALTAR?" and "I WILL PUNISH YOU!" show, the screen shakes, and the favour falls by 16 ^[31]. Kali's punishment grows with each altar the player has defiled in the game ^[32]:

Kali's favour has the punishments in full, and Kali a clip of each. In the main clip, the first altar the player defiles lets the Spiders out ^[24]. Below, a Bomb takes the floor from under a fourth altar, which crumbles, and six more Spiders come out ^[35].

A stunned or dead monster, or a thrown or dead Damsel, left lying still on either half for 20 steps is a sacrifice: it bursts into flame, and its worth is added to the favour ^{[36] [37]}. Sacrifice has the rules and what each body is worth. The first time a sacrifice brings the favour to each of three marks, Kali gives a gift, which appears on the altar's right half, free to take ^[38]:

Each is given once a game, and one a sacrifice jumps past is never given (Kali's favour). In the clip, a Damsel thrown down on an Ice Caves altar burns, and Kali gives a Compass ^[42].

• The Kapala comes from nowhere else: the altar is the only way to it ^[25]. In the clip below, a stunned Yeti's sacrifice brings the favour to 16 and the Kapala appears; then a UFO's laser destroys the altar and the Spiders come out ^{[43] [44]}.

• A Damsel's sacrifice has a branch that would make a stunned one worth half as much again, but she's never in the state it tests for, so she's always worth 8 ^{[45] [25] [46]}.
• On level 14, the roll that places the City of Gold's door goes over every block with room above it, and doesn't skip the altar, as the Spear Traps' roll beside it does, so the door can stand on the altar. The block under the door is made indestructible, so that half of the altar survives explosions, the Mattock, lasers and Boulders; the other half doesn't, and takes both with it, and the floor's going still crumbles it ^{[47] [48] [49] [30]}.