Yeti Lair

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

A Yeti lair is built by a room script of its own, with floors and ceilings where the rest of the Ice Caves are platforms in the open, and nearly all of its blocks are ice. Level generation makes the Yeti King nowhere else: it waits in a room of its own with four Yetis. There are more Spikes and thin ice than in the Ice Caves' other levels, and fewer UFOs, and the level starts with the message "IT SMELLS LIKE WET FUR IN HERE!"

An Ice Caves level after the Moai's that isn't the Mothership's is a Yeti lair one time in 6 ^{[4] [5]}. The lair's roll is the last branch of the Moai's, which every Ice Caves level takes until the Moai is made, so a level before the Moai's, or the Moai's own, is never a lair, and lairs only come on levels 10, 11 and 12 ^[6]. It starts with "IT SMELLS LIKE WET FUR IN HERE!" ^{[7] [8]}. Like the rest of the Ice Caves, it's never dark ^[9].

In the clip, a lair loads with its message, and the player runs right from the entrance and drops into the Yeti King's room, where he whips a Yeti and the Yeti King starts to yell ^[10].

The level is laid out as the Mines' are, four rooms by four on a path from the top row to the bottom, but its rooms come from the lair's own script rather than the Ice Caves' ^[3]. Most of its layouts have a floor of blocks along the bottom, and some a ceiling, where the Ice Caves' other layouts are mostly platforms in open air ^[11]. Five blocks in six are ice and one in six the area's dark rock, where the Ice Caves' other levels have one block of ice in ten ^{[12] [13]}.

Until the Yeti King has been placed, each room of the second kind is its room with a chance that grows with the row. Every one rolls 1 in 10; in the second row, a 1 in 3 roll follows when that fails, and in the third a 1 in 2 roll and then the 1 in 3; in the bottom row it's certain ^[18]. So a lair has one Yeti King at most. It has none if every such room above the bottom row fails its rolls and every room of the bottom row is the exit's, the one the path drops into, or a side room. Its room has a ceiling of ice, some of its blocks left out at random, over an open hall where the Yeti King stands with two Yetis on each side of it ^{[19] [20]}.

With most of its blocks ice, a lair has more frozen Cavemen than the Ice Caves' other levels. Its shops have their Shopkeepers, and the Ghost comes to a player who stays too long, as on every level ^[25].

• Spikes. The Ice Caves' other levels have Spikes only under the Golden Idol's ledge. The lair has rows of them in the bottom row's box side room and under some layouts' thin ice, a floor of them in one of the rooms the path drops into, and some on the ground of the outcrops that other layouts add, each such tile one time in 3 ^{[26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31]}.
• Thin ice, which melts under the player in 30 steps (1 second), as in the rest of the Ice Caves. One of the layouts of the path's rooms has a floor of nothing else ^{[32] [33] [34]}.
• Spring Traps, fewer than elsewhere: generation puts them only on dark rock without a vein of gold, and dark rock is one block in six here ^{[35] [36]}.
• The Yeti King, whose touch takes 2 hearts and whose yell shakes blocks of ice loose from the floor (its page). In the clip below, it yells at the crouching player, then his walk into it costs him 2 hearts ^[37].

Shops come as on any Ice Caves level, in a side room beside the path, on a floor of smooth dark blocks ^{[38] [39]}. Treasure is scattered over the blocks as in the Mines ^[40]. The dark rock hides gems, Big Sapphires most often, and items as the Ice Caves' does, but the ice hides none: its roll for an item is commented out, and the frozen Caveman is all it can hold ^{[41] [42]}. A lair has no Golden Idol and no Kali's altar (above).

• The lair's room script is a copy of the Mines', and keeps the Mines' code for things no lair has: the snake pit's rooms, with Snakes and Big Rubies, the idol room's altar, Golden Idol and giant tiki head, chests and ladders ^{[43] [44] [45]}. Its idol room's layout is commented out, and the line that marks the idol as made follows a roll that can only give 1 ^[46].
• The Ice Caves' own room script has a tile for a Yeti that none of its layouts uses; the lair's Yetis and the Ice Caves' come from the lair's script and level generation ^{[47] [6]}.