Lava
Lava is a heavy, brightly glowing liquid that sets wood, plant and oil alight without cooling down, and turns to stone when water or ice reaches it.
- Movement
- Liquid — flows and levels out
- Weight
- 6 / 9 (heavier sinks through lighter)
- Lifetime
- Permanent
- Glow
- Bright
At weight 6, lava is the heaviest liquid. It sinks through water, acid and oil, and it also outweighs the weight-5 powders, so sand, salt and gunpowder float on a lava surface while lava poured over a sand heap seeps down to its base. Like other liquids it spreads sideways into lighter cells and levels into a flat pool. It runs as freely as water here; real lava is vastly more viscous, and Sandlab ignores that.
Its glow is the brightest of any liquid and spills onto surrounding cells, making it the main light source in a dark scene after fire.
Against wood, plant and oil, lava is an igniter that is not used up. Its table sets touching wood alight at 40 percent per check, plant at 60 percent and oil at 70 percent; in each case the neighbour becomes fire and the lava remains lava. Oil also carries its own lava entry at 80 percent, which is why an oil layer catches especially quickly. Gunpowder is the exception: its entry turns both cells into fire at 85 percent, so a gunpowder trail eats into the edge of a lava pool as it flashes.
Cooling is the only thing that ends it. Water touching lava becomes steam while the lava hardens to stone, at 70 percent; ice melts into water while the lava again becomes stone, at 90 percent. Real volcanic islands and pillow basalt form through the same basic process, but the sandbox compresses it into one step with no gradual cooling, no cracking crust and no temperature value at all.
Wall, stone and metal are unaffected by it, and acid has no entry for lava either.
Try it yourself
- Build an island. Fill a basin with water and pour lava in from above at one spot. Each blob hisses into steam where it meets the water and leaves stone behind; keep pouring and a rocky mound builds up out of the pool.
- Lighting a row of fuels. Along a stone shelf, set pockets of wood, plant and oil a few cells apart, then run lava down the shelf. The oil and plant catch almost at once, the wood takes a little longer, and the lava keeps flowing past all of them.
- Seal a channel with ice. Paint a short wall of ice across a lava channel. Lava pressing against it hardens into stone while the ice melts to water, and that water cools still more lava, so the channel ends up closed by a grey plug.
Reactions
Odds are per contact check: each tick, touching cells inside the same two-by-two block are checked against the reaction table, so even a small chance happens soon after contact.
When lava touches something
- Touching Wood: turns the Wood into Fire. (fast, 40% per contact check) →
- Touching Plant: turns the Plant into Fire. (fast, 60% per contact check) →
- Touching Oil: turns the Oil into Fire. (almost instant, 70% per contact check) →
- Touching Ice: turns into Stone, and the Ice turns into Water. (almost instant, 90% per contact check) →
When something touches lava
- Touching Ice: the Ice turns into Water, and this Lava turns into Stone. (almost instant, 90% per contact check) →
- Touching Gunpowder: the Gunpowder turns into Fire, and this Lava turns into Fire. (almost instant, 85% per contact check) →
- Touching Water: the Water turns into Steam, and this Lava turns into Stone. (almost instant, 70% per contact check) →
- Touching Oil: the Oil turns into Fire. (almost instant, 80% per contact check) →
Tip
When lava threatens something, cool the leading edge with ice or water instead of building walls in its way. A stone skin forms where they meet and seals the flow behind it.