Ash Wood

This is the strongest wood tier before Hardmode, so a full kit made from it beats anything ordinary trees can give you and costs nothing but the walk. The catch is where it grows. Ash forests sit down at the edge of the Underworld, which is a rough place to be swinging an axe at the point in a run where the gear would actually help.

You do not have to keep going down. Ash grass will hold anywhere you can place it, and an Acorn dropped on top of it grows a full tree at any height, so one trip turns into a permanent grove next to your base.

A couple of the special world seeds put ash trees right at spawn. On those, an ash start is one of the fastest openings in the game and skips the descent entirely.