Bundle of Balloons

Each jump in the chain belongs to one of the bottles you fed into it, and they always fire in the same sequence. With wings equipped there is a real difference between tapping and holding the key. Tapping burns a jump, holding goes straight to flight. Learn that backwards and you will spend the whole stack before you leave the ground during a boss fight.

Nothing here protects the landing. The stack takes you high enough that a bad drop does hundreds of damage, and with rocket boots on top you can reach a height that flatly kills a mid game character. Pair it with a horseshoe, a featherfall or wings before you start using the full height.

Two of the three bottles are easy. The sandstorm one stalls people, because before the world turns it only comes out of pyramids and the crates you fish from an oasis, and plenty of worlds generate without a pyramid at all. Afterwards you can craft it from Forbidden Fragments, which is usually faster than hunting the desert if world generation was stingy.

Extra jumps beat early wings for changing direction. Each one gives you an instant burst of vertical speed and a hard turn, which dodges fast projectiles better than the gradual buildup wings give you. It holds up until Golem, when fights start demanding sustained flight instead of bursts. It is also the better pick on a ground mount, where wings do nothing at all.