Cloud in a Bottle

The extra hop is short by the standards of the later bottles, but it is usually the first one you find, and it changes early exploration more than anything you replace it with. The bigger use is as a brake. Fire it just before you land and the fall resets, so a mistimed drop down a shaft costs nothing. Building that habit early prevents a lot of cavern deaths.

Every bottle style jump stacks with the others, so a full set gives you five separate leaps before you touch ground again. If you are not building toward the Bundle of Balloons, upgrading to the Fart in a Jar is the obvious move for more height. If you are, Shimmer will pull the cloud back out of the Fart in a Jar later, so you do not have to choose.

The Angel Statue, the one thing every player digs up and nobody ever uses, began life as a stand-in sprite for this accessory.