Ice Block

Ice has almost no grip. You slide on after releasing a direction and overshoot every turn, which is why the frozen biome feels worse to move through than its enemy list suggests. Ice Skates and the accessories built on them cancel that, and they earn a slot for as long as you work up there. Otherwise, mining out the surface under your feet beats fighting the physics.

Ice takes the world evils and the Hallow the way stone does, giving the purple, red and pink variants, and each converted block then spreads its own biome onward. That makes a frozen cavern a fast highway for Corruption or Crimson once Hardmode begins, since the sheets of it are connected over long distances. Purification Powder cleans red ice back, which is enough to contain a small breach.

Past the frozen furniture line, plain ice feeds tools that turn it straight into placeable objects, the Ice Machine included. The colored variants are locked out of all that except the Mitey-Titey, so gather the plain blocks and leave the converted ones in the ground.