Ice Rod

The Wizard stocks it, which makes this one of the few early Hardmode magic weapons you can simply decide to own instead of farming for a drop. It autofires, and Mythical is the modifier worth reforging toward.

Aim at an empty tile and the shot stops there and becomes a real block: solid, translucent, faintly glowing, slippery, and gone on its own after a short while. Aim at anything already occupied, background objects included, and the same shot never becomes a block. It flies flat, ignores gravity, and shatters on the first enemy or wall it meets. That split is the entire weapon, and it is why firing into the gap in front of an enemy throws the damage away. Aim through ice you already placed and the next shot passes cleanly through it.

• Climbing with nothing under you. Grapple onto one, place the next above it, and a floating island is reachable without building a tower.
• Resetting flight. Drop a block beneath your feet the instant your wings run out, land on it, and the timer refills.
• A one way wall. Your own shots pass through your ice, enemies and their projectiles do not, which is unusually strong in player versus player where most attacks are too fast to dodge.
• Anchoring builds. Ordinary blocks will sit against ice, so you can start a structure in midair without running scaffolding up from the ground.
• Scouting. When a block times out it drops glowing sparks that fall through solid terrain, briefly lighting up caves and ore below you.

The ice counts as a block rather than a projectile, so it can be actuated, hammered into shapes and painted, and it will hold a valid house together for as long as it lasts. Chests and other storage refuse to sit on it. Wall torches jump onto a placed block in front of them and jump back when it breaks. None of it can be mined or collected, and it has nothing to do with the ice you dig out of a snow biome.

It is as slippery as the natural kind, so a stack of blocks used as stairs is an efficient way to slide off one from a great height. Ice Skates or Frostspark Boots fix the footing completely and are worth equipping before any serious ice climbing.