Iron Pickaxe

The copper tier digs. This one digs at a pace you would actually choose. It is also what a new Journey Mode character starts holding, which is a fair signal about where the real floor of the game sits and how little the tier below it contributes.

It stops one step short of Meteorite, and that single block is what pushes most new players to go looking for gold or platinum in the first place, since the meteor gear on the other side is the first genuine power jump in a run. Once the next pickaxe exists, this one has no reason to stay in your inventory.

• It holds item id 1, which suggests it was the first entry ever written into the game's item list.
• It and its lead counterpart ask for slightly less wood than the other early pickaxes, an inconsistency nobody has bothered to fix.