Rocket Boots

The tank refills the instant you touch solid ground or latch onto anything with a hook. Paired with a grappling hook that turns a very short burst of flight into continuous movement across broken terrain, since every latch hands you a full charge again. Learning to fire the hook at the top of a burst is the difference between these feeling useless and feeling like early wings.

The flight spends itself in small increments rather than one continuous burn, so you can hop a gap with a couple of taps and keep most of the meter. Holding the button on instinct empties it in a moment and leaves you falling with nothing left. Extra jump accessories also fire before the boots kick in, so a jump you thought you were saving may already be gone.

On their own they are a stopgap. The reason to visit the Goblin Tinkerer early is that they combine with a speed boot into Spectre Boots, which stay in your loadout for a long stretch of the game and feed several later upgrades. Multiple different speed boots work as the other half now, so use whatever your world handed you rather than hunting a specific one.

The flight stops working as flight. Wings take over and the boots quietly extend the wing meter instead. That is still worth a slot in early hardmode, and it stops mattering once you own a decent pair. Also worth knowing: a full set of Shadow armor turns the exhaust purple.