Slimy Saddle

The mount bounces on its own for as long as you keep jump held, so travel turns into a steady rhythm of hops instead of a run. Going up it clears more ground per jump than anything else you can get before Hardmode. Going down it falls at twice the normal rate, and that is the part people underrate: a hellevator that took a minute to descend takes a few seconds, and the extra vertical speed is enough to slip under an attack that was aimed where you used to be. Your stopwatch will not agree, since it keeps reporting your ordinary speed.

Come down on an enemy and it takes damage and throws you back up. The hit ignores defense and it counts as summon damage, so summoner accessories and armor raise it while the critical strike bonus from banners does nothing for it. It also does not roll the usual random spread, which is why it turns up in testing: the same enemy takes exactly the same number every single time. You get a short window of invulnerability on the bounce too, brief but enough that you are not punished for the contact you just made.

That bounce makes it a real weapon early on. Against the Eye of Cthulhu you can spend most of the fight sitting on top of it, which takes contact damage out of the encounter entirely, and contact damage is what kills most first attempts. Worm bosses are better still in a room with a low ceiling, because you land on one segment, get thrown into the roof, and come down on the next before the first has moved. Two things go wrong with this. The bounces can launch you high enough that the landing kills you, and the vertical distance can pull you far enough from a boss that it gives up and despawns mid fight.

Land in water and the mount rises to the top and sits there. A deep flooded cave stops being a drowning risk and becomes a lift, and you can stand on open water and fish from it. Lava behaves the same way, so a lava lake becomes something you can walk across, but only after you have dealt with the burning through an Obsidian Skin Potion or a Lava Charm. The mount itself gives you nothing against the heat.

• Dismount at the top of a jump, jump again, then remount in midair. Repeating that gets you far higher than staying on the whole way up. With a bottle accessory in the mix the difference is close to half again as much height.
• Trigger it just as Rocket Boots run out of flight and you squeeze a few more blocks out of the transition.
• Double jump accessories still work while mounted, so that slot is not wasted.
• It bounces off Target Dummies as well as enemies, which is enough to build a working elevator out of a column of them.
• Jumping off the surface of water sometimes gives you a second jump in midair. It is too inconsistent to plan around.

Fire a grappling hook into a wall and summon the mount while you are hanging there. The spawn effect throws light a long way through solid rock in every direction, which shows you ore, caves and the occasional buried structure well before you own anything that lights up a room properly. Aim it downward from the surface and you can spot an Enchanted Sword shrine without digging for it. You do need clear space at the hook for the mount to appear, so it will not work while you are pressed into a narrow tunnel.

It softens fall damage rather than removing it, and this is a mount that spends its time at heights where that matters. A Lucky Horseshoe or any pair of wings shuts fall damage off completely while you are riding, and one of those should be equipped before you start using the bounce as a combat tool.