Ice Skates

Ice Skates is a specialized mobility upgrade that allows you to maintain control over your movement on ice surfaces. In Nullscape, ice biomes feature slippery terrain that normally causes your character to slide uncontrollably, making precise platforming extremely difficult. Ice Skates completely neutralizes this hazard.

How It Works

Without Ice Skates, stepping onto an ice surface causes your character to lose traction. Movement inputs become delayed and exaggerated, turning tight jumps and precise landings into unpredictable slides. On ice over hazards or near edges, this can be fatal. Ice Skates restores full movement control on ice, allowing you to run, jump, and stop on icy surfaces exactly as you would on normal ground.

The upgrade does not provide any bonus on non-ice surfaces — it is purely a counter to the ice physics mechanic. However, it also enables a unique technique where you can use the slight remaining momentum on ice to perform extended slides that cover more distance than normal running, essentially turning a hazard into a movement tool once you are comfortable with the physics.

Cost and Availability

Ice Skates is moderately priced and appears regularly in the Mart. It is most commonly encountered during or just before ice biome sections, which is convenient timing for players who need it. However, purchasing it proactively before entering an ice zone is ideal, as the Mart may not be available once you are deep in a frozen biome.

Tier Ranking: A

Ice Skates earns an A-tier ranking because it completely removes a significant environmental hazard, but its value is heavily biome-dependent. In the Frozen Caverns and any room with ice platforms, Ice Skates is effectively an S-tier upgrade that prevents deaths and enables precise platforming. In non-ice biomes, it provides zero benefit. The averaged ranking accounts for the fact that ice sections make up a meaningful but not dominant portion of most runs.

Best Synergies

• Double Jump: Ice surfaces combined with double jump let you reach platforms that would be impossible on normal ground because the ice slide carries you further before you jump.
• Grace Wings: Gliding over ice sections gives you a safe aerial path that avoids the slippery surface entirely, while Ice Skates are there as a backup if you need to land.
• Grapple Points: Grapple over ice patches to bypass them entirely, keeping Ice Skates available as insurance for sections where grapple anchors are absent.
• Adrenaline: Speed boost on ice gives you controlled fast movement even on the slipperiest surfaces, as Ice Skates maintain your directional control during the boost.

Tips

If you know an ice biome is coming, buy Ice Skates even if you are not currently in one. The proactive purchase can save your run later. Practice the ice slide technique — it is not as fast as Adrenaline but costs no cooldown and can help you clear wide gaps over hazards without any other mobility upgrades.