Ice

Ice is a translucent solid block formed in snowy Biomes (formerly winter worlds) from exposed water, and is slightly slippery.

Ice can be easily destroyed without tools, but using a pickaxe greatly helps. If there is another block directly underneath the ice block, it will revert back to water when broken. If not, it will shatter without producing water. Due to its transparency, ice cannot have Torches placed on it directly.

Ice will also melt into water if the light level immediately next to it on any side is 12 or brighter, from light sources other than sunlight. Conversely, a water block in a snowy biome will eventually freeze into ice if exposed to the sky from directly above, and the light level immediately above the water block is 9 or less, from light sources other than sunlight. This can happen at any time of day, and in any weather conditions.

Ice blocks could only be collected with the Silk Touch enchantment, but since Minecraft 1.0 this is not the case anymore. However, it is still possible to build ice structures without the enchantment in snowy biomes by building a mold and placing water in it, keeping the water exposed to the sky until it freezes. Pistons can be used to move ice blocks to warm biomes. Ice blocks can only be placed in creative mode.

Items and broken blocks move extremely fast if they are in water that is flowing over ice. This is particularly useful for transporting resources using water currents because items will keep sliding on ice blocks when they are dropped at an angle, even if water is not placed on top.

Potential uses

 * If creating a water slide, ice blocks can be used as the bottom pieces of the slide to speed up item movement.
 * Because items exiting a water flow will continue to slide on up to six blocks on ice, sequences of flowing water over ice can be used to transport items indefinitely with no vertical drop.
 * In creative mode the player can place ice blocks in the nether and use lava to make water.
 * Making a 2-block high hallway with an ice floor, sprint-jumping down it causes the fastest possible speed in the game. However, this will deplete your hunger bar rapidly.
 * You can build structures with ice in a tundra biome by putting dirt (or any other material) around the walls you'd like to build. After you've laid out one level of dirt, you pour as much water into the layout with buckets until all blocks have become ice. After this, make another level and repeat. Make sure that there are no blocks anywhere above the block of water you want to freeze, as this disallows the whole freezing process.

Trivia

 * If a player rides a pig on ice using a saddle the pig moves incredibly fast, making journeys across long frozen lakes easier.
 * Although it is seemingly translucent, water cannot be seen through ice, nor can other ice blocks. The same thing happens when ice is placed in lava.
 * Sugar cane can be placed on the side of ice.
 * By sprint-jumping while on ice and in a 2-block tall tunnel, it is possible to move 16 blocks a second, twice as fast as a full-speed minecart. By replacing the 2-block ceiling with trapdoors, it's possible to travel 1000 blocks in 54 seconds, or 18.518 blocks per second. However, this will drain your hunger bar extremely quickly: roughly 1 unit per second.
 * If you try to light ice on fire with a flint and steel no flames will appear, but the flint and steel will still act as if it had been used (its durability will decrease slightly). The same thing happens with glass.
 * Ice isn't as translucent as glass, so light passes through ice blocks diffusely, reducing the light level by 2 per ice block.
 * Ice doesn't look transparent in the inventory or when your character holds it but will look translucent when placed.
 * Along with Portals and Water, Ice is one of the few blocks that uses translucent pixels (colored but still semi-transparent) in the default Minecraft texture pack.
 * As of Beta 1.8, Ice can be used to get water into the Nether in creative mode. Placing a bright enough light source next to it will cause it to melt.
 * In Beta 1.9 Prerelease 4, mining Ice with a pickaxe with the Silk Touch enchantment would cause Ice to drop, which could then be brought to the Nether for water. This was fixed in Minecraft 1.0.
 * It is possible to see the edges of chunks through ice, but only in "Fast" graphics setting.
 * As of Beta 1.9 pre5, Ice's texture was changed.

Bugs

 * If one is to place a bucket of water on an ice block, and if the player is standing on it while being washed away by the water, the he/she will not be able to jump, and walking anywhere will be the same as walking on ice, making it impossible to play in any game.
 * If the user is playing on a non-snow Alpha map generated before the Halloween update, as of 1.6, oceans may freeze over because of ice regeneration in the newly generated snow biomes.
 * Lakes can spawn inside of oceans, causing a frozen ocean to have "craters" of ice.
 * It is possible to create a single block of non-flowing water by melting ice, even when there are no surrounding blocks. As soon as a surrounding block is changed, such as adding or mining a block, or placing items like torches, the water will start flowing.
 * If a partial block like a cake or a single slab is placed on an ice block, that block gains the slippery property of the ice block below it.
 * Ice placed in the Nether will melt into a water source block, avoiding the no water in the nether restriction. This is however only possible in creative mode or with mods.
 * Using ice, it is possible to have a water source block directly above a fire block. By placing Netherrack below any solid block and an ice block above said block, then destroying the middle block and setting the Netherrack on fire, the ice will melt and float above the fire.

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