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 cannot be collected but it is still possible to build structures with them in snowy biomes by building a mold and placing water in it, keeping the water exposed to the sky. Pistons can be used to move ice blocks to warm biomes.

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.

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.
 * If an ice block is placed in mid-air and is melted by a source of light, such as glowstone, then it will melt into water while staying in the air. The water will remain suspended in the air until a block adjacent to it is modified.
 * 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, Ice is one of the few blocks that uses translucent pixels (colored but still semi-transparent) in the default Minecraft texture pack.
 * Mobs standing on ice blocks during the daytime will be fireproof, as if they were submerged in water.
 * If cake is placed on an ice block, the cake becomes slippery too.
 * Ice blocks do not immediately spread as water when melted. A block next to them needs to be updated before it starts spreading.

Bugs

 * 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.

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