Ice Rod

The ice rod is a Y-item in ALttP that fires a projectile capable of freezing enemies.

Location

Ice rod is found in a chest inside the ice cave. To reach the chest, the player must use the left ice cave entrance that's blocked by a bombwall on the overworld.

Description

The ice rod uses 16 MP (8 MP with half magic) and fires a projectile that applies damage or a freeze effect to most enemies. Some enemies are completely immune to it.

The ice rod projectile moves more slowly than the one that's shot by the similar fire rod. This makes it a worse combat tool in most circumstances where both rods work (i.e. the Lanmolas fight). But there's one thing in the game the ice rod is absolutely required for: damaging Trinexx's fire head. Any run that has to defeat Trinexx, such as runs that do All Dungeons or 100% the game, must collect ice rod in order to defeat Trinexx.

An item dash with the icec rod is known as a ice rod dash or more potentially just rod dash when there's no need to disambiguate with the fire rod. Link will shoot the ice rod and begin a dash charge simultaneously, and he'll have a slightly reduced rod animation time.

The ice rod can be a strong option in some ancilla glitch setups for overload or misslotting. This is because it using the ice rod spawns 4 ancillae: the ice rod shot itself and 3 ice spark ancillae that occupy back slots. Furthermore, the player can have two ice rod shots onscreen at a time, potentially creating 8 ancillae from using one item.