Balloons

Balloons are accessories that allow the player to jump higher and may also allow to double jump and negate fall damage.

There are two "root" balloon accessories that function identically, but are found in different places, and have very different upgrade trees through the Tinkerer's Workshop. Both increase the regular jump height from 6 blocks to 10½ blocks. This effect does not apply to any other jumps from double jumping, only the initial jump. The effect also does not stack between any of the accessories listed below, whether through equipping multiple accessories or crafting them together.

In decreasing order of jump height (measured in blocks), the best balloon accessories are: Bundle of Balloons (61), Sandstorm in a Balloon (36), Fart in a Balloon (29), Blizzard in a Balloon (25), Sharkron Balloon (23), Cloud in a Balloon (19), Shiny Red Balloon (10), None (6). The Lucky Horseshoe upgrades have the same jump heights.

Shiny Red Balloon


The base Shiny Red Balloon is an accessory found in Floating Island chests and Sky or Azure Crates. It can be combined with various "jar" accessories (any except the Tsunami, see below) to provide various double jump balloons. Each double-jump balloon can be combined with a fall damage-cancelling Lucky Horseshoe.

Alternate upgrade paths

 * The Cloud In a Bottle can have its jump height (and those of its upgrades) drastically improved by combining it with a Whoopie Cushion (making a Fart in a Jar), at the price of a sound effect which may prove annoying. Since the Cloud in a Bottle cannot be found in Crates, neither it nor its upgrades are renewable.  That said, it is relatively common in underground chests.
 * The Shiny Red Balloon can alternatively be combined with a Honey Comb for a Honey Balloon, providing an improved single jump plus defensive bees, then with a Lucky Horseshoe for fall protection. Unlike most other balloon accessories, the Honey Balloon is technically not renewable, since it depends on the Queen Bee.
 * The Cloud, Blizzard, and Sandstorm balloons, instead of being upgraded with horseshoes, can be combined into the quadruple-jump accessory Bundle of Balloons.
 * Although the icon shows a yellow, blue, and green balloon, the item actually uses the sandstorm (yellow), cloud (blue) and blizzard (white) balloons.
 * The scarce key item here is Sandstorm in a Bottle -- even for large worlds, the majority of worlds do not have a Pyramid, and even for those which do, it is not guaranteed to contain a Sandstorm in a Bottle.  Without that one item, it is not possible to craft a Bundle of Balloons.   (The Cloud in a Balloon is much more common, and the other ingredients can all be gotten from Crates if needed.)   Naturally, the Sandstorm in a Bottle is not renewable, nor is the Bundle of Balloons.
 * The Bundle of Balloons' multiple-jump effects stack with other double jumps, such as Fart in a Jar or Tsunami in a Bottle and their derivatives, but needing more than 4 double jumps is rarely actually necessary, and using a Frog Leg as secondary accessory instead may prove better for total jump height anyway.   More importantly, the Bundle of Balloons does not provide fall protection -- if the player does not have some Horseshoe-based accessory or  some other fall protection, using all their jumps can easily bring them to a height from which the fall damage will be lethal regardless of health and/or defense.
 * The increased height of the first jump, which is the original benefit of the Shiny Red Balloon, does not stack with other balloons.

Balloon Pufferfish
The Balloon Pufferfish is an accessory found by Fishing in any biome. It functions identically to the Shiny Red Balloon individually, but it can only be combined with the Tsunami in a Bottle, and then with a Lucky Horseshoe. This provides a total jump height of 23 blocks, which exceeds the regular Cloud and Honey balloons' jump height but is exceeded by any other double-jump balloon. However, the ingredients for the Sharkron Balloon can be found by fishing anywhere, so it may be easier to acquire than the others. Since they are fished up, they are renewable.