CiCi's Climbing Axes

Two ice axes for White Knuckle.

Leaderboard disabled while active

Features

• Starts in your inventory — a pair of climbing axes at the beginning of every run
• Lodge anywhere: swing into any static surface to plant the pick and grip it
• Alternate hands to climb: swinging with the lodged hand drops the pick — the other hand has to plant the next move
• Anchor guard: you can't instant-save yourself mid-freefall — the other hand must already have an axe equipped or be gripping a surface before a new lodge takes
• Voluntary release: whiff-swing into empty air to let go
• Jump to detach: jumping off a lodge returns both axes to hand cleanly
• Durability 30 per axe: each successful lodge spends 1 durability on release. The mesh visibly darkens as durability drops. Broken axe is removed from inventory
• Idle regen: axes recover 1 durability per minute while not being used
• Hit feedback: randomized impact sounds at the wall, distinct break sound at the player's ear, slight camera shake on landed swings
• Lighter than a hammer: 1/3 the weight, so carrying two still costs less encumbrance than a vanilla hammer

How to use

The axes spawn in your inventory at run start. Equip both hands and start climbing:

1. Swing the first axe at a wall — it lodges and your hand grips
2. Swing the other axe higher up — it lodges, and the first auto-releases
3. Repeat. Whiff-swing to drop on purpose. Jump to detach cleanly.

What's new in v1.0.2

Features

• NEW SPRITES AND WORLD MODELS
• Just like pitons now you can see where the axe will hit

Fixes

• The axes now work properly with saves

Credits

• Li-0 — art, design, mechanics
• Mesh made in Blockbench
• Source available on the Thunderstore page "Source" tab

Changelog

1.2.0

Adds a third climbing-axe variant and a new trinket.

Added

• Free Climber trinket — start with a pair of green climbing axes that never wear down. Mutually exclusive with Wall Runner and Alpine Purist.
• Console spawnitem support for all three axe variants — cici_normal_axes, cici_regenerating_axes, cici_infinate_axes.

1.1.6

Fixed

• Linux install: archive was packed with backslash path separators, which Linux extractors treated as part of the filename instead of as folders. Repackaged with spec-compliant forward slashes so the mod installs cleanly without manual file moves.

1.1.5

Fixed

• Axes now lodge normally on wall sections that carry a vanilla handhold. Previously, accidentally clipping a handhold during a swing would refuse the lodge AND drop your other lodged axe, which punished routine climbing.

1.1.4

Fixed

• Mending Axes terminal-perk purchase no longer freezes the game.

1.1.3

Changed

• Alpine Purist now also bans the Christmas/Chimney holiday variants of pitons and rebar (Item_Piton_Holiday, Item_Rebar_Holiday, Item_RebarRope_Holiday) plus the explosive (Item_Rebar_Explosive) and bone (Item_Rebar_Bone) rebar variants from world spawns and vending. Existing perk-terminal filter (piton / rebar / hammer substring) already covers any perk that grants these.
• Picker mutex now also locks out any framework starter trinket whose item-grant or perk-grant would conflict with Alpine Purist. Picking AP greys out the matching piton / rebar / holiday-variant / hammer-related starters; picking any of those greys out AP. Conflict tooltip lists each blocking selection.

Requires

• CiCi's Trinket & Binding Framework 1.2.1 or newer for the holiday-variant starter trinkets to appear in the picker.

1.1.2

Changed

• Axe meshes re-scaled to match other in-game items (matches the same item-scale pass that landed in the shotgun mod).

1.1.1

Fixed

• The shipped 1.1.0 zip contained a stale asset bundle that was missing the red axe mesh and the outline meshes. Red axes incorrectly displayed the yellow mesh in the inventory and neither variant showed an outline. This release ships the correct bundle.

1.1.0

Adds the Trinket / Binding system, a red-axe variant, vending and perk distribution, and fixes a long-standing lodge-orientation bug on flipped maps.

Added

• Wall Runner trinket — start the run with 2 climbing axes.
• Alpine Purist binding — start with 2 red (Mending) axes. Bans pitons, auto-pitons, rebar, rebar-ropes, and the hammer from world spawns, vending machines, and perk terminals. +0.5× score multiplier. Tracks a per-gamemode best speedrun time when run in pure mode.
• Red Climbing Axes — fragile (10 starting durability) but self-repair over time while you're alive. Regenerate from a broken state after a short grace period. Hits harder than the yellow variant.
• Yellow climbing axes can now appear in vending machines (rare; 12 roaches buys two).
• Mending Axes terminal perk — buy from a perk terminal to receive 2 red axes (23 roaches).
• Wear-and-tear sprites for both yellow and red axes — pristine → cracked → battered → final → broken.
• Mutual-exclusion locks between Wall Runner / Alpine Purist / Carabiner / Pitons and Beans (incompatible selections lock each other out and show the conflict in the tooltip).
• Revive top-up — dying with Alpine Purist active and respawning replenishes your starting red axes.

Fixed

• Lodge orientation no longer flips on maps with mirrored level geometry (Silos, certain Hull rooms, etc.). Axes now lodge correctly on every map.

Requires

• CiCi's Trinket & Binding Framework 1.0.0 or newer (auto-installed via Thunderstore).