The Ice Box is a Food Tab structure used to store and preserve Food, reducing spoilage rate by 50% (so edible items stored in an Ice Box will last twice as long before spoiling). It requires 2 Gold Nuggets, 1 Gears, and 1 Boards to craft and an Alchemy Engine to prototype.
When demolished by a Hammer or other means, it returns one Gear, Gold Nugget, and Board, along with any items stored in it.
It is possible to find an Ice Box trap. If the Chest next to the Ice Box is opened, Winter will immediately begin. The player can safely demolish the Ice Box for its components, but demolishing the Chest with a Hammer still triggers Winter immediately. If Winter was already in progress, the progress will extend as if it were already around the first day of Winter.
Reign of GiantsEdit
With the Reign of Giants DLC active, Ice, Ice Cubes and Fashion Melons can be stored indefinitely in an Ice Box, Thermal Stones can be chilled if stored, and Ice Boxes become renewable due to the 1% chance of Gears dropping from Tumbleweeds. Crafting an Ice Box also costs one Cut Stone instead of Boards.
There is also a version of the Ice Box trap that starts Summer instead of Winter. It's distinguishable from the Winter one since it only spawns in a Desert Biome. Unlike the Winter trap, opening or hammering the Ice Box or the Chest will start Summer.
The following items can be placed in an Ice Box:
As food spoils faster in Summer in Reign of Giants, it is recommended players put their food in the Ice Box to slow down the spoiling rate of food and help preserve food for Winter.
- Because destroying an Ice Box returns 100% of Gears used in crafting, extra Gears can safely be used in crafting Ice Boxes without fear of losing non-renewable resources.
- Gold in SW, while renewable, is difficult to renew consistently. Thus, it may be more of an issue to hammer down an Ice Box. Warly can make many Chef Pouches to negate this problem.
- The Ice Box was added in the Spoiled Rotten update. Before the A Little Rain Must Fall update, constructing one did not require Gears, instead using Cut Stone. Ham Bats and Garlands were able to be stored in Ice Boxes until a November 14, 2013 bugfix/performance update, when the two items were made non-edible.