Stone Bricks

Stone Brick are one of the materials that are used in Strongholds. Stone bricks have the same blast resistance as Brick or Cobblestone; a TNT block surrounded by either of these will only destroy one block in each direction. All variants of Stone Brick have the same blast resistance. They can be mined with any pickaxe, but not by hand.

Cracked Stone Brick is a variant of a Stone Brick. It can be found in Strongholds, which were also implemented in the 1.8 update. Its texture is a stone brick texture modified to make it look cracked; however, this does not affect its blast resistance or mining time. This item cannot be crafted, but can be used to craft other blocks the same way as regular Stone Brick.

Mossy Stone Brick is another variant of a Stone Brick. It can also be found in Strongholds. Its texture is a stone brick texture modified to add a mossy effect, much like mossy cobblestone. Like Cracked Stone Brick, this item cannot be crafted, but can craft other blocks.

Circle Stone Brick is yet another variant of a Stone Brick. It can only be obtained in Creative mode, as it is not generated naturally and is not craftable. Once produced in Creative mode, it can be used to craft other blocks in the same way that Cracked and Mossy Stone Brick can.

Crafting
Stone Bricks can be crafted by placing 4 Stone blocks in a square, meaning they can be crafted without a Crafting Table.

Crafting
Stone Bricks are made from Stone, which normally must be smelted from Cobblestone by the player. To save resources, the player might use Silk Touch on natural Stone. However, this might be more labor intensive, considering the process to enchant a pick. This also does not account for the random results of enchanting.

History
Stone Brick - regular, cracked, and mossy - was implemented in the Beta 1.8 Adventure Update.

In Beta 1.7, the file "en_US.lang" contained a reference to this block as "tile.stonebricksmooth.name=Stone Bricks", giving the first confirmation of their name.

In the Beta stages of the game, Stone brick that the player crafts appeared to have a very small chance of having the object change to Cracked Stone Brick or Mossy Stone Brick when harvested. The same phenomenon also happened with harvested Stone Brick Stairs. You could also mine another type of a "Normal" Stone Brick (Neither Mossy nor Cracked) if you mine it from the Stone Brick Stairs. Due to a bug in 1.8, Mossy Stone Brick could be made by destroying Stone Brick Stairs that were facing east (common north is where the sun rises). This was fixed in version 1.9 pre-release. Due to a bug in 1.8, cracked stone bricks could be obtained by creating stone brick stairs, then mining them while not touching stone or near water, as mining during that time will produce different results. There was no other known way to create cracked stone bricks. These were all fixed Minecraft 1.0.


 * Stone Bricks that are "crafted" by breaking a Stone Brick Stairs that was placed when facing South (F=3) are not stackable with Stone Bricks that have been crafted from Stone or obtained by destroying a Stone Brick Stair in East (F=2) direction. There doesn't seem to be a visual difference at this time, though. As of 1.2.0 it would drop circle stone bricks but due to the bug being fixed it is impossible to witness this.


 * It appears that, as of 1.8 pre-release, cracked stone brick blocks were acting like mushroom cap blocks, generating a different texture based on location.

In Beta 1.9 pre4 cracked stone brick is called stone brick just like the other 2 versions; however, the texture is different.

As of 1.2.1, there was a new type of stone brick added called the Circle Stone Brick. The circle stone brick is only available via spawning in creative. However, there is a glitch that was fixed in 1.2.4. In 1.2.3 you could use a normal stone brick and a Piston, Redstone and water to turn the stone brick into the circle stone brick.

Bugs

 * When a silverfish enters a Mossy, Cracked or Circle Stone Brick block, its appearance changes to a regular Stone Brick block. This is because there is no mossy/circle/cracked stone brick variant of Block 97, the block that, when mined, spawns a silverfish.

Trivia

 * The insect mob known as Silverfish spawn from blocks identical in appearance to Stone Bricks known as Block 97.
 * Cracked and mossy stone bricks are never silverfish blocks. However silverfish can "crawl" into them changing their damage value to that of a smooth stone brick.
 * In the code, cobblestone is named "stonebrick". Stone Bricks themselves are named "stonebricksmooth", however.
 * If you harvested stairs and created "different" stone brick (stone brick with a damage value of 3, which didn't stack with normal stone brick) in beta 1.8, in 1.2, it is now circle stone brick.
 * The texture of Stone bricks may have been influenced by the cobblestone of the Painterly texture pack.
 * The texture is also extremely similar to the game Metagun's stone brick texture, made by Notch for Ludum Dare.