Stone Bricks

Stone Brick are one of the materials that are used in the Strongholds. Stone bricks have about the same blast resistance as Brick; a TNT block surrounded by either of these will only destroy one block in each direction. Cracked, Mossy, and regular Stone Bricks all have the same blast resistance.

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. It can also be used as a building resource. It is the strength of cobblestone. To collect it, use any pickaxe. Creepers can easily break through it by blowing up, but about 5-10 layers should block explosions. This item cannot be crafted.

Mossy Stone Brick is another variant of a Stone Brick. It can be found in Strongholds and Dungeons. Its texture is a stone brick texture modified to add a mossy effect, much like mossy cobblestone.It sort of looks like all the other stone brick but this is mossy. It is the strength of cobblestone. You can use any pickaxe to collect it, wooden to diamond. You can get it by finding it in a stronghold. This item cannot be crafted, but can craft other things.

Circle Stone Brick is yet another variant of a Stone Brick. It can only be obtained in Creative mode. It is not generated naturally and is not craftable. Any pickaxe can collect it. Its Blast Resistance is the same as Stone or Cobblestone.

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. Placing a stair while facing north (F=1) then breaking it will get you a mossy stone brick. Placing the stairs when you are facing west (F=0) and then breaking it get you a cracked stone brick. East and south produce normal stone bricks. 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.

Bugs

 * In Minecraft 1.2.3, Circle Stone Brick is normally only accessible through the Creative Mode menu. However, there is a bug which allows the player to create Circle Stone Brick. The process involves using Sticky Pistons and Water to change normal Stone Bricks damage value to that of Circle Stone Bricks. Although difficult to diagram, one might look here for details on the setup to accomplish this.
 * Mossy, Cracked and Circle Stone Bricks change their textures to a regular Stone Brick block when a Silverfish goes into it.

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 are named "stonebricks", however.