Cubestone

Cubestone is a special type of stone discovered (accidentally) and named by Fubaka on the 4th of January, 2012 while making some repairs from WorldEdit. It is a variant of Smooth Stone Slab that has no crease in the middle, bearing its 'top' face on all sides. As such, it is valuable for decoration. Its obscure nature made it famous on Cubic Worlds (becoming its official block), and a successful petition was launched to save it from deletion when Nether Quartz sought to take its place in the slots. Cubestone eventually became a formal block in the game under the name Smooth Stone.

Obtaining Cubestone

A single block of Cubestone.

For much of its history, Cubestone was impossible to obtain naturally. As such, Fubaka offered to convert any stone slabs brought to him into Cubestone. Although technically unnecessary, Fubaka ritualized this offer by building a great pyre (or using an existing one) to 'temper' the slabs given, and return Cubestone 'slabs'. Initially, the half slabs placed looked like normal stone slabs, but the side texture was not creased on the top. Using two slabs completed the block. At the time, normal stone slabs and cubestone slabs looked practically identical, and shared the same name in the inventory, making confusing the two a distinct possibility.

The Great Cubestone Disaster of '12 - '13

After the seemingly innocent introduction of nether brick slabs in Minecraft 1.4.6 on December the 29th 2012, the data value for Cubestone was changed to suffix ":7" instead of ":6". While in itself only a minor change, this meant that all structures constructed using Cubestone were now made with netherbrick slabs instead.

Later on, in the early 13w snapshots, Cubestone was removed entirely from the game, in order to make room for another new slab, Nether Quartz, which took the remaining slab ID. This called Fubaka and the rest of the server to enter a state of panic and petition Mojang to bring the block back, as detailed in this thread: [1]

After a week of petitioning on Reddit, Jeb finally took notice and decided to keep Cubestone in the game under a different Block ID. In snapshot 13w04a, released January 24th, 2013, Cubestone was brought back as Block 43:8, along with a similarly conditioned block referred to as Smooth Sandstone, which is Block 43:9. From here on out, Cubestone no longer came in the form of slabs, but rather, as whole blocks.

Even as such, the 1.5 update will require another batch conversion of the server, to replace all occurring instances of 44:7 with 43:8, since all Cubestone in structures will be replaced again, this time by Nether Quartz.

Standardization

Later versions of the game eventually gave Cubestone in its whole block form a proper place in the Creative Mode inventory, now under the official name Smooth Stone. The upcoming Village and Pillage update will make Cubestone obtainable in Survival mode by cooking Stone in a Furnace. Once this update releases, classic stone slabs will also need to be crafted using Cubestone as the recipe, thus completing the circle of one of Minecraft's strangest block sagas.

Trivia

• The discoverer of this block initially planned on calling it Fubakastone, but then decided not to be so egotistical.
• Fubaka once used vader369's Evil Fire to temper stone slabs into Cubestone. Side effects have been reported to include nightmares given to those who sleep near the stone, and a strange evil aura coming from the blocks.
• Cubestone was once known as Block 44₇ before it was given a formal place in the block list.