ANDESITE

Andesite is one generation further removed than diorite or granite: a crafting grid takes 1 diorite and 1 cobblestone and turns them into 2 andesite, the only one of the three that needs one of its siblings as an ingredient rather than raw quartz or cobblestone alone.

The Mason treats it the same as the other two regardless: 16 andesite for 1 emerald, bought from the player, never sold. Cut on a stonecutter it becomes andesite slab, or polished into a smoother gray building block if that fits the build better.

Bring it to a Mason once he reaches Journeyman: he pays 1 emerald for every 16 andesite handed over.

The best rate any villager offers is an emerald per 16 andesite, from the Mason, and 2 of the other 5 pay out faster. No villager sells andesite back, so it is emeralds out and nothing in.

One slot at the Mason takes 16 andesite a trade, 16 trades, 16 emeralds. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

16 acacia boats against 384 paper for the same 16 emeralds, 24 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Mason at 10 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted. Andesite itself pays 16 an emerald, so 50 of the 72 ask less and 19 ask more.

A villager needs a stonecutter and 70 banked trading experience before journeyman unlocks, level 3 of five. Nothing about andesite itself is special here; it opens at the same point on the ladder as the two stones it is related to.

Once unlocked the slot takes 16 andesite a use, 16 uses before it locks, and refills on the usual restock timer, capped at twice a Minecraft day regardless of how much andesite is sitting in the world waiting to be mined.

16 sales close the row, and the 2-real-minute restock timer is fixed no matter how the Mason is treated, up to two fills inside one 20-real-minute Minecraft day.

Both fills used, one Mason absorbs 512 andesite for 32 emeralds in a day, then sits with the offer untouched until you bring more.

A cleared slot is 256 andesite for 16 emeralds, no better done in smaller batches since the rate holds flat trade to trade.

Because the recipe eats a diorite along the way, andesite is naturally the scarcer of the two crafted stones if you are making it rather than mining it; keep that in mind before selling off diorite you might need for this instead.

Also on the Mason's list: diorite, polished andesite, polished granite, polished diorite, dripstone block and nether quartz.

Andesite generates in blobs through ordinary stone, and it can also be crafted from cobblestone and diorite, so nobody ever runs short. Polished, it becomes one of the cleanest neutral building blocks in the game.

It is the block modern builds use where plain stone looks flat, and a stonecutter turns it into slabs, stairs and walls one for one. That is why the Mason's polished version is worth more than the raw block it came from.

Andesite reads as grey infrastructure, which is why it turns up in almost every technical build as the floor and casing around redstone. It contrasts with stone just enough to show where a machine ends.

It comes in four shapes from the stonecutter, and the polished version is the one that reads as finished, so a wall of raw andesite with polished trim is the standard cheap facade.

Being craftable from cobblestone and diorite makes it the only speckled stone with a guaranteed supply, which matters when a build wants hundreds of blocks of one grey.