Minecraft wiki entry for Mining, associated text: The advantage of a staircase is that the player can always trivially climb back up, without need to place ladders. Crafting some of the harvested stone into stairs makes getting down and up even easier without jumping, though they need to carve out an extra block of headroom. Any such staircase drops at most 1 block for each 3 blocks excavated (without the headroom). There are several sorts possible: