Minecraft 101 - Not getting lost

[blane]

This one is fairly obvious, but some people may not think of it, so I put it up here.

Whenever I explore a cave (or dig out mining shafts) I always put my torches on the right wall. This way I can easily find the exit by keeping the torches to my left. If exits are not easily seen, I usually put 3-4 torches on the ground to mark the exits.

 

[Spacethingy]

Now that is clever!
Just mind the Hansel and Gretel effect in multiplayer...

 

[Izack]

Doesn't work quite so well with large mineshafts with multiple levels and double-backs...

 

[blane]

Well it certainly depends on how you layout your mine shafts. Personally I only mine on level 12 with a simple layout (a main branch where sub shafts are dug in perpendicular). But generally the risk of getting lost in your mine is much less than in a cave.

 

[garyw]

I just use signs. Whenever I branch off a mine I whack a sign up.

 

[blane]

Usually I don't use signs because I find them impractical: I don't carry them around as they are not stackable and eat up inventory space and while I'm mining I don't like to bother with crafting them up specifically. However, at some point I sometimes decide to make my mine fancy and slap up signs everywhere; every mineshaft gets numbered and/or named and exits are marked everywhere.

Also I sometimes use signs to point to points of interests like lava lakes, slime locations or dungeon spawners.

 

[Shinrar]

In single player (I don't have the resources yet in our Multiplayer server to do it), I just throw down torches when I go cave diving... And when I come up to a branch, I carry a stack of Redstone torches as well, and set a normal torch and a redstone torch adjacent to each other. The red points to the exit. =) If it is a hidden exit, I'll stick a redstone torch over it to flag it (and surround it by normal torches too).

 

[RisingFury]

So far I only got lost once when lighting a huge cave near my giant mob spawn farm. The place was so big I used 20 stacks of torches to light it up. I ended up digging my way out........

The only Minecraft 101 I'd do is:
www.minecraftwiki.net
You'll find anything and everything from "keep your torches on the right wall" to "wheat requires light level of 9 or higher ABOVE it" there.