How do I not get lost underground?

Question

I have found a rather large series of underground caverns in Minecraft, and have come close to becoming fatally lost several times. What are some best practices in making sure I get back to familiar territory? I have the compass but since it points to my original respawn point it's not terribly useful. What tactics are employed to make sure you can explore deep caverns and still make it home in one piece?

Answer 1

There are a number of spelunking techniques that lead to successful navigation and tracking while wandering underground. As with anything in minecraft, you'll want the right tools for the job:

tools

1. bow+arrows (sword optional)
2. food
3. torches/raw wood
4. a bunch of stone shovels/pickaxes
5. iron/diamond pickaxe for rare ores
6. steadfast resolve in the face of impending lava, and/or water bucket

I put the bow and arrows first as they're really the most important for surviving caves in minecraft, killing enemies at a distance will significantly reduce the amount of damage you take, which will allow you to go further, although food will help in the event that you get hurt.

Torches are key, you'll need lots. I usually pack 64 and make more from wood when I find coal veins.

stone shovels and pickaxes are just for regular old digging, and you'll need to do a bunch of that to get through the steeper jumps

As far as directions go there are a number of simple tricks to being able to find your way around.

lost & found

1. Right/Left-wall rule – Follow the right walls while traveling into a cave, and you'll be able to do a 180 and follow the left walls to find your way out. This is a tedious rule to follow, but is one of the simplest rules for new adventurers to adhere to. As an extension of the rule, place your torches on the same side, and you'll have a better idea of whether you're going into or out of the caves.
2. Signs – Signs used to take up a bunch of inventory space because they didn't stack. But they are stackable now, and they make for great posts for spots that are particularly confusing, especially when you find yourself at a 7-way junction that goes every direction but up.
3. Arrows – Not the arrows for your bow, simply arrows made out of blocks, use dirt/gravel/cobblestone to make → in the walls or ground. Have fun and make a 3D floating arrow in the middle of the path, it'll be much more visible than a sign, and can be a useful way of getting rid of some of the materials that you've no doubt collected on your journey.
4. Torch Patterns – use torches to make patterns to give you clues as to which way to go. Simple designs like ..: can be used to point the way in or out (make up your mind before you go in so that you're not confusing yourself with inconsistent signage.
5. Drilling – If you've got a particularly deep system of caves that double-back and overlap, "drill" some 1x1 ladder holes or 2x2 staircases in any location. They're convenient fast-access points to the surface or other tunnels. As long as you can find your way back to the surface, you're bound to be able to get back to your home.
6. Clean-up – If you've got a lot of time to burn, and you really want to be able to get home in one piece, dig out the tunnels so that they follow a nice pattern with decent lights and stairs.

Answer 2

If you place cobblestone on the floor and look at the top, you should be able to see a L-shape (only with the original texture pack.) If the L is the correct orientation you are facing North

If you saw this texture then you would be facing North. This can help you keep orientation if you know which way you are suposed to be heading.

Answer 3

If you're not averse to changing your texture pack, this can be a great solution. Alternate texture packs will change the look of your paintings as well as the rest of your textures. For example, the PieHole texture pack transforms some of your 2x1 signs into these directional arrows:

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The texture pack also comes with some good paintings for marking dangerous areas:

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Pros:

• Unlike signs, paintings can stack in your inventory, meaning you can carry as many of them as you like without filling up your entire inventory.
• These bright, & colourful 'paintings' are much easier to identify than standard signs, and don't require you to read them.

Cons:

• You may not want to change your texture pack.
• Paintings are randomly selected when placed, so it might take you a few tries to get the one you want. A trick to speed this up is to temporarily build around the spot you want to place your painting in; this will limit the selection of paintings that can randomly appear to the ones that can fit inside the resultant shape.

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EDIT:

As Kevin Y pointed out to me, if you really don't want to change your entire texture pack, you can simply edit the paintings in the default texture pack. This will retain all of the standard textures, while letting you switch to 'custom' paintings.

If you're unsure how to edit your textures, you can read about it here.

Answer 4

There are some good suggestions, but a couple useful tricks are missing so I'll add them. The most certain way of knowing where you are (particularly if accuracy becomes important) is to use the coordinate system. Hit F3 and you get a HUD (Heads Up Display) which displays coordinates. Note down coordinates for places you know, and learn which direction they increase/decrease in, and no matter where you go you can find your way back there. It's worth noting that for some reason the Y coordinate is up/down instead of Z.

Another tip for exploring large caves is to set up totem poles at entrances to branches you've finished exploring. Place a stack of blocks 2 or 3 high with a torch on the front. Effectively blocking off places you're done with drastically reduces wandering/lost time.

Answer 5

If you have explored a region and found it to be a dead-end, and stripped it of all interesting resources, block it off — either build a wall or mark it in a way you will easily recognize. In this way you can reduce T-junctions to straight lines, and block off entire branching cave systems (by reducing them to lines and then blocking that line) once they're uninteresting, making fewer opportunities to get lost. It may even help you explore your way to the exit if you're already lost.

Of course, this doesn't help if the cave system contains loops. But if you know the shape of one loop, you can choose to block it off at one point since you know another path to the other side, and thus continue.

Answer 6

The technique I usually use when exploring a large tunnel network is:

• Always place torches on the left side of the tunnel when moving forward. When I'm back-tracking I keep the line of torches to my right.

• Keep a full stack of dirt blocks in case I'm hopelessly lost and just need to tunnel up to the surface.

• If I enter a large cavern with multiple exits, I'll mark the tunnel I came in from with a few blocks of dirt (assuming the cavern is mostly stone).

Answer 7

I use redstone to indicate a direction to an exit. A redstone torch or wire can be seen from a pretty good distance and nothing else looks like it. You'll run into endless amounts of redstone while exploring so that shouldn't be a problem

If you want to specify a direction, consider an "Arrow" with the torch as the head and redstone wire as the tail. Just go in the direction it points.

Other hints:

When exploring a large cave system I bring the following at a minimum:

• A stack of wood--You can make anything you'll need but food with this and it's worth 4 stacks of planks.
• A stack of wheat (The only stackable food)
• A full bucket of water.

If you get damaged, wall yourself in, create a workbench and make some bread from the wheat.

If you see ANY free lava, dump the water bucket out on a tile next to the water. It will wash over the lava and turn it into obsidian, then scoop the water back up--repeat until all the lava is gone. Lava may be pretty but once you've died 10 or 20 times loosing stacks of diamonds each time, you'll realize the wisdom of doing it this way.

Don't dig straight up or straight down.

Fully light everything. You should be running a coal surplus anyway so just throw torches everywhere. this A) lets you know Very Clearly where you have and haven't been, and B) stops monsters from spawning.

If you run out of coal, make a small tree farm and start creating charcoal by using planks to cook wood.

If you have a HUGE cave system and you create a base of operations, I suggest you build a tree-farm there. At least one or two 3x3 areas of dirt with a torch in the center and saplings planted around it with the ceiling cleared as high as you can reach. The thing about this is it's Amazingly Visible--you can glance it from far far away because nothing else in the caves is green like that. Also you can replentish that wood supply and stay down longer.

Answer 8

This is an old question, but I just found it and have something to add :)

Apart from directional torches, I use a two-high stack of cobble in the middle of a passage as a "bollard" meaning "this is a dead end". I find this useful for finding my way in and out faster in a complicated network. Cobble is always available and only appears due to user activity (apart from around lava sometimes).

As for torches, mostly what others have said; wall-torches on the right going in (as others have said) and otherwise only floor-torches, if needed to light up and make safe a large area for example. So I only pay attention to wall-torches on the left to find my way out.

Answer 9

Carry a few picks. If you get lost you can use them to tunnel back up with. The few times it's happened to me I cut stairs rather than a vertical shaft so the opening would remain in case I wanted to go back down.

Answer 10

In mineshafts use blocks of sand with a torch on the side pointing towards the exit. You rarely find sand naturally in mines, theres scads of it about and torches (made using charcoal) are a renewable resource

Answer 11

I use a variation on torch placement:

• FYI you can mount torches on walls (left, right) or on the floor
• For normal lighting purposes, always put torches on walls
• Only mount torches on the floor when you're near the exit
• Mount additional 'floor torches' when you're within eyesight of another 'floor torch'

Thus any time you see a floor torch you should be able to stand on it and look around and find the next floor torch, and so on, back to the exit. It's like a breadcrumb trail.

Alternatively, if you have a lot of redstone, use redstone torches as the 'floor torch'.

Answer 12

I have found the best way to go through tunnels and caves is using minecarts. Once you get enough iron (it is everywhere) just craft about 3 stacks of rails and make a couple of minecarts. build your base of operations near the entrance and start placing rails in any path that you are interested in It is a fast way to get through the caves and it is very direct. if you want to go exploring a section that doesn't have rials, just be sure to bring torches with you. If there is a fork ahead, go back to the nearest rail and make a railway to the fork. It might take a bit more time and use a lot of resources, but It is worth it and it is fun riding minecarts.

Answer 13

I have a habit of digging long, straight lines. I will place torches on the floor, instead of on the wall at important junctures, such as my stairs up. If worst comes to worst, I dig upwards.

When exploring caves, I will place torches on the right wall when walking around. If I need a torch on the left, I will place it on the floor. This way, I can see which way I was walking. If I want to find my way out, I can just keep the wall mounted torches to my left.

Answer 14

If you're not too attached to your house (which is unlikely), rebuild at or near your original spawn location. This way, no matter what (except for perhaps the Nether) you can tunnel to the surface and whip out a compass.

Building near your original spawn point is possibly the best way always find your way home.

As for in caves, try leaving bread crumbs. For me, I use sand as my bread crumb because it stands out against all the rock. Never wander too far from your last bread crumb, and explore in small increments. When you find/make a path that you'd like to continue pursuing, start adding more bread crumbs.

Answer 15

I'm surprised this hasn't been posted yet... Only place torches on the left side while you are progressing (facing the newly discovered area of a cavern). That way you can return to your point of entry by making sure that torches are on the right side of you while you walk.

If you reach a fork, you can, and will explore both paths of that fork. Place torches on the left side of both paths. You're ability to return to the entrance is unhindered by getting lost in a cavern maze.

This is easy, and can be done as soon as you well, make torches. It's the only spelunking method I have ever needed.