The current cave I'm working on is becoming unwieldy and disorienting. It's becoming harder and harder for me to keep bearings of where I am and what is the fastest way to my shelter. I'm looking for a cost effective way to fix this.
This is mainly due to my policy of digging through all earth and gravel in mines. It may be an excellent way to find coal and iron veins (not to forget openings to further areas) at zero cost, but it makes areas hard to navigate fast.
So far the only idea I have is to get going with signs:
┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐
│ CAVE 1 │ │ SHELTER 1 │ │ SAFETY FIRST │
│ DEPTH 15 │ │ │ │ Be advised: │
│ <== Shelter 1 │ │ Cave 1 down │ │ Sea above the │
│ Workshop ==> │ │ mind the lava │ │ cave │
└───────────────┘ └───────────────┘ └───────────────┘
I love this idea - which is why signs are quite costly to make (~1½ log each):
I could use a compass, but that's not very good when you are in a hurry. Besides, the cave extends below the spawn point. Also, I still have no Redstone to work with.
I could also make additional ways up, but this costs even more between torches and doors (to keep the ground level mob outside) and opens flooding risks (see sign 3).
What is, then, a good, cost effective way to help orientation in Minecraft caves?
Here's, to give you an idea of my progress, my full inventory as of a few game days ago:
In the background, Shelter 1. :)