Hello. If you have found this, you must be mining. Or you were mining and fell off a ledge and landed here, like I did. Either way, you're here. Being here in this cave is very dangerous. Please leave this cave now; there are many mobs and other dangers such as lava down here. I already mined almost all the iron ore down here and unfortunately lost it, so you probably won't find any iron down here. As there isn't any iron left in this cave, I think it would be fair to assume you do not have an iron chestplate and iron leggings. You should strip mine to get some iron and make a chestplate and leggings before returning to this cave. If you do already have those pieces of armor, you'll want to know what to bring mining with you and how to handle certain situations. 

What to bring with you when you mine:

When you are going to go mining, it's always a good idea to keep with you:

• Lots of food. If you only have food like apples and carrots, bring lots, as they do not fill you up much and they don't have very good saturation. If you have foods like steak and cooked pork, you will still want a lot to be safe, but not as much of it as you would need if you only had fruits and vegetables, as meats have higher saturation and fill you up more.
  
• A water bucket. In case you are in an area with lots of lava, and want to cross without being disturbed by mobs. Just pour that over lava and it will create an easy to cross obsidian bridge. Also ideal if you have a diamond pickaxe, find lava, and need or want obsidian. You can just create your own obsidian right there and mine it.
  
• Wood. Pickaxes don't last forever, even unbreaking 3 diamond pickaxes. You will want wood to make sticks to create new pickaxes (or any other tool that requires sticks), to make a new crafting table if you lose yours, and to make torches.
  
• A sword. As you may know, mobs love to spawn in dark places, and caves are dark. Just have a sword at easy access at all times and you should be able to keep death by mobs at bay.
  
• Torches. As I said before, caves are dark and mobs like to spawn in dark areas. Just craft some torches with 1 stick and a piece of coal on top and place those on the wall. Reduces mob spawning which will make you a little safer if you don't have a sword on you and lights the place up so you can see where ores are.
  
• A crafting table. To craft new weapons and items to replace the old ones break, get lost, get destroyed, or you simply just need it now.
  
• A pickaxe, of course. To mine.
  

How to handle certain situations you may encounter in a mine:
You may find yourself in a sticky situation while in a mineshaft, ravine, cave, or other area underground. The following are ways to counter those problems.

• When you are getting attacked by a horde of hostile mobs. If you are in this situation and end up at low health, like three hearts or less, turn around and run away from the mobs. When far enough away, build a case around yourself out of cobblestone or whatever material you have on you. While in there, heal up and eat if hungry. Then, when done healing, you can destroy your case and go back to fighting the mobs or leave them.
  
• When you hear the hiss of a creeper. This is very scary and will require fast reaction time to escape. When you hear the hiss of a creeper, get away from the area in the direction opposite of where the creeper is and wait for it to blow up or come closer to you to try and explode again. If it explodes and you get away, you're good to go. If it doesn't and tries to get closer to your new location, pull out a sword and keep stabbing it until it dies. If it corners you, get out a sword and swing as fast as you can to hit it away and/or kill it.
  
• When you fall off a ledge. This is also scary and requires fast reaction time. If this happens to you, grab your water bucket as fast as you can and dump it, so it slows your plunge down and you don't take damage.
  
• When you fall in lava. This is very hard to escape, but if you aren't too far in the lava, try to jump out and use your water bucket to set out your fire. If you can't get out, try dumping your water bucket in the lava or around, so the lava gets turned into obsidian and saves you from certain death.
  

When you have finished mining, you should make a base if you do not already have one. I don't make bases until after my first mining trip, as then you don't have to navagate back to your shelter. Also, then you will not have to change all the wood you likely used for it when you built it to cobblestone, which is a stronger building material. As a base, all you need to make is a wooden or cobblestone structure that is two stories tall and has a basement. You should have farms in the basement, a wheat farm, sugar cane farm, and whatever other crops you'd like to grow, such as carrots and potatoes. The first floor should be storage, your bed, furnaces, and crafting tables. The second floor should have an open deck area for shooting mobs below, and the inside can have extra storage or whatever you want really.

When you find diamonds, if you have 3, make a pickaxe. If not, save them until you have 3. If you find obsidian and have a diamond pickaxe already, mine 14 of the obsidian. Four for an enchantment table, and 10 for a nether portal. An enchantment table is pretty important, since it can make your gear stronger. To craft one, you'll need 2 diamonds, 4 obsidian and a book. To get a book, you'll need 1 leather and 3 paper. You get paper by putting 3 sugar cane in a horozontal or vertical line in a crafting table. To make your enchantment table able to enchant your tools and armor to better enchantments, you'll need to surround the enchantment table with 3 walls of bookshelves, each 3 blocks long and 2 blocks tall. Then you put the enchantment table on the middle block. Once you have that, you'll need lapis that you likely found a lot of mining, and your XP points. Put in however many lapis you want into the slot for lapis in the enchantment table. One lapis will only allow you to get the lowest level enchantment, two lapis will allow you to get the first or second, and three will let you get any of the three enchantments. Once you have enchanted all your gear, you can go to the nether if you want to. In the nether, there's nether quartz that gives you lots of XP for mining, so is good if you love enchanting. There's glowstone, for if you want your lighting in your house to be fancy. And there's nether fortresses, filled with valueables that come at a big risk. There's a high risk of death in these fortresses, so be careful. If you plan on going to the end, you'll want to go to these fortresses though. To get to the end, you'll need to find the stronghold with an end portal by luck while mining, or use an eye of ender to find it. To make an eye of ender, you'll have to find a blaze in the fortress and kill it, getting its blaze rods. Once you get one rod at least, you're good. To actually craft the eye, you'll need to put the blaze rod into a crafting table, make blaze powder out of it, and put an ender pearl and one blaze powder in the crafting table. To get ender pearls, you need to kill an enderman. Once you have the eye of ender, go outside and right click it. It will fly in the direction of the stronghold. Keep following it and throwing it when it drops. When it doesnt fly anymore and just goes up then drops when you right click it, dig down, as the stronghold is right under you. In there, you'll find a portal that is missing one eye of ender. Put your eye of ender in the missing spot, then jump into the newly created portal. You will spawn in a new dimension called The End. There is a big dragon, the Ender Dragon, that resides here. You will have to kill it. Good luck, and remember: don't make the same mistakes I did.
-Steve