After several months I have finally completed what I considered to be the most perfect shelter. I had designed it to be as strong and secure as possible with wooden doors and torches everywhere. In addition, it is surrounded by a stone fence to keep the creepers and other mobs out. I really only had one concern about safety left still nagging at me. If a mob was able to find a way to get into my home, how would I get out without having to pass right through the mob? I knew I had to come up with some form of plan, but I was at a complete loss as to what to do.
After thinking about it for a period of time, I finally figured out what I thought would be a great, yet complicated idea. I had included a trapdoor in my home that opened up to a small underground hiding spot. There was only one problem, once I was down there I had no way to escape except through the door I had come through. I needed to find an abandoned mine close enough to connect it to a passageway that would lead me to my underground area. I put this at the very top of my list of things that I needed to do as soon as possible. After all, I had not been assaulted by a mob in quite a while and I knew that they would eventually find me and strike out.
When the sun finally came up the next morning, I was ready to set out in search of an abandoned mine, though I had absolutely no idea where to even start looking for one. I knew enough to start by looking for any cave that had an attached ravine. In my first days in the world of Minecraft, I had come across one close to the ocean, so this is where I decided to go first. Although the cave was not all that far from where I was, I knew that I only had a short amount of time to get there before the sun went down. I was in no mood to run into any mobs, so I hurried off in that direction.
I approached the cave cautiously because I could not be certain what I would find inside. I had a full set of gold armor on, including a helmet, chest plate, pants, and boots that had taken me a good bit of time to craft together, but you can never be too safe when exploring an unknown area. Lighting my torch, I headed into the dark opening, pausing for just a minute to listen for any sounds that could indicate any potential trouble ahead. After I was satisfied that I had not heard anything, I continued into the cave. Far within the cave, I found a large chamber that I knew was a ravine. I studied the outer edges of the ravine, looking for the wooden planks that I knew indicated a mine shaft. Fortunately, I found one almost immediately.
In addition to hoping that I could find some way of connecting the mine to my home, I was also looking forward to seeing what else I might discover deep within its confines. After walking for several minutes, I stumbled upon a partially hidden wooden chest. I did not take the time to try and open it because I was on a mission to find out where the mine ended. However, it was rather light, so I was able to push it along with me without much difficulty
I continued to trudge onward for what seemed to be an exceptionally long distance. However, I was lucky that the mine was headed west, which was the same direction my home was in. Maybe I would get even luckier and find that the mine ended not too far from my home, so that I did not have too much to break through. Finally, after what seemed like forever, the mine came to an end.
I examined the walls and realized they were made of redstone, which I should easily be able to breakthrough using the pick ax I had brought with me. I rested for a minute to eat and come up with a plan. To be honest, I had no idea where I was in relation to my own home, but I felt like it could not be that far. I really had no choice but to start mining through the redstone and hope that I did not have that much distance to cover.
I got started, but it was not easy work. I had a very difficult time breaking through the redstone, so it was a very slow and tiring process. To keep my morale up, I told myself that I would not open the trunk until I was completely through with this task. I really wanted to look inside, so this kept me focused and motivated to keep working. I had no idea how long I had been working when I discovered that the stone was getting easier to cut through. There did not seem to be as much resistance and I took this as a sign that I was probably getting closer to my home. Sure enough, a few minutes later a small part of the stone crumbled and revealed my underground space.
It took several more minutes, but I finally created a large enough hole to allow me to easily get through from the mine shaft to my space. However, it was not so big that mobs would have an easy time moving through it as a large group. Now, it was definitely time to get to the fun part of popping open the trunk. What would I find inside? Would there even be anything in it or would it be empty? After all, it had been very light in weight.
To my surprise, there was no lock attached to the chest, so I simply pulled opened the lid and looked inside. It was mostly empty, but I did see something glimmering from the very back corner. I tried to look closer without having to pick it up, but I just was not able to determine what it was. I reached down and picked it up. Wait a minute! I had hit the jackpot! It was several small slivers of DIAMONDS! I was excited and amazed. I never expected that my mission would end up with me finding some real diamonds. Now, I had a way to escape my home in the event of an unexpected attack and I had some diamonds to barter with the next time I headed into the village.