Where is everyone finding new armor and weapons? I still have an Iron Warhammer, Steel Sword, Iron Armor, and Iron Sword. I'm level 15 and focusing on one-handed, two-handed, and block. New items would be very useful. Also, I found a mine, but how do I mine?

To mine, you have to first find a pickaxe. If you happen to be in the Embershard mine, then you should find one right next to the first ore vein.

i ran into a random cave, found some steel plated armour. All i can say is: explore explore explore

Just play the game and explore you'll eventually find better weapons.

Well you'll need to level you smithing skill, go kill some deer, take the hides to a tanning rack to create leather. Use some of your leather to make leather strips. Then take your materials to the forge and make some hide bracers. Once you've got a perk point you can buy the first perk on the smithing perk tree, which will allow you to make steel weapons and armor, and allow you to reinforce them twice as much.

To mine you just need a pick Axe in your inventory.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of loot and enemy scaling too. Whereas stragglers used to wear iron and hide, i am now coming across random folks wearing Dwarven. I'm hoping that this is not always the case. It would really pull me out of the experience to see a bunch of basic characters decked out in Daedric.

Alright cool. Thanks.