Listen up: I've just looked at my map. This will be easier than we thought. If we head DIRECTLY west of Wolverine Hall, we'll hit a large island. It has a mushroom tree on either end, so that's two mushroom trees. Continuing west, there's a slightly smaller island with a single shroomtree on it. Seperating the two is a mere ditch, water only ankle to knee deep. No biggie. From this island, there's a tiny island further west, and to the southwest is the huge island that Tel Fyr is on. If you splash over to the tiny island, then the island we want to be on is just to the south and a little bit west. We could probably even see it from there. You'd just need to cross the water and keep going south, then there'd be a bridge to Tel Fyr. This route requires crossing far less water.
2 15-second waterwalking potions should be sufficient for the entire trip The first one for crossing from this fort to the 2-tree isle, the next for crossing from the tiny island to the Big Island with Tel Fyr On It.
I'll draw up a map.
Michael, can you see this?
Just 2 cheap potions of WW and one of levitation, and we're good. It's not even that far.
Brilliant and awesome, but are you sure about the danger level and scaling those walls?
On the other end, this means that if we get lucky we won't even need the waterwalking, won't it?
And what are our (marketable) skills?
Obviously we're not very good by the standards of the game world, right? But we DO have a major trump card. Modern SCIENCE!
That is my proposal. Find someone willing to loan us enough cash to get started on creating marvels of the modern world (we might be able to do it without a loan, but it would be slow going), and sell those to pay that loan back and get some damn cash instead of running around and hoping to sell some piss-water for a few coins.
There's a few issues with this.
One is, as you mentioned, that we don't actually know how much of this stuff will work.
Another, though, is that we're not personally in a great position to take advantage of it. You'll notice part one of your plan is basically to wheedle someone into giving us free stuff to do our awesome idea-thing. Where are we gonna find someone for that? Where are we gonna find someone for that at a good price? What are we gonna do once we've sold off the secrets of electric lighting and automobiles?
Finally, there's the issues of who's going to actually want it. Someone invented a flying machine in Bloodmoon, but all they managed to do with it was get a bunch of sailors killed and send a hero off on a fetch quest they could have done in the first place. Presumably he was not being mobbed by desperate emperors who felt that their entire empire would be revolutionized if only they had the combustion engine. So... who does want our stuff? We're talking about a place where beasts of burden are semi-obsolete already due to magic. We're talking about a place where bottles are free because everyone can fire mud into them at will. We might be talking about a place where lanterns are eternally burning anyway. What exactly do we know about that we're absolutely certain important, wealthy people are going to want and be able to use?
Let's take a step backwards for just a moment. At some point, you are going to have to start becoming strong enough to be self sufficient, whether through magic or some of the physical arts. Is there any reason NOT to make that the first priority? I mean, are you in a hurry to get to the corprusarium? Will it make your life easier somehow? Or will it just have a really high chance of killing you?
To what end? So we can max alchemy? So we can live in an okay house until we die of old age? Clearly it's not to really accomplish anything, or at least anything for the foreseeable future, if we're going to ignore the world-shattering events around us to go bake pies for a living.
But for that matter, who says we have to wait until we die of old age? Supposing we're annihilated as soon as somebody kills Dagoth Ur. What do we do about that? Well, nothing if we don't know about it, and we're sure as hell not going to know about it shopping for drapes in Balmora. But that's okay, because we're clearly a perfectly normal person and the notion that the events of this world might unduly affect us is laughable, right? And as Khuul showed, normal people here have nothing to fear no matter what.
So let me turn your question around- at some point, we are going to have to figure out what the hell is going on here. Is there any reason NOT to make THAT a first priority? Well, as you've said, it's hard to figure out what's going on when a pair of mudcrabs counts as a difficult obstacle. But the events are time-sensitive; leveling up is not, at least not as far as we're aware. We can go out and punch rats for skill gain any time; we've already lost out on a ton of important events and developments, and are completely in the dark as to several potential more.
So to answer your question directly, yes- there's no point getting power if we miss out on all the chances to use that power, and likely the knowledge of what we might want to use that power for. I'm all in favor of punching rats for a bit to level up to the point where we can punch rats for a living, but not while there's important things to be learned about and/or done.