I found that rope was useless really early on and stopped collecting it because I thought the way past the locked door into the very first dungeon was to drop a rock through a broken bit of floor (which worked) and then tie some rope onto the crane standing over it. After trying to interact with every pixel on it I searched online and found that rope was just for selling to merchants. Disappointing... I always seem to carry a Rope of Climbing in D&D.
My avatar had STR 8, so the trick of leaving the weak characters at camp didn't work for me. I did end up using things like flight, Misty Step, that jumping potion, etc. quite a bit; if it was just to explore somewhere I'd usually just send Lae'zel and maybe Shadowheart.
