Quests for gems ? I am reminded of a trick which I used in "Hack". If you ever played that game, then you know about trap doors. What I would do is (to avoid starving to death) fall throgh a trap door to the next level. If I found a monster to slay, then I would eat it and return upstairs. Then I would exit to DOS and delete the level I just visited, having carried everything useful upstairs. I repeated this until I had a maximum hit points etc. character. I also exploited the bounds 256 characteristic. For example scrolls weighed three units. So if you carried 84 the net weight was only 2. The same went for everything else. Somewhere I still have a ghost level saved which has a full stack of every type of object, which can be carried easily. The minotaur was a pushover....
The same thing goes for the Balrog in Moria.

Lonnie Courtney Clay