Every experienced adventurer knows that a length of rope is a timesaver and a lifesaver, finding a hundred essential uses in dungeons, haunted forests, or whatever else you might be doing this weekend. Not so many are aware of the advantages of an almost equally useful common item however, flour.

When it's not being mixed into tasty cakes and loaves of bread, flour can be an adventurer's best friend in a tight spot, here are just a few of its versatile uses:

• Flour can be mixed with a little sugar and water to create a strong glue. This is great for making your own arrows, securing knots, waterproofing and sealing bags, gumming up locks or even catching insect swarms.
• When mixed with a small amount of water, salt and oil, flour becomes clay which can be baked to hardness in under an hour. This is great if you need vessels to carry liquid, exact weights to trigger or hold traps, make oil lamps or even lanterns, or when combined with reeds, rushes or dried grass, creates a very strong and durable form of cement.
• Not sure if someone's nearby? Cover strategic areas with flour and see their footprints as clear as day afterwards! This also works for handprints or other marks left by enemies.
• Throw it in an enemy's face for instant, effective blindness! Especially handy for creatures like dogs as their sensitive wet noses will become immediately clogged. Beholders suddenly become much less of a problem too!
• Flour absorbs oil, so it can make slippery surfaces much easier to cross. It also helps with climbing if you pat some onto your hands.
• It can be used to polish steel, copper and other metals, so you can look your best when swaggering through the untamed wilderness. Also useful for making impromptu mirrors from pieces of metal, although this takes a lot of polishing.
• Invisible monsters are no longer a problem, and even incorporeal monsters can be detected if they leave any swirls in the air. Chameleon skinned creatures are likewise given away with a light dusting of flour.
• And last but not least, flour blows right the heck up! Flour will detonate like a champion when exposed to naked flame, especially if it's floating in the air in confined spaces. Besides the flash and bang effect as well as sheets of scalding flame, this can be enhanced by mixing a few nails, some sharp rubble, or anything else you might want to throw in there. Shake it up in a pipe for an interesting flamethrower effect, or just lash a handful in front of your torch to break up an oncoming charge or deter pursuit. Dropping some slightly damp flour onto hot oil will create an oil explosion, spraying hot oil everywhere. For the more ambitious, it can even collapse tunnels if lit in a sealed chamber, an old sapper's trick.

So the next time you strap on your broadsword and get ready for some adventuring, don't forget to pack a pouch of flour too - it wont last long!