It is very frustrating when you get to the CoC at level 6 or 7, find a river in the earlier levels and have no available means to cross it. At this point you feel forced to scum for some item that allows crossing, which is not an easy task. These items can be a wand of teleport, a wand of trap creation, water breathing gear, a wand of cold or potions of carrot juice in order to learn swimming.

None of the alternatives is very appealing. The items are difficult to get and swimming is learned at very low skill, not to speak about the item destruction and rusting.

Therefore, I think it's necessary to give new possibilities to characters in the early game. The idea that comes to my mind is revamping bridge building. If bridge building could work, let's say, without needing trees it could be more useful. Perhaps making wooden sticks more frequent in the dungeons and being able to use them with bridge building could work.

Other possible solutions I thought (but I don't like them that much) are being able to pray to your god in order to cross the river and remove the rivers completely in the early levels of the CoC.