While pathfinding can be a major hassle, in this case it's fairly trivial. All it really requires is for the pathfinding algorithm to look two moves ahead, and if it is going to move to a space that it can reach in one move, then it should move there, instead. This should both address normal corners in corridors, but if there's an item in that corner, it should actually move to the item itself, since the pathfinding algorithm would have stopped there, anyway.

And since it's going to have to do the extra step, anyway, it is really just performing the check one step earlier.

Pressing '>' or '<' takes the PC on the shortest possible path towards the stairs, so it looks like a useable framework exists in JADE already

A side-note on the pathfinding, for those interested, it seems that diagonal movement is prioritized effectively the same as straight movement. I've seen my character w-move in non-straight lines through intersections, for no reason apparent to me.

As low a priority as something like that would be, I'd be interested to see this worked on just a little.

Actually, going diagonally is more "optimal", as you can "see" more ground while spending the same number of turns. w-move seems to take advantage of this and I think this is how it should be.