A treasure hunt for the magic artefact

Question

Somewhere in a magical land a small golden chest is delivered by an white eagle to a soon-to-be heroine. She opens it with shaky hands, knowing what it means that this gift has been delivered to her. Indeed, the first thing which falls out is a parchment bound and sealed by her mentor. The letter reads:

( Full Resolution Letter )

The chest also contains a map and 22 small scrolls, each listing a wisdom spell written by the mage in his runes.

( Full Resolution Map )

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( Full Resolution Spells )

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With just this, can you locate where the holy nut could be found?

The position can be found on the map. Use the following grid to specify the coordinates:

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Comments & Hints

• This puzzle (in slightly different form) was 'solved' by an unintended short-cut (now closed), but is still requiring a 'proper' solution. You might find it by backward-solving it form the now known solution, but there is more fun in not doing so. (I hope.)

A hint:

- The lake and the compass both hold a clue...

A full eye-opener hint (strong spoiler!) added after the full solution has been posted:

The map overlaid with a hex grid (spoiler!)

Answer 1

I believe the full explanation is as follows...

We need to visit the 8 X marks around the map, but need to "end [our] trip in the dark forest" and avoid the witches tower, so we'll start on the lower left and proceed clockwise around the road.

Multiple hints point towards hexagonal tiling: The six pointed star, "honey, she still rules", seven minus one mages, the lake (looks like 4 hexes stacked), the compass on a 60 degree tilt, etc.

So if we draw a 60 degree grid over everything (using the lake as a guide for spacing), we get the following (I've labelled, in blue, all the features that appear in the spells in order from A to V):

You can now see that for each X we need to visit, there's a feature that has three copies that all triangulate on the given location. I've labelled these, in green, in the order in which we visit them.

Now, if we take these 8 spells in the order travelled, we end up with the following list (which is where Dennis Meng's solution picks up):

From here, reading down the columns produces the text:

From the dead tree in the swamp, go South. Halfway to Mount Dragon, stop. Where you cross the road is the Holy Nut.

So, taking the dead tree in the swamp (assuming the swamp is indicated by the reed looking icons), we have roughly Ed (the lone P on my labelled map) and Mount Dragon (assuming it's the biggest, most foreboding mountain) at roughly Ak, you can see a clean "South" line based on the hex grid, which cuts the road at the bottom right of the Cg grid square, as indicated by the big yellow X on the labelled map. And so, here lies the Holy Nut!

Answer 2

Partial answer here, though I'm not entirely sure how hard the rest is supposed to be. Putting spoiler tags on for now.

If you take 8 of the 22 spells and shuffle them around, you get this: Reading down each column, you get the message:

From the dead tree in the swamp, go south. Halfway to Mount Dragon, stop. Where you cross the road is the holy nut.

The rest so far is taken from @MisterEman22's answer (for completeness), with minor changes.

The dark point on the compass signifies North, so going south would be counterclockwise about 30 degrees from directly down. There are 3 dead trees on the map at: (B,e), around (P,p), and (C,q). The only one that is inside a swampy area is the one at (B,e). The others are on "normal" land. If you go south from there, it would take us to a mountain at (A,h). halfway to that point is a jut in the road, and when crossed you are in the space (B,g), which is the final location.

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Thus, the only remaining part of the full solution that is missing is how to properly deduce that these are the correct 8 spells, and in the right order. Although @BmyGuest has stated in the comments that the above partial solution is correct, a full solution is able to deduce how to get to where my partial solution begins. I got here via a shortcut that you could find in an earlier version of the puzzle with slightly different wording in the title and letter, and as stated explicitly by @BmyGuest (and implicitly via the edits), a "proper" solution does not use said shortcut.

Answer 3

Using the clue that Dennis Meng got, the treasure is at:

(B,g)

Explanation:

The dark point on the compass signifies North, so going south would be counterclockwise about 30 degrees from directly down. There are 3 dead trees on the map at: (B,e), around (P,p), and (C,q). The only one that is inside a swampy area is the one at (B,e). The others are on "normal" land. If you go south from there, it would take us to a mountain at (A,h). halfway to that point is a jut in the road, and when crossed you are in the space (B,g)