Favourite and least favourite level?

[slickrcbd]

If it's a small room, it sounds like a good candidate to fill with poison clouds. That way the gigglers run into the poison and take damage while running away.

[jayrshaw]

The room is relatively small but large enough that the Gigglers can easily run out of view and/or outside the range of Fireballs. I haven't really experimented with different strategies for clearing the room of Gigglers, but I would say it's too risky to venture inside the room early on to try filling it with Poison Clouds, since attempting to do this would give one or more of the Gigglers a good opportunity to escape the room with one or more of your items [Gigglers can steal various types of items from a character's inventory in the SNES version of Dungeon Master instead of only being able to steal items from a character's hands].

As far as I could tell, the safest bet is to simply block the only exit to the room and lob Fireballs in at the Gigglers as they step into range until you don't see any Gigglers for awhile or see one only very occasionally [this process likely won't take more than 5 minutes or so].


--Jay

[slickrcbd]

It's too bad you can't create the guard minions from DMII, or set some kind of traps.
For some reason I really hate most enemies that can steal from you in most games. I dislike the hit & run thieves like Gigglers in Dungeon Master and the thief bots in Descent II. At least the Gigglers are easier to dispatch than the thief bots which are some of the hardest to kill non-bosses in the game (even if they like the Gigglers don't directly harm you).
Worse are the ones in games where you don't get back what was stolen even when killing the monsters, like some of the thieves in Zozo from FFIIIUS/6J, or the food stealing monsters in Ultima like Gremlins.

[Prince of Elves]

Hate most thief mechanics too...
In Skullkeep you have to find their lairs because they will drop the stuff they stole from you somewhere.
And in Ark there's some creatures too. Ichthyornis will strike at you repeatedly. Any food will be instantly devoured and getting back other items is a bit of luck as they dop it while circling above you. Pegomastax grabs what it can get and runs off with it, so those are pretty similar to gigglers.Once I'm good enough to do so I kill both species as soon as I spot them.

[Ameena]

At least Thieves in DM can be rendered useless by just having everyone empty their off-hand, since that's the only hand they can steal from.
Funnily enough, I agree on the fishbirds and pegos. Thieving little shites.

[slickrcbd]

The thing is, the "can only steal from your off-hand" does NOT apply to all versions of Dungeon Master. I tried that tactic in the Apple IIGS version as a kid over 30 years ago and they wound up stealing from my backpack.

IIRC the gigglers/kleptomaniacs (First time I saw that word was in Dungeon Master in the 'kid's dungeon" and I thought that was what they were called in 1989 when trying the game at a friend's place) in the "kid's dungeon" can even steal your weapon from you if you have nothing else.

[jayrshaw]

What I *really* hated and did not expect was encountering an enemy in the swamp area of the Dark World in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past who can extend his tongue and steal/eat Link's shield....


--Jay

[EricFr]

Favorite level: definetly number 1. It's easy but many puzzles and that's where I fell in love with the game.

Level I dislike most: the one with clockwise puzzle and scorpions

[Ameena]

Clockwise is Level Eleven (the one where you get the key to pick a route between wasps, water elementals, and blue trolls), while the one with the scorpions is Level Ten (starts with "Beware my twisted humour..." and has "Zoooooom" near the end). Unless you count the Hall of Champions as Level Zero instead of Level One, in which case, erm, minus one to those numbers, I suppose?

[GothmogPlays]

Level 3 for me specifically. It's basically there to pick up one gem for the level 4 opening riddle (you've already got the coin and bow you need) and to go up and down the stairs to farm Myconids/Screamers/Mushrooms (whatever you want to call them) - It's also got the most annoying room in the whole of DM in - The teleporter room puzzle, which is just bleargh and you don't need to touch it.

Best Level? for me it's level 7 for precisely the reasons everyone else seems to hate it - a huge space full of fun hazards (albeit with one annoying key that blends into the floor a little too much), the gigglers and a load of great kit. Because you've got two Vorpal blades by this point, the ghosts don't matter at all and the gigglers get dispatched with a second level power fireball, so it's just a case of keeping an ear out for them stealing - It's one of the only levels I couldn't just map out for you on paper from memory which for me means it's still interesting.

Honourable mention for the nastiest bit of level design in any DM game - Level 4 - "Death Row" in Chaos Strikes Back; Falling into here, even prepared with only one character means guaranteed death (and I'm talking even Arch Master levelled), it's terrifically tough with two and "just" very hard with all four characters. An absolute git of "gotcha" design.

[jayrshaw]

I always disliked the puzzle with the large room of pits which open and close more than the puzzle with the teleporters, personally. Also, I actually managed to map out the open level with Gigglers / Ghosts / Pits on paper when I was playing Dungeon Master on the SNES roughly 20 years ago - if I recall correctly, I believe I started out by skirting around the walls to get a decent outline to work with....


--Jay