It was mostly directed at Gregz. I think he saw the bit where I said "I have the map" [of level 1] and didn't notice I started the paragraph by saying I'm mapping the tower
Under other circumstances, like with how much I replay MM1, I just use my own, old maps now. I just know the game too well. The reason I'm not doing that with BT1 is that I remember almost nothing about the level design, so it really does feel like playing it for the first time. Well, also because when I looked in my "old game notes" box I didn't see a folder for BT, so I probably don't have them anymore. Bits and pieces come back to me, like when I got attacked by a "Fred", and as soon as I entered Mangar level 3 and was in darkness I remembered how much I hated mapping this the first time round (I think that this level, the wine cellar, Skara Brae itself, and the last level of the Mad God's Temple are the only ones I actually remember). I'm hating it just as much now, and if not for Gregz's post above I might've been tempted to actually get that level's map
I did find Kylearan's easier than I expected from reading everyone's comments here. The dark maze is by far the most difficult and time consuming part, otherwse I'm looking at my map and there's... the big dark area with the riddle, which you can lawnmaw. There's the big central room with all the one-square side rooms, but that didn't take long to map. There are the 2 room with spinners. There's the nasty and evil stasis chamber. That's it. The path through them is very linear, you go from one area to the next, usually with no way back. If there are traps I levitated across all of them and never triggered any. A good chunk of the map is just "filler" corridors, easy to map and with nothing in them. Running away worked for most fights, so that wasn't a problem either, and aside from the fixed dragon fight the rest weren't too hard, even for my underleveled party. The only difficulty is that you can't leave until you're done, but even if I weren't using save states (which I didn't have to use that much anyway... though I did have to to get out of stasis) the hard part is mapping, so even if you die and have to come back, it takes 2 minutes to get back to where you left off.
Mangar's tower has been
much harder so far, partly because the fights are harder and running away doesn't work that often, but mostly because the level design is more devious. Level 1 has the 3 identical-looking areas with one-square rooms that you teleport between, then the Deathfield, then that all-spinners room I mentioned. Seriously, it's only a 5x5 area (including all the side rooms) and it took me longer than the entire level to map. And then I didn't find anything there anyway! Then level 2 has another dark zone to map out, where I got the silver circle (shades of Ultima 7's EA logo references... except this was 6 years earlier!), the long dark hallway that gives you access to the southern part (took me a while to figure it out), the southern area with trapts and spinners and health leeching squares... and the level 3 is ALL dark hallways, with traps, spinners, health sap, antimagic zones, spinners IN the antimagic zone that is also dark...
Seriously who thought of that one! And I still have like 4/5th of the map black.