Well, I beat The Trolls/Kobolds/Flour Bags Combo

That bint of a city commisioner had me open a CHEST in the middle of her OFFICE to get my reward for killing Norris. How weird.

I thought that with the XP bonus I got for slaughtering Norris the Gray like a bug I might be tough enough to take on the trolls. My fighter/cleric is like 2/3 now, and although I ain't thrilled with the lvl 2 clerical spells, I ain't gonna spit in my diety's eyes, if you catch my drift. My fighter is lvl 3, my thief is lvl 4, and my two fighter/magic users are both 2/2. So I headed in to take them on. I have a wand of magic missiles too- that might help tilt the see-saw in my direction.

Well, I put a few kobolds to sleep and that's... nice, but big whooptedoo, I always do that. I hit the one troll with magic missiles- pfah, might as well have kicked him in the leg. Then I notice, while checking out my thief in mid-combat, that I still have this necklace I got from someone. I can't remember if it changed my AC any, but what if it does something else? So I USE it, and a great big circle appears.

I remember what happens to my characters when the square casting mark touches them (SNORE along with the monsters), so I move the circle until it touches only two kobolds and both of the trolls. Then I hit the A button, and watch...

There was no animation for it, but I pretended to be appalled as both kobolds were BURNED to DEATH by the fireball, and both trolls also took massive damage. COOL! So we stepped on the baby kobolds a bit more until the thief was able to lay hands on his nifty necklace and FRUUUMT. The fireball killed both trolls this time and that left us with one kobold child left. To slaughter like an insect.

The poor adolescent kobold fell beneath our weapons and we left his corpse to rot with his fellows and my three conscious characters lifted the unconscious characters to the temple. I had never really paid attention to the impressive list of services offered there before, but they really offer a quite varied menu of services for a very reasonable price range.

5,000 GP isn't that hard to get if you want to risk dismemberment.

I think I am, and as such my characters as well, really starting to get along in this game. It's no longer a frustrating hose-a-thon and more of a challenge. I'm really liking it, even though it's a NES game. So far they've done a really nice job of it. Sadly for myself (and thus, all of you as well) I have never played nor, obviously, ever finished the PC version of this title, so I can't really contrast and compare as well as someone who has played and solved it. But then- I don't think anyone who has played and solved the PC version would be able to stomach this version anyway :)