So here's the thing: Gunthro And The Epic Blunder has DLC. A lot of DLC. In fact, there's about six times as many puzzles in the DLC as there are in the regular game - and they're (nearly) all a great deal harder than the base game too. In other words, Gunthro on it's own is a nice 10-20 hour adventure. Gunthro plus DLC can take up literally hundreds of hours of your life.

But the DLC isn't organised by what order to play in. In fact, Smitemaster's Selection Expansions 9+10 contains both the second-easiest and the second-hardest sets of levels in a single package. This guide goes over each DLC's difficulty, canonity, and community levels so you know what to spend the next weekend playing.

Keep in mind in this guide that all DLC are JUST levels (and an OST). None of them will add extra options for your own puzzles or make even any cosmetic changes.

DROD, outside of Steam, is a five game series. But, for whatever reason, only two of them actually made it to Steam. To get around this limit, Caravel Games released the remaining three as DLC, along with the twelve Smitemasters' Selections. So keep in mind that, although they're called DLC, each one of these games is actually a full game and as big as Gunthro.

They have a set order, both in terms of timeline and in difficulty, so you shouldn't skip ahead.

1. Gunthro And The Epic Blunder (actually the fourth game, but it's a prequel and the easiest of the five)
   
2. King Dugan's Dungeon (remake of the first game, from 1996- the (almost) original version is available for free as DROD: Architect's Edition)
   
3. Journey To Rooted Hold
   
4. The City Beneath
   
5. The Second Sky (separate on Steam)

Each game is about 300-350 puzzles long, except for The Second Sky, which has over twice that.

There's also DROD RPG, which is a spin-off, but that's a VERY different type of puzzle game, so there's no point listing it here.

So generally speaking, you shouldn't choose to buy Smitemasters' Selections over base games, you should only get them if you already own (or are determined you're going to buy) all of them. But if you do buy the Selections, you should play them while playing the base games. Each one is between 50 and 100 puzzles each, but they're generally a bit better quality than the full games' puzzles. But there's two exceptions:

1: Smitemastery 101 should really be played right after Gunthro. It's significantly easier than the others, and is a nice refresher course before continuing. If you don't do it then, you'll find it boringly easy later on.

2: Finding The First Truth is the only story-relevant Smitemasters' Selection, and should be played in between The City Beneath and The Second Sky.

I'm also going to say: if you're going to get one, get them all. The full bundle is a good deal, and the chances that you'll want some but not all of them are pretty much nil. In that regard, I won't be advising what order you should BUY them in.

Because each Selection level is fairly self-contained and doesn't add much to the story, there's no point playing by canonical timeline, but it's worth keeping mind that selections you SHOULDN'T play until after you've beaten a corresponding base game, on account of spoilers. They are:

Can be played at any time:
- Flood Warning
- The Choice
Before beating King Dugan's Dungeon:
- Smitemastery 101
Before beating Journey To Rooted Hold:
- Complex Complex
Before beating The City Beneath:
- Perfection
- Beethro's Teacher
- Master Locks, Master Locks Expert (same story, harder puzzles)
- Beethro and the Secret Society
- Halph has a Bad Day
Before beating The Second Sky:
- Devilishly Dangerous Dungeons of Doom
- Suit Pursuit
- Finding the First Truth

Did you know that, as with community-made levels, each Selection has a community-voted difficulty rating? Here's the order that people think you should play them in.

- Smitemastery 101 [Difficulty: 4.5/10]
- Suit Persuit [Difficulty: 5.5/10]
- Halph Has A Bad Day [Difficulty: 6/10]
- The Choice [Difficulty: 6/10]
- Master Locks [Difficulty: 6.5/10]
- Flood Warning [Difficulty: 7/10]
- Beethro And The Secret Society [Difficulty: 7/10]
- Devilishly Dangerous Dungeons Of Doom [Difficulty: 7/10]
- Finding The First Truth [Difficulty: 7.5/10]
- Master Locks Expert [Difficulty: 7.5/10]
- Perfection [Difficulty: 8.5/10]
- Complex Complex [Difficulty: 8.5/10]
- Beethro's Teacher [Difficulty: 9/10]

Of course, that's not to scale - Smitemastery 101 is almost as easy as Gunthro, and Beethro's Teacher is nigh-on impossible without a guide.

As with difficulty, users can rate levels by score too. In order of best to worst.

- Perfection [Rating: 9.2/10]
- Complex Complex [Rating: 9.0/10]
- Finding The First Truth [Rating: 8.9/10]
- Master Locks [Rating: 8.7/10]
- Flood Warning [Rating: 8.7/10]
- Beethro And The Secret Society [Rating: 8.7/10]
- Devilishly Dangerous Dungeons Of Doom [Rating: 8.4/10]
- Smitemastery 101 [Rating: 8.4/10]
- Beethro's Teacher [Rating: 8.4/10]
- Master Locks Expert [Rating: 8.3/10]
- The Choice [Rating: 8.2/10]
- Halph Has A Bad Day [Rating: 7.9/10]
- Suit Persuit [Rating: 7.7/10]

There's a buttload of them. You can browse them here.[forum.caravelgames.com] Even the people that made Smitemasters' Selections make free levels too, so a lot of them are like the DLC but without a story. Do note that the Steam version of Gunthro And The Epic Blunder is actually using The Second Sky's engine, so it can play any levels and use level elements actually introduced in TSS. Nifty!

Since that level browser already shows (and lets you sort by) difficulty and rating, there's no point going over popular ones. So instead, I'll just highlight three that you should know:

-Advanced Concepts[forum.caravelgames.com]: A very in-depth tutorial about AI and functionality of various enemies/items. Pretty great if you're ever confused about why a certain enemy did something, and a must-play for if you're trying to design your own levels. Feel free to just play the tutorial parts and skip the 'implementation' challenges if you want. Doesn't cover snakes.

-Advanced Concepts 2[forum.caravelgames.com]: Same as above, but covering less frequent enemies. Still doesn't cover snakes. I don't know why.

-The Room Of Humility[forum.caravelgames.com]: The only level ever voted more difficult than Beethro's Teacher... and it's a single room! And it's legitimately difficult too, it doesn't work off of odd behaviour or unpredictable moves. If you ever want to see what a puzzle that takes several hours to solve looks like, this is it.