I really like the Hive too. Just as you said: it has great atmosphere. I don't care if it's too easy: I think that it's actually kind of the point.

What I love about MM6 in general is how it has several stages, each feeling almost like a different game. At first, you don't even feel like a hero, and a couple of bats and rats is more than enough for you; here you have to be cautious and pick your battles. Then you get into the "early middle game" that I enjoy the most: you have some nice items and start to get useful spells, but you're far from "maxed up". You have an immense freedom to go anywhere and do anything, you start working some of the Council quests and promotions. Then you obtain Fly and Town Portal/Lloyd's Beacon spells and the game suddenly plays very differently (you need to go more linear as well). And in the last stage, you get blasters and the game plays like a FPS. I consider the Hive to be a sort of a "reward" for the player: you've fought hard to get the blasters, now you can enjoy blasting through the Kreegans and finish the game. I also like it doesn't overstay its welcome.

Tomb of VARN — agree completely. Somehow, I just like how huge the MM6's dungeons are, and I like that navigating around them is an actual challenge. The sci-fi elements like the radiation and the Star Trek room are very nice too.

My only problem with it is that the developers have restricted themselves to 3 monster types per dungeon. And because there is a single robot down in the control room, you have only 2 types for the rest of the huge dungeon. I would like to have more.

Castle Alamos — nobody has mentioned it yet, but I like it too, for similar reasons. The dungeon is huge, with different interesting parts, and you can enjoy some good combat and good loot there.

Silver Helm Outpost — here I disagree completely. I enjoy this dungeon quite a lot. Not because of its construction, but because it forms a kind of "rite of passage". Defeating the captain and the monks is difficult, but it feels good. And since there's only one captain and not so many monks etc., it's doable and, for me, enjoyable. However, I agree with the stairs being clunky and a bit frustrating.

Goblinwatch — it's interesting you classify it as one of the worst. I would say it's one of the best, and a very good first dungeon. It's not small, but not too large either, it has various nice puzzles and several different parts where you have to employ different tactics. I also think it has a great atmosphere (actually, when I played MM6 as a kid, the various growling sounds scared me so much that I didn't go in that dungeon at all!) And the goblin guard on the top is priceless (you can talk with him about humans, and he explains how pitiful they are ). But I can agree that the Abandoned Temple is not that great, though I don't think it's too bad, too.

Sewers — I liked them for some reason. Probably because there are so many entry points through various houses in the city. The fact that the loot is worthless and the enemies weak didn't bother me, really...

However, the Halls of the Fire Lord don't belong to my favorites. I find them to be more confusing than VARN, less atmospheric, they also have only two types of boring monsters (because there's one jackal man somewhere), and it doesn't have any kind of "rewarding conclusion". To top it off, when I went through them, I didn't get a key from the jackal man due to a glitch, and I had to hack it in using a save game editor.

Darkmoor — I must agree with Ossie: of course I suffer when going through, but it forces you to play differently, and that's a good thing. It adds to my rejoicing about how the game shifts gears many times, feeling very different each time. And the cathedral buried in a cave beneath the castle is IMHO very nice.

Agar's Lab -­ I'm surprised anyone likes it . It's not good for anything, and for me, it's just a generic dungeon with uninspired layout, lots of those cursed eyes, and very slim loot .