What is the best way to make multiple Levels

I am making a top-down Zelda like game and I am at the point where I want to add more dungeons/levels. I am unsure if I should just put all the levels on one Huge layout and just have the player warp to the other areas or if I should duplicate my first level layout and make a new Level from that?

I know that duplicating the layout means that anything I create in one level that I want the have in the other level, needs to be duplicating as well, but that seems like I would be making everything twice.

How I have it right now is that you can go to the other levels by going through a portal, but if you got a item on the first layout and it is not on the 2nd layout you lose it.

I think that what I would do, is to separate the map into multiple layout, and have all of them use the same general event sheet.

Just like zelda games you have the main field , then a town, the montain, the forest, the river, the dungeons, etc; all on their individual layouts. And if each area uses too many events, you could have those in their individual event sheets and include them when you load an area. Or have the area events in groups and enable/disable those when necessary, so they don't eat up processing time just waiting for their turn to play

I don't understand why you think you need to duplicate anything though =O

i would have a passive layout to store all the "waiting" objetcs, like enemies ans such. And create them on demand, like with triggers something.

Passive layout for off screen objects! Never thought about doing that, would make my main layout less clustered around the edges...

hmmmm, interesting. So i could make a layout for global sprites and put all of them in there, including my HUD?

Going to try that out and see what problems i run into

yup, the HUD too could be store in the passive layout and be created though events when the layout is loaded =D

I generally use a "splash" layout to show my logo and stuff, and i store all the waiting objects there. Since showing the logo is pretty much a 3 seconds deal with rather simple events, all the images can't impact performance. Also, they are offscreen and those aren't rendered anyway