Top-down Action RPG questions

I was wondering what the most efficient way to create a top-down action RPG with the Legend of Zelda like scrolling. From reading various tutorials, it looks like I could create an invisible sprite at the side of each area and then move the player/scroll the camera to the appropriate pixels.

Two questions:

1) How does one deal with the status bar over the top (e.g., black bar with map/life total/etc in picture)? All the tutorials I've found have a HUD that is just overlaid on top of the actual game. One way I thought about it is to have empty space in between every single area in the map. Is this the best way?

<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3a/Legend_of_Zelda_NES.PNG" border="0" />

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/LuSL4UX.png1" border="0" />

2) Is it best practice to destroy all the sprites once you leave an area and then redraw them once you enter it? How can you save location of enemies/items? I thought about creating an array for each room and saving everything into the appropriate cell. Is the optimal?

Not sure why you don't just use the scroll to behavior to have the camera always follow the player. You could have that entire map as a layout, then just have spawners on each areas of it that spawn the bad bad guys when the player gets close. That way you don't have to worry about transitions between screens. You can then make separate layouts for the dungeons and when the player steps on the door to them switch to the dungeon.

Well I could but it wouldn't have the same feel right? ScrollTo makes the transition seamless right?

What about my other questions though? Particularly the black bar/status thing...

The black bar status thing would be on a separate layer with parallax set to 0 so it doesn't scroll. If you need it to slide down onto the screen, just position above the viewport and have it slide down into view when they hit a certain button. But if you want it always on the screen, just put it on a separate layer with parallax 0.

Personally thought, the scrolling to each new room in Zelda always annoyed me as I just wanted to walk in and not sit there for a few seconds while the screen slid to the next room.

Hm, okay. So that's really cool about the viewport.. I think I got it working without having to redraw anything with your parallax advice. But it means I should still leave deadspace above the map right? Like in the second picture I attached? And force move the player to new coordinates when travelling up/down.

Thank you so much for the help. I can see how the scrolling room thing can be annoying - I will reconsidering changing it :)