The acid burst on Swarmers when they die is excessively strong.

You fight 30-50 of these guys who do d6 acid damage when they die with no reflex save to my knowledge.

Endure Elements doesn't even last one fight.

Resist Elements is gone after one or two fights.

Elemental Resistance may last two fights.

So those protections don't help. Yes, an amulet of acid resistance will let you just roll through the quest: but I think the acid damage should go down to 1d4 with a reflex save to avoid or take half.

Or be rogue/monk :P

There is a reflex save to avoid it. It might be a bit strong, but if you know what you're doing it's easy enough to complete.

As helpful as all your posts are trying to be, they don't address my concern.

Which is the Swarmers acid damage is too high for their CR. I'd prefer to keep the CR the same, but lower the damage.

I've never seen a reflex save be rolled. If it is happening, it'd be terrific to see it show up with your server messages.

I do like that the Swarmers can be hurt by acid, it adds some strategy to that quest really. However, if you walk into a group of 10 swarmers and kill them: you're taking 10d6 damage essentially. That's a lot, that's more than you should be taking on a quest meant for level 3-7 PCs.

The quest is very survivable. The issue is that it's very, very costly on supplies.

And, for what it's worth, There are an awful lot of 5/- acid resistance items which will pretty much let you complete the quest without being scratched by the acid.

When you do this quest, you just need to use a -lot- of healing. The first time I did it with Cail and like 5 other people, we all managed to survive, and the spawns haven't changed a bit. Thing was then that we used a crapton of healing supplies, and I ended up losing a lot more than I gained for very little XP. I reported it, and the End quest XP and the gold were greatly improved.

What I think really ought to happen with this quest is that instead of paying a set amount of gold, it ought to be a certain amount for each person, if divided evenly. Such would be my suggestion to the DMs, to make the quest a bit more worth doing.

Swarmers; AFAIA only spawn in some QA. The end reward is plenty, both XP & GP wise; and there's at least half a dozen of items with 5/- acid resist- I assume for a reason! Lower it to 1d4, and any Guard could litteraly solo it (by manner of speaking)

I have a concern with saying "This quest is supremely easy and solo'able if you just purchase a single specific item".

If that's the case: I'd suggest thusly:

Different types of swarmers: fire swarmers who are the "soldiers" and burst in flaming death for 1d4 damage and acid swarmers who are the "workers" and burst in acidic death.

So that :

1) You can't have fears the quest can be "solo'ed" by a PC who happens to own or have purchased the right 'item'.

2) The quest's potential drain on potions isn't so high.

Because while the pay out is good: I've done the quest several times and each time note that while archers and mages do well with gold--the front line fighter has to use a lot of healing when he can take 10d6 damage from a single encounter--unless he happens to have gone and purchased a specific item.

It's never seemed overly costly to me, although I can see where a low-reflex frontliner may suffer a lot. Having more than one type of swarmer would be great though, and give a bit more variety to the quest.

Reflex save for half damage added in v861.

Endure/Resist Elementals spell might go a long way in this quest?

Haven't done it myself, but it seems to be a case of the right people and good tactics.

gobbledygookie Endure/Resist Elementals spell might go a long way in this quest?

Haven't done it myself, but it seems to be a case of the right people and good tactics.

Yes, only last time I did the quest I used six Endure Elements and Four Resist Elements, one potion of each, and still had to use three Cure Serious to get to the end.

So no, actually-its not just "right people and good tactics".