spider swarms are killed with torches.

[VladK02]

What title says. Those 2 torches you start game with?

APPARENTLY, they deal fire AoE damage.

Wish game told me that a few hours earlier. How many potions I wasted on those f-ing spiders? A bunch. Oh and was forced to trash my sorceror for a new wizard - burning hands :)

[Graygan]

It's in one of the tips you see during loading screens and it's a mainstay of Pathfinder. Torches deal 1-4 fire damage as well as acting like a light mace. Though it's an improvised weapon so a -4 to hit.

The swarms only take the 1-4 fire damage, plus 50% because they are vulnerable to energy damage.

But yeah... I feel ya... For people not familiar with Pathfinder, it's not intuitive and a more explicit hint would be appreciated.

[Sima Marlin]

There's also bug that makes the swarm almost immune to torches and splash damage.

I was hitting them for 0 damage with the said torches myself, reported that as bug and lot people verified it.

I also got that issue only on 1 charecter out of 3 tries I had on early game.

[Wonderboy2402]

I use fire pots four times and it only reduced one of the swarms like 30%? I ended up reloading and deciding to come back to the spot at a later point.

[Lillika]

swarms are stupid and this game will lose alot of players because of this

[Lillika]

I went back and bought lots of flask, but it wasn't enough. kinda stupid having to buy like 12 flask because the 6 you bought wasn't enough

[VladK02]

there is a cheese way to fight swarms. inquisitor popping his regen ability to tank with torch and shield works fine. fight will last forever, you need to roll 19-20s to hit, but the regen is infinite so... thats how I beat that fight with only the 3 pots given to me in tutorial from assasin leader. Put the undead inquisitor to tank the swarms, use fighter lady and barbarian to drop the spider and stand back a bit and offtank second spider when it comes, use my main character (also inquisitor) to spam acid splash with +hit buff, and occasionaly heal my undead tank. It worked.

The actual cheese part is the OP Community domain clerics/iquisitors get. Free 8x Light heals per day and growing with levels. And its not positivs channeling, its a pure heal so works on undeads too. Obsene how powerful that domain is.

[TripSin]

Torches only do 1 damage. Couple that with the fact that they have an absurdly high HP pool and that this game is a stupid MISS fest - good luck killing them with just torches.

Whole thing is stupid.

[Cuddly Beast]

Originally posted by TripSin:

Torches only do 1 damage. Couple that with the fact that they have an absurdly high HP pool and that this game is a stupid MISS fest - good luck killing them with just torches.

Whole thing is stupid.

Keep complaining!

[Obnoxious Owl]

I bought 30 acid flasks and spammed them with every character. I ended up using 26 on the swarms only.

[Stoibs]

1d4 fire damage? Torches only do 1 fire damage from what I can see, and from what I can remember the two swarms had about ~10hp each?
In any event it's an incredibly unfair encounter for new players and a low level party who (unless they themselves are one) more than likely won't have any mages or character capable of AOE damage.
For it to be more or less one of the very first sidequests that you stumble across after the tutorial also is a questionable move when the game doesn't even bother to come out and explain swarm mechanics at that point.

Had to cheese it myself through a combination of trial and error and janky ai.