DDO: Autwind Where's your Trousers? (I hate Ooze)

You may wonder why Autwind Horogood, that precocious scholar of the arcane arts, is running around Stormreach in his underwear. If you are astute you may even have noticed the distinct lack of an imposing wizardly staff in his hands.

How has this sorry state of affairs come to pass? Oozes. That is what has led to this.  Squelchy slimy fetid oozes.

Autwind is working his way through a quest arc set in the Kobold infested tunnels of Storm-reach waterworks. Things went well enough for the first couple of missions and large numbers of Kobold were slaughtered.The third mission is set in Clan Tunnelworm's lair and these particular Kobolds are rather remiss in their housekeeping. The lair is filled with rapidly respawning grey oozing creatures. Not only are these oozes immune to my fiery magics they also exude an acidic slime which dissolves weapons and clothing. One minute Autwind was a powerful wizard commanding terrible arcane forces,the next minute he was standing in his underwear looking at the broken fragments of his staff. Autwind managed to complete the instance anyway with the help of his trusty hireling cleric but running around naked in a dangerous lair is no fun.

The repair bills for this are probably going to bankrupt me. I have already spent most of my cash learning new spells (surprisingly expensive by the way) and I amn't getting enough loot from these missions to cover the repairs. This may indeed mark the end of my career as a solo adventurer. Its not just that the missions are getting harder it is also that the economics of DDO seem to be firmly stacked against soloing. Most of the loot from an adventure comes from chests and quest rewards. As far as I can tell these are independent of party size. No /roll is required here, everybody gets to loot the chest. The solo adventurer takes longer to complete a mission and has a much higher repair bill but only gets the same rewards.