How much do creating swarm-shifter undead costs?

[ayvango]

Swarm-shifter is an acquired template. But I failed to find any information of how can an undead creature acquire it. How the ritual looks like, what it consumes. What would be an appropriate price for making undead shifter?

[Segev]

I, too, have oft wondered this. There is no canon answer; it's all going to be theorycraft and homebrew. "There exists a ritual" is not even guaranteed; it could be a spontaneous-undead-thing-only. But that seems unlikely.

It's a +1 CR for one kind of swarm. +2 for two or more. There is no LA given.

We can look at the Ritual of Crucimigration for at least some notion, though: that ritual costs the would-be Necropolitan a level as well as a thousand XP. It has no LA, and I'm AFB so I can't check if it has a CR adjustment and I don't recall. I believe it also costs a thousand gp, though again, check me on that.

I'd probably ballpark it at 6000 gp for ritual components that are consumed. Maybe as high as 11,000, or 6000 gp + 1000 xp.

[ShurikVch]

One possible solution there is to cast Wish (or Miracle) - it will be a "greater effect", but still may work

Another possibility is the Shrouds of the Unholy (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20021031x): since it able to create any kind of Undead, it should include Swarm-Shifters too

And finally, there is Swarmform Vampire - the only "playable Swarm-Shifter"