Ya, that's completely strange. The only difference between your last version of the 2.x quester and the latest one is that change I told below. I just ran it the other night for a few cycles, and it's super snappy once you get past the first quest.
What version of the looter are you using? Are you using the old-old CLAw? That one was pretty slow... If you're using the old one, you might upgrade to the new one although the setup is a bit different (err, totally different).