@Petater (first post)

Existing shadow lair keys would be turned into energy. It's really not that hard to deal with that sort of compensation, as they have an energy equivalent to become. Existing shadow lair materials would reward the player with a single UV ticket each.. which seems like a bad deal until you realize that they go for less than 20K on the auctions.

@Fangel and Petater (second post)

Lets go with the clearance idea. Before shadow lairs become of avail to your knight, you have to have:
-A full set of fully heated, five star gear = 2 weapons, a shield, 2 armor pieces and a level 100+ battle sprite
-Full mission completion
-45K prestige, possibly whatever badge comes before it.

Every run when you go on a shadow lair you have to work your way to the core terminal, or join someone as they go there. This implies a bare minimum of one player getting to D25 and inviting, followed by 3 players fighting through at least 3 levels, D26-D28, prior to the boss fight.

The obvious solution to farming radiant fire crystals becomes arcade Vanaduke followed by invitations at D25 followed by loot of epic proportions.. but the problem with this is really the time constraints- Darkfire Vanaduke takes a good hour if not two, normal vanaduke takes a good 45 minutes, and stratum 5 takes a good 10 minutes to run through or 30 to play through. Add up all of those, and you've got a minimum of around 2 hours for a single run, but it doesn't stop there, because you had to coordinate that challenge with all of your closest friends, since you know that any randoms joining you aren't going to have the prestige badge, won't be able to go down, are incompetent etc.

To me, all of this sounds like a fun challenge as well as that "high level" thing that Petater described as keeping players in the game... but instead of only keeping players there until they did it once or twice and realized how high the costs are, it would become a new farming area to master, allowing for even more of a draw.. and since it's tied to the arcade, the 'best gate' would vary quite a bit-

Gate 1: Snarby + arenas on D27/D28
VS
Gate 2: Vanaduke

Suddenly, the shadow lair snarby + 2 arenas sounds like the gate to farm. The arenas are much faster, and shadow lair snarby is fun in its own right. In this way, the "best level to farm" would now rotate for elite players, giving the game much desired replay-ability. No crazy mist systems, no shadow keys to farm for, just a new area of the game.

What if the player couldn't view their "mist score" and just received one bound shadow key every now and again via prize wheel, wherein that shadow key must be spent to begin earning another? The formula could be something like you suggested, but could also reflect your current amount of prestige so as to reward more prestigious players considerably more, since this is who this is aimed at-

When you... you get:
Completing a level (mission) = 1 point
Completing a level (arcade, T2) = 1 point
Completing a level (arcade, T3) = 2 points
Finishing any T2/T3 mission that isn't hall of heroes/talking = 5 points
Reaching emberlight = 5 points
Logging on for the first time that day = 10 points
Reaching the core terminal = 10 points

Amount needed to earn a key: (starts when you finish all missions)
Under 45K Prestige: 500 points
45K Prestige: 300 points
55K Prestige: 150 points
70K Prestige: 100 points = new prestige badge?
100K Prestige: 75 points = new prestige badge?
150K Prestige: 50 points = new prestige badge?
Every 100K Prestige earned after that: -1 point required, until 30 at 100*21 = 2,150,000 prestige

So for most players, you'd have to wait about a week to get a free shadow key, possibly much less if you had more prestige and played more often. If you were a novice endgame player (less than 55 prestige), you'd have to wait a good month to attempt a shadow lair.

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And is there anything better than back to back Vanaduke? Of course there is, it's called back to back arenas followed by shadow lair anything and less honorable players exploit the first part of that whenever they feel like it, myself not included. The D25 thing, well, I'm selfish and I want to force my friends to play shadow lairs with me as opposed to cheating. If you're really joining a friend at D27 you might as well be joining that friend a bit earlier so that you actually have to work for the loot.

You'd have to pay more because of the cost of the items currently. If you want them, you have to bring orbs of alchemy and pay for a key and do the lair. Paying extra once or twice for the gear is a great practice, as it's a rather special set of gear-- paying that much for a single run is overkill. The half-key cost solution would get them twice as much per item crafted, but would place all of the cost on the gear and not the levels.