Making shadow lairs too cheap to enter as a solo player makes them too farmable.

Making shadow lairs too expensive to enter as a solo player (as they are now) ruins the fun.

Scale the key price in a way where it costs 450e X the amount of people in the party.

Payout wouldn't be touched at all, only accessibility.

A key of a higher tier can function as a key of a lower tier.

I'm not sure how you would implement this, but this is my take on it:

Introduce 3 new keys into the supply depot that open their respectively sized parties' elevators.

1 person shadow key: 450e

like real talk 1800e per run is quite a steep price for some of the more difficult content this game has to offer,
not even including the implied cost incurred via having to spark in it due to the currently increased difficulty.

it would be nice to be able to do solo SL runs at 450e, though i'm not sure myself on how i'd implement that.
maybe have the elevator take either shadow keys, or having people deposit 450e into it, locking the party
when someone deposits energy, and it opens up when everyone in the party has done it.

Status Chance Increase
Self-Explanatory.
Low: +5%
Medium: +10%
High: +15%
Maximum: +25%

Status Power Increase
Increases Duration of Status and Strength of Status. Strength will affect how strong the effect is. Ex: Poison decreases defense more, Fire and Shock do more damage. Stun slows them down more. This will NOT affect the threshold needed to be immune to a status.
Low: +5%
Medium: +10%
High: +15%
Maximum: +25%

Dash Distance Increase
Self-Explanatory
Low: +0.5 Tiles
Medium: +1 Tiles
High: +2 Tiles

Balance Ideas
Status Flourishes and Cutter - Status Chance Increased.
These weapons deal their status way too rarely, why would I not use their more damaging counterparts if they can't status very often.

Hunting Blade and Wild Hunting Blade - Damage changed to piercing.
Nowadays us players can obtain Damage Level Maximum very easily. So this damage bonus versus Beasts on WHB isn't very useful at all. If you give it piercing damage however, it could be a nice and fun weapon.

After literal years without playing, I returned to finally level my dumb, underpowered, ridiculous Winmillion into a Turbillion. I was shocked that they actually, FINALLY gave it an upgrade.

I was, predictably, disappointed with the end result.

+
It's stronger.

-
I think the Winmillion looks better. Why is it purple? It's not a shadow weapon.
Two strike and shield cancel is better than full combo. That's lame.
Charge attack is completely useless and shield cancels the tornado.

I thought after years and years the spur line would finally get it's redemption.

So you know the laser that sentries fire and the one that the Roarmulus Twins fire? This will work similarly to that.

Acquisition

The 2 Star Lasergun can be obtained for 15 Bark Modules at Brinks.
The 3 Star, 4 Star, and 5 Star recipes can be found at Basil.

How It Works

So, you guys are keeping Shadow Lair difficulty... but the reward is the same? I'm sorry, but that isnt going to sit well with the community. You need to increase the rewards in order for the community to be satisfied with this change. Here's my possible changes.

Change 1: Raw Payout

I mean come on! How can you not make a literal TORNADO suck? Please GH

Make Turbillion have flinch/stagger, at least. Turbillion charge leaves you vulnerable while dealing sub-par damage to enemies. If you hold your shield button, the tornado projectile that comes out after the charge swing will not spawn as well, so you're waiting for the time the tornado spawns and actually hits the enemy/ies, to actually be able to shield and block incoming damage.

Now that Grey Havens has delivered on the 5-star Winmillion, I just want to remind you all that Fang of Vog is still in need of a buff.

I acknowledge there are other 5-star swords more worthy of attention. For example, Acheron should be faster and shoot projectiles to balance it with the recently released Turbillion. However, given the fact that FoV is a boss weapon and it has been in the game for a long time, I think it's only fair to make it a rational option for PvE and PvP use alike.