Enlightened Shard chokepoint in multiplayer

[Dingle]

I play in multiplayer worlds, usually with 3-4 other people. The upgraded chests would benefit us a lot, because more people mean more stuff dumped at the base. I'm not sure when we would even get one, though. Probably right before we permanently shut down the world, making the chest upgrades completely pointless for us.

Everyone would want a crown, so we would be getting one enlightened shard per kill until that happens. Then there's 5 things we could spend that extra shard on. The first shard would go to starting the rifts. After that, there's 4 things that the shards do, with at least chest and light upgrades being something you'd want to do multiple times. It seems very grindy to me to put it on one boss.

I think this is not really a problem for solo megabasers. Once they kill CC twice and deconstruct the second crown, they are set. Sometimes I get the feeling this is how most people play the game. It's just strange to me that actual multiplayer seems to take a backseat to solo boss rushing and (often solo) megabasing.

Some possible suggestions:

1. Have some of the 4 current enlightened shard recipes not require a shard. Change the requirement to something else.
2. Have another source of enlightened shards, secondary to CC but a bit earlier. Maybe even just have Crab King drop one on kill.
3. Have some other source of upgrading a chest, that is more limited but earlier than the current shard based upgrade. Something like having the scaled chest require a different upgrade method, and then put it on an existing boss with a 20 day timer.