I literally just wrote about why this is a thing yesterday.
The hardships you are experiencing are working EXACTLY as designed because of diminishing returns on Hoard investments. This design is not accidental, nor is it an designer “error”.
I hate to be the Debbie Downer in this thread, but any requests for bonuses that circumvent event delve shop purchases in the future have a literal zero chance of being implemented. Not even “you’re telling me there’s a chance” low. Literally, hard zero.
Depending on your perspective on the matter (glass half full/empty), players are either being heavily incentivized to invest in new faction and Tuesday delve events to clear them to avoid the consequences of normal delve play [half full]. Or, you can view the long, slow daily grind as “punishment” for failing to invest in Delve event shops [half empty]. Either perspective comes out the same in the end.
It is intentional that at your Hoard level that only 4% of your chaos shard pulls have any value towards raising that Hoard and it is intentional that the devs want players to spend millions (potentially tens of millions) of gold to raise Hoards at that level to clear PF 500 runs.
It’s been suggested (may no longer be valid) that eventually there will be Power 16-20 for kingdoms that will provide the next faction Hoard boosts. Expect to pay great/insane amounts of Imperial Deeds if that is the case as the massive roadblock preventing players from obtaining these boosts.
EDIT: Just saw the requests for extra delve runs per day. That won’t happen, either. It’s part of the “pain” of running normal non-event delves without gem spending. I wish though. 