My suggestion is, Reaper Vendors sell reaper boosts for items for reaper experience points.
This way, you still get reaper boosts for your items, only if you play enough quests on reaper difficulty.
At some point, even the reaper experience system is exhausted if you have all possible reaper AP and this is a way to keep it longer alive for the hardcore players.
You have another reason to buy experience point potions for more reaper experience/quest.
So players can decide if they pay for shards or for experience potions or both.
A player who plays reaper on higher skulls gets his AP faster and/or also his reaper boost on his items if he wishes. I think that's fair.
You can boost items you can only get as a quest reward or when they lose there boosts (the old item "epification" system)
How much a boost should cost and if the first vendor only sells +1 boosts and the second +2 and the third +3 etc. is of course not easy to answer and I don't even want to decide this.
I just assume it is possible to have a barter device (maybe if you once rework the stone of change) to add a reaper boost to an Item. Similar to the system you use in Slave Lords and Temple of Elemental Evil to add mythical boosts to items.


For me, there should be always a way to attain something you want in a game, if you play long enough to get it.
I know not everyone agrees here but that's my strong opinion.
If there is a second way to get something with luck, I like this too. A small hope to get it right now, increases the fun in a game for me.

Why is this my opinion? I think I have good reasons for it.
It is about expectation and disappointment in a positive or negative way and the result of both is the feeling of satisfaction.
On the first try no one expects to get what he wants instantly, but if you get it on the first try, it feels of course good.
But this good feeling has a limit, you cannot “explode” because of your good feeling so to speak.
So even if you have a very low chance to get something and you know it was extraordinary, your pleasure is limited.
I play a lot, and I seen sometimes players get something very rare on the first try and they appeared not very happy because they did not even know what happened (they don't felt the pain before there gain)
Now the part of expectation, if you try to get something your expectation to get it increases with each try. And with it the frustration level if you don't get it increases.
If you have players who have a very low pain barrier they don't accept a lot of frustration and then they stop and move on to another game that provides more fun for them.
On the other hand, if it is too easy to get, you may have fun at the very moment, but this fun is limited and the satisfaction is only there if it is not too easy to attain (I think the Button of Winning has some good wit)
If everything is too easy to get, some players leave because there is nothing more to get for them.
So whats the solution for it, if you want to have both kinds of players?
In my opinion, it is a way to “work” for an item (or other things in the game), in this case, the fun comes from the anticipation and then satisfaction if you got what you worked for.
And with this reasons, it makes not much sense in a game to set some chances too low and to have no second way to earn an item.
If the chance is relatively high, it is basically no problem because you really need a lot of bad luck not to get it, but the lower the chance is, the higher the number of frustrated players.
That's why the idea to get an item of your choice after 20 raids, is a good solution for this problem.
Even more the new solution with the runes, so the difficulty decides how fast you get what you want, this makes a lot of sense!
But now you basically do the same mistake again with mythic and reaper boosts.
While the idea is good because players have a high chance to get the items they want in a new quest and can be happy for the moment. The chance to get the extra power boost is very low and you have the described problem, I see a gap here so to speak.
The same basically for Mythical boosts, maybe you can make them a rare drop in every quest, or you can attain them if you trade normal expirence points for them in a similar way.