PLEASE have some sort of balance in PotD? Introduce some sort of checkpoint system.

[Neophyte]

I see this new feature dying soon if every time it takes 9-10 hours for a group just to reach 'savage' floors for a chance to clear 200. Already hard to find people because it's so tedious to grind trash from 51.

Wow, so for 5*10 floors (51-100) with 5*60 = 300 minutes timelimit you need 9*60 = 540 minutes on average.

Even 100 floors don't need of that long, lol, 600 minutes are max. (that is, if you're doing it solo and kill the last boss at 1s left). Cut it to half, maybe.

I didn't said 101. TC said 180 took him 9+ hours. Anything else before that isn't hard.

That's still pretty long. Also in my opinion one try per week to beat level 200 is ok though, and can be done with reasonable playtime.
Starting at 100 would make getting gold horde items way to simple, also upgrading you weapon towards +99/+99, also preparing with good items ("Oh, only 1 Manticore/Witching and 1 Sight in floors 100-110, let's wipe and get better prepared for the hard stuff"), also lowering the "risk" of every action.