I went ahead and turned on HDRI's soft shadows and left a render to finish overnight. Still going, lol. (but I had it rendering only using 2 cores, not all 4)

But, that's really to be expected and my standard test render size is much larger in pixels these days. But, I am very happy with what I see.

I would still most likely render out the shadows separately and apply them in Photoshop and/or just plop render soft shadows on the floors only, which are a couple tricks I've already been using for years.

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