You need to use a Skylight in addition to directional to get rid of pure black shadows.
Why are you afraid of it?
If you dont want to use a Skylight then enable LPV.
Well you have control over intensity of the Skylight at least. And I don’t know why LPV wouldnt be suitable for a large landscape. I am using it with a 4kX4k landscape right now and everything looks as expected. Performance may differ depending on your scene though, so you’ll have to test and see for yourself.
There doesn’t seem to be any opacity setting for shadows. The shadows from directional lights are very dark/harsh.
Event when the light is very far away from the object casting shadows.
That’s what I was afraid of 
Thanks for answering though.
I’m trying to make an improved day/night cycle for a large outdoors environment.
A skylight works quite well if I recapture the scene very frequently but this seems like too much of a performance hit just to soften the shadows.
I don’t think LPV’s would be suitable for a large landscape scene would it?
It has a bit small volume actually that follows the player but it’s not an issue as long as you are not seeing the whole landscape at all times. Don’t forget to make use of Atmospheric Fog, btw. It improves the looks a lot if you arent using a sky sphere, and it can also occlude and/or give some sort of ambient lighting to distant parts of your landscape and horizon.
I see. That makes sense.
Yes, I’m using the atmospheric fog. It does make things look much nicer for outdoor scenes. Thanks.
I am using it with a 4kX4k landscape right now and everything looks as expected
Really? For some reason I thought they were only good for smaller, localized areas. I might give them a try. Thanks.