I closed Bryce while it was in the Super render settings, so the next time I opened it it was in that setting. I started rendering an image but I got curious how much faster I could render it so I changed to Regular. The problem I ran into is the render is not going any faster, even if I further reduce it to Default. Does this have anything to do with the object in the image being tansparent?

definetely! transparencies and shadows cause massive render times.

Of course transparency causes long render times, but what I should have added is I can also make it take a really long time to render a primitive just by starting Bryce in a high render setting and then lowering it(that's how it seems to work, anyway). I can get pretty decent times if I start with low render settings but it is starting with high settings and going down that gives me problems.

Hmm, I can't say I've ever had this bug. Perhaps your TIR and Ray Depth settings are still up very high? Perhaps you didn't turno on any of the optimizations? Just some ideas...

LSD is right, the optimisations can make a HUGE difference.

When I go from Super to Regular the ray number box fades out and shows 1. That is usually on of the only things I change. 6 on the Ray depth is usually where I keep it.

No, that is the Ray-per-Pixel setting that goes down to 1. Ray Depth is what I was talking about. If it's the same, that's not the issue. Perhaps it's a CPU or RAM issue...