Thanks for the mini tutorial, bagginsbill.
I can see the differences and the shadow quality does make a difference.

However, as I mentioned, making Poser comics sometimes requires 100+ images for a 30-odd page story. Taking the initial tweaking you did to the defealt dungeon set, that is the sort of thing I would need: better materials and a sense of dampness.

Once shadows are put in, the scene does look better (especially the staircase) but I don't think it is "9 minutes" better. I suppose where I am coming from is much closer to Keith's philosophy which I could call "partisan rendering" or "guerilla rendering". That is, you want some bang, but you need to be able to deliver it rapidly. This will absolutely require cutbacks and sacrifices. The real issue is what to cut back and what to sacrifice.

For me, I am in a fortunate position that now I have upgraded my computer, I can look to be improving the render features rather than cutting back, but I also can't go crazy with the features and make a shadowy scene that will take 10 minutes to render out. The question is: what do I improve? what do I not add?

So I would like to ask you:
With what you have shown, what would be the best settings and features you can think of to make a good quality render in 4 minutes or less (and most preferably less)?
Keith has given a few suggestions I am going to experiment with when I get to my rendering computer later on, but I'd like to know what you think. For example, would you sacrifice shadows completely? If not, what's the best balance? Needs to be a good compromise between fast and pretty.
That's a mathematical puzzle if ever I saw one...

Thanks for your time.
I'm going to print out this thread later on for future reference.