Raytracing:

• For simple reflections you only need one raytrace bounce. If you want reflections of reflected surfaces you need to increase that. For Refraction you might need 3 raytrace bounces if fresnel or refract is used.
• Start of with a quality of 0.1 for reflect/refract/fresnel in the material node. This is usually sufficient. Increase if needed.
• Set  blur in raytrace bounces to 2.0 or less. Increase only if softer shadows are needed.
• For indirect lighting you can set the IDL bounces independent of the raytrace bounces with a script in Scripts:Partners:Dimension3d:Firefly Render - Keep the IDL bounces as low as possible.

Rendersettings:
 - Set min shadow rate to 0.60 or higher initially. Decrease when needed.
 - For Poser 8 set bucketsize to 32, use external process and threads to number of cores on your system. For Poser 7 set bucketsize to 64

These will give the fastest rendertimes while keeping all the features. Tweak the individual settings for fine adjustments. With these in mind you can decrease rendertimes from hours into minutes