@BiggAdd: I've used HDRI images before, I guess I could have used one for this render. I've never used them for Global Illumination though, not entirely sure how that works in Blender, but there are quite a few buttons under that category that I don't know the function of. Also, Blender's internal renderer is not capable of caustics as far as I know, but it is very compatible with Yafray, which can use caustics. I've looked at a few tutorials for how to do this, but they haven't turned out as expected. I do plan to use DOF, global illumination, and caustics(if I can get it to work) in future renders.
@sp3ng: I have worked with the node editor, but as I said this was just a quick render of a simple scene, I'm currently working on other renders that will probably use nodes.
@TEH_CODERER: I noticed that as well, that may be caused by the faked area light (an array of spot lights with buffered shadows), since using a single light with ray-traced shadows shows a more transparent shading on the shadow. There may also be a way of using transparency with buffered shadows that I'm not aware of.
