Render Settings and Lights

[faramata]

That is true. But, emissive adds to the overall vibe of the scene. I think one should not use it a sole lighting system but add pointlights for example.
I used to light with primitives but they seem to tax the system more so i switched to point lights instead.
Also de-crap the scene. The lesser is in the scene the better. Meaning anything not in the view.
And finally, use an iray cam. It will cut anything out that isn't in the view and speed up rendering times in that way.
Though there is a lot of experimenting involved.
HDRI is indeed pain but i use HDRI for indoors which are useful. Can't really use outdoor HDRI with indoor scenes. I tried and it looked weird.

Just use meshlights. I posted a link above and in my experience they are reasonably fast. And the quality is incomparably better.

 

[coffeeaddicted]

Just use meshlights. I posted a link above and in my experience they are reasonably fast. And the quality is incomparably better.

Well, it depends. I think for you character you still need some lights to lit them somehow but sure, overall these look nice. Usually.
One asset where i never got it right was the apartment floor. May be a great asset but i never got the vibe i was looking for. Has a lot of mesh lights. But that was in my learning years. lol So it may be different today.

 

[MissFortune]

Just use meshlights.

For environments? Sure. For figure/character lighting, spotlights are superior in every way short of reflections.