Octane absorption/scatter questions

[DanCaldwell3D]

Hi guys, I'm new to Octane. I'm doing a small test scene with a glass of milk to figure out absorption and scattering, and I got a couple of questions:

I was initially getting very dark results until I increased the diffuse depth in the kernel settings, I'm wondering why this particular setting has an effect. The glass and milk materials are both specular with no diffuse component. Also, the scatter depth had an effect, but nowhere near as strong as diffuse.

I had to set both glass and milk materials to fake shadows before I could get a realistic result.. is this common in Octane? my glass material has an absorption medium applied if that helps. I assume though that if Octane is a pure path tracer, shouldn't faking shadows be a no-no or not required?
Thanks

[face_off]

This is an Octane question rather than something related to the plugin, so I suggest posting it in the Octane Standalone forum.

Thanks

Paul