Octane Settings:

Kernels:
Directlighting: for quicker renders, biased
Pathtracing: for photo realistic renders, unbiased
PMC: mutating unbiased kernel for complex lighting and caustics

Max samples: Maximum samples per pixel, most important, controls noise
Specular depth: Increases or decreases realism of transparent materials, only
matter with specular materials, amount of times ray reflected in transparent
materials
Glossy depth: Number of times ray reflected off of object surfaces
Diffuse Depth: diffused reflections in scene, higher value makes more realistic
lighting and reflection, from non glossy surfaces, should rarely go beyond 4
unless indoor render, start by slowly increasing value until there is little change
AO distance: distance of AO (GI AO must be selected)
Path term power: higher values make render faster but add noise to shadows
Ray epsilon: resolves artifacts, higher is better
Filter size: higher values generally make blurry images
Coherent ratio: increases render speed, higher value = more potential to flicker

Alpha shadows: makes shadows transparent instead of opaque

Alpha channel: allows transparancy in image
Static noise: makes sure noise is the same for each frame of image

GI Modes:
None: only white from direct light source take into consideration
Ambient: shadows filled with light from environment
AO: Adds complex shadows on top
Diffuse: most realistic, adds color bleeding

Additional Pathtrace settings:

Caustic blur:sharpens or blurs noise from caustic calculation, only for specular
materials, higher = smoother (but maybe less realistic)
GI clamp: balance between global illumination and caustics, lower = less noise but
less realitic, light through transparent materials are clamped, lower = faster
render

Additional PMC settings:

Exploration Strength: lower = noisier images, higher value = more splotchy image
Direct light importance: determines amount of indirect light bounces sampled
Max rejects: lower value = faster render but more biased
Parallelism: how fast caustic calculations clean up, higher = faster clean up but
higher render time

Camera Imager:
hotpixel: helps reduce noise (use only as last resort)