Hello Friends!
This is my progress so far after learning about the crazy shading node system, I tried my best to replicate glass, but could not really get it to look like my glass cup i was using as reference. But since I am new to blender I will have to cut myself some slack.
I am having a lot of fun learning from this course, i cant wait to learn more about this program 
Looking nice. Glass can be hard to sort out. Being too clear can make them hard to see.
@NP5 thank you 
it really is confusing, i was messing around with different poly counts on some pieces and noticed that light refractions kind of helps with defining the shape of the glass, i just hate how long it takes to render the images because i have a old doo doo computer, i made some changes earlier today but im still waiting for it to finish rendering 
i have about 2hrs 11Mins left untill it finishes 
Yes render times go up with transparency! Bane of our lives ageing computers.
I made some slight lighting changes
learned that my PC hates the cycle render engine
also every time i try to add a boolean wedge in the bishop, blender consistently crashes, thats the only reason I kept it out 
i can still do a lot within the eeve engine to where it is worth the headache,
Sounds like the computer is struggling, Cycles will work hard with transparency. Boolean ought not to be a major issue this simple.
I like your scene, the glass is a unique take on this. Have you thought about making your glass frosted? This may solve two problems:
Sorry for lack of response, I was currently working with a hp zbook g3 with a i7 Intel Chip m1000m graphics chip and 32gb of ram, it was doing pretty good despite not being able to use cycles and extremely long render times
so i took a little break and dedicated 100% of my time towards work until I saved up enough to build a machine
with an I9 12900k+ 3080ti + 64 gb Ram + z690 MB + 6T storage (1T SSD + 5 T HD)
i"m so happy i can finally jump back into learning blender without hardware restrictions 
