Do NOT think for one second that you can use another players portal out of a lab and be able to complete it. It just doesn't werk that way. Do it yourself and get your own portal.
Perception does NOT help you get more pent drops. It's pretty useless and a waste of skill points. Put em where you can use them. Same with bartering. It gets you stuff slightly cheaper but not really enough to make a hill of beans worth of difference.
Do NOT believe that you can turn in more than one e-stone to reskin. You can do that only once so if you do another a "favor" for turning one in and then sharing the gold you get, you jip yourself out of the part that you gave the other player. Just wait and you can get an e-stone for cheap to free as a pent drop. Then you keep ALL the gold for yourself. =)
As I fall for more useless legends I'll put em here. lol