This is my first ever post, so..HAI

I am in the process of making a coat of arms for my grandparents for their 50th anniversary. I have borrowed (read:stolen ) several elements from various coats of arms made by the illustrious Sodacan on Wikipedia, and, combined with a few elements of my own creation, have gotten this far. I'm doing pretty good I think, especially considering I didn't know how to use inkscape - AT ALL - 2 days ago and have been learning as I go. But I just hit the first major road block. Having finished the shield, I'm in the process of adding supporters etc. For some reason, some of the colors on my shield are behaving as if they are transparent. The shield needs to just slightly overlap the base it's on, and the base should not show through. For some reason, it does show through, as if the shield is just slightly transparent. (picture for clarity) I have been through every transparency setting I can find and none of them seem to fix my problem Any suggestions?

Welcome aboard!

You can add transparency to fills too, not just to objects -check the fill in the fill and stroke panel (Shift+Ctrl+F) that all alpha values are at 255.
If that doesn't solve, then maybe you grouped objects together, and while the group is 100% opaque, some objects inside are not.

Checked, all opacity values at 100% - but I have found a clue! The group for the smaller quarters describes them as "filtered". I'm sure that's the root of my problem - but I don't know how to turn it off :-O

Holy cow, I fixed it. Selected the group and under the "filters" menu, removed all filters - but I have no clue how it got a transparency filter to begin with!

Can be a result of pasting from a layer not in normal blending mode (implemented by filtering.)

Glad you got it working!