For my Chinese course we are now also supposed to study a list of common traditional characters. We don't necessarily have to be able to write them, but we at least have to know them passively.

I would like to incorporate that into my skritter routine, but I'm not sure if that's possible. I wouldn't mind studying the writing of those characters as well, but the language settings page confused me.
The options 'traditional', 'simplified' or 'both' are obvious but what exactly do the 'simplified and previously added traditional traditional' (and the reverse) do?
They all don't seem to be what I'm looking for.

I thought I could just make a custom list with the traditional characters I would like to study, but they got automatically converted into simplified characters.

Is there a way skritter can help me with this or will I just have to study that list the old-fashioned way?

Just turn on "both" while adding from that list. Then when adding from other lists, turn it back to "Simplified and previously added traditional". Then you'll keep studying the common traditional characters you've added while you were on "both" (which also adds traditional forms of any new words you add while it's on).

When you make a list, it can be used for simplified, traditional, or both, but you only see the form you've chosen in your study settings when you look at it. That's not true for the queue--it adds whatever form you put into it, but it can only add that form into your studies if you have it enabled when it comes time to do so.

Thank you for your reply. I was playing around with the settings a bit and came to a similar conclusion, but I didn't realize that it I had to choose "simplified and previously added traditional".

Another question. One thing that bugs me a bit about the current system is that it only keeps track of the writing of traditional and simplified characters separately.
While it stands to reason that you probably can read 語 if you can read 语, this is not be the case with more complicated characters (especially since there are probably a lot of people who only want to study the reading of traditional characters).
Also, how are characters like 发 and 几 treated that have more than one traditional version?

There was a thread on this issue a few weeks ago, with a bunch of debate, but I can't find it. I also forgot what I said, but probably something about how it's more efficient this way and difficult to change. I made it so that it shows you one form or the other alternating each time for the other prompts.

Characters with more than one traditional form will have their definitions tracked separately if the definitions are different; same for reading and tone.

One of the biggest issues with this system though is that if I add the traditional version for characters that I already know, I might not even get to see them until months after.

Yes, except for the writing part. You could try cramming the other parts at first--if you put in 20 new traditional words with their definitions on into the scratchpad, or a custom list section, you can get to them and mark the ones you don't know as wrong to get them back into circulation.