Given how WK advertises completion in just over a year at best, there seems to be a misconception that WK is finished once every item reaches guru stage, while the finish line should logically be considered when everything is burned and not half way, which seems like quite a bit longer.
I have a question to people who already reached the level 60 guru stage and had a rather steady and fast progression around a week/level (having studied japanese for a number of years before starting WK, I am going at this pace myself)
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how would you estimate the time needed to burn everything after level 60 has been reached? I have an estimated finish date from wanilog that is based on guru rather than burned stages. Should I consider that 6 months more is a realistic estimation? maybe a year?
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Is that past-level 60 phase so slow that you are tempted to give up and consider it all done anyway?
It took me about 21 months to hit 60, so maybe I’m not who you’re looking for, but here’s my opinion: If your goal is to learn Japanese, burning everything is a waste of time. By the time you’re at level 60 (or even level 30), you should be doing immersion, which will be much more productive than bouncing the same handful of rarely-used leeches between Apprentice 3 and Master every few months.
Seconding what @frequent4832 said, I did WK on the fast end but I outright stopped in the 50s. It’s pretty common for people to either slow way down in the later parts to de-emphasize WK or stop before they’ve done the whole thing because if you’re keeping up with other JP study of grammar and whatnot (which you really should be), you’re going to start being able to read and reading is a way better method of getting a better understanding of how the words are really used and even locking in the kanji you sorta pre-studied on WK into your memory better. Burning is just a point where the SRS timings would be long and is really fairly arbitrary.
That said, if you do stick to 60 and feel like you want to finish it, the burden should constantly decrease with no more lessons to add so it’ll de-emphasize itself, but outside the desire for full completion there’s not a good reason to stick around like that imo. Anyway if you still went ahead, you’d be MOSTLY done 6 months later (burn was 6 months right? it’s been a while) but you’re probably going to have a few leeches that bounce around for a long time after, just leaving you to remember when one review is coming up here and there for something annoying.
yes that makes a lot of sense.
I was thinking that the past-60 stage would take far less time so it could be good to keep going anyway, as a side quest I guess (of course having immersion taking over). Now I realise your view might actually be shared by most people who reached lvl60 indeed.
“Side quest” is how I’d describe the levels from 40-60. I completely stopped lessons for the ~2 months before last December’s JLPT, then once I resumed I did it at a much slower pace because I was now prioritizing other tools that were making me more well-rounded.
Interesting, I may consider slowing down if I feel the same as you did in those levels rather than keeping the fast pace to rush to an unnecessary swamp.
I’ll se soon, It is hard to estimate before walking the path but I can already feel where I am now that the content is slowly getting more specific rather than necessary.
Echoing a lot of the sentiment said in here already, but as someone who just reached level 60 a few days ago and at a generally brisk pace- the last ~8-12ish (if not more) levels have felt like a pretty meandering soul-draining drag, with maybe 1/5th of the content provided actually feeling lasting or meaningful. If not for being way too obsessive-compulsive I would’ve happily stopped early and diverted my time more towards practicing grammar, listening/speaking, and generally engaging with more native immersive material instead- and if (or when) you start feeling like WK is overstaying its welcome I would listen to your gut and probably phase it out unless really enamored with the idea of full completion
Following the analogy if levels 40-60 are described as being a side quest here, burning everything (to me) feels like those tedious grindy video game achievements for like ‘obtain every weapon in the game’ or finding all the optional hidden collectibles. Definitely worth being proud of if you have the fortitude for it and naturally more practice will always help reinforce things, but when time is so limited it’s worth laying out options and shifting priority
i’m closing in on 50 this week (4 days per level in the fast levels is WILD yo) and i definitely have hit a certain amount of diminishing returns.
i think, though, that WK works best (at least for me) if you’re a little bit ahead of it. right? like ok, maybe calling the 十 radical “cross” felt funny to you too, because you’re like girl, it’s just “ten” don’t give me this, but i bet for SURE when you got to 成程 you frikkin said “NARUHODO” out loud like an anime character. again, maybe just me.
anyway all of that to say, i do still come across kanji i don’t know how to read on the order of once or twice per page or so. which means that when the crabigator finally deigns to bless me with its wisdom regarding those kanji, i’ll be like “doooooope, i kinda knew this one already”. which is at the moment plenty motivation for me to stay the course.
besides, marketing gimmick or not, something about “do reviews on your birthday, do them on vacation” etc really spoke to me. it’s been fun being a little single-minded about Japanese for the first time in my life this past year. i’m excited to turn that flame to other stuff after 
anyway so also in that regard, i think the hardest levels for me were back in December/January, where I hadn’t really committed to immersion, so the levels were full of kanji i had no personal experience with. despite being a professional mathematician i can’t figure out in my head if that means the late 10s or early 20s as far as level numbers, so i’ll let it be a mystery.
I noticed these faster levels past 43, my understanding is the drop in radicals gives you immediate access to all kanjis. From what you both describe here it pushes me in the direction of slowing down, at least keep the 7/days pace or even slower despite having the possibility to go even faster.
There’s the tentation to get rid of WK sooner (and subscription!), but I am careful to put my knowledge at use as soon as possible and not get overwhelmed by WK.
I already did that mistake doing RTK a few years back, a lot of knowledge got lost due to lack of actual reading in the process.
I agree with the sentiment that after you reach 60, WK shouldn’t be as much as a priority in your learning stack.
Besides, if you continue doing WK consistently and your accuracy is high, your number of reviews really starts to drop as you burn things.
To answer your question directly: Think 6 months to burn most items. But I’d say once you’ve guru’d all items you’re good.
I was too burned out (and changed jobs so had less time for WK) by the point I reached level 60 so a lot of time passed before I even touched my lessons.
I’m back to speed with WK, my goal is to indeed burn everything but I know I still have a year or two ahead of me (especially when they keep adding content EVERY MONTH asjdhfgasjdhfja *breathes*
But yeah, that’s my two cents
I wasn’t sure where to ask this but is level 48 is no longer a “long” level? Just trying to pace myself a little and was expecting a bit of a break this week to catch up but it looks like it’s the same pace as the previous few levels.
I’m gonna grind next month to finish just because the more vocab I check off here, the less that shows up in my bunpro N2 pile lol
Assuming my memory is correct, once you reach the early-mid 40’s the entire remainder of WK is “short” levels that have so few new radicals that you can (if electing to do that many lessons and getting reviews consistently correct and on-time) pass without the full ‘second-wave’ radical guru → Kanji guru cycle. So yes, 48 is not a “long” level.
If needing a break to pace yourself- I’d recommend just slowing/stopping new lessons until you feel more comfortable adding new material into the review cycle.