My goal is to get there as fast as possible, ideally in a year or so. Do I need to be selecting everything in the lesson picker whenever it’s available? Or if I go at the normal algorithm’s pace, how long will it take to get to 60? Thanks!
If you just choose kanji every time and ignore vocab you’ll get to level 60 faster. Getting 90% of the kanji to guru is the only thing that matters for levelling up.
But is that really what you want?
Level 60…but at what cost?
5 Likes
Just gonna drop this in actually, just saw it today. You can put in how many lessons per day and it’ll give you a ton of projections. Have a play around with it and hopefully you can find the answers you seek
Here’s a link to the original post for it, credit to user induty-wani
2 Likes
If you go to the app settings and change the preferred lesson batch size to 10, with the new changes WK just rolled out, that will result in up to 30 lessons per day. You can actually go max speed with 25 lessons per day, so long as you do all the reviews as soon as they’re ready.
EDIT: As pointed out by some others below, 25 per day requires reordering for true full max speed. Without reordering it’s still fairly close, but not technically max speed.
Just be aware though that doing so many lessons per day and going max speed is quite likely to burn you out and make you quit altogether. You will eventually be doing 300 to 400 reviews every day and, depending on how fast you are able to do those reviews, probably spending > 2 hours every day on them once the enlightened and burns start coming in.
Many people have fallen into that trap and never made it to their goal. So long as you know what you’re getting yourself into and are confident that you won’t burn out, have at it. Good luck!
3 Likes
Yes, 25 is the magic number. But this isn’t quite correct because the learning order matters. To get that 7 day/level speed, you absolutely need to learn all radicals on that first day. When all those radicals guru 3.5 days later, you need to then immediately learn the remaining kanji that become unlocked. By that 3.5 day mark you should have all available kanji learned. Then (hopefully) 3.5 days later you have guru’d at least 90% of the kanji for that level.
If you’re not using the lesson picker, then the maximum number of lessons you could do per day is 30. Then, based off of the new algorithm described here, the question is “for a given level, is there a number of lessons less than or equal to 30 that will ensure you learn all radicals immediately on the first day of that level?”
It will take a little bit of investigating to answer that question.
3 Likes
I’d advise against going full speed, because that’d make Wanikani your part-time job it sort of is anyway tho
4 Likes
Oh… It’s too late for that now…
3 Likes
This doesn’t seem right to me. That might work for normal levels, but going “max speed” for the fast levels requires you to do every single kanji lesson as soon as you level up, and that’s a lot more than 25 (especially under the old system, which would give you vocab from the previous level first).
That being said, going max speed is a bad idea in the first place. I did it back in 2020, and I wouldn’t recommend it.
2 Likes
Agreed that lesson order does matter. You’re right and I really should clarify that it’s close to max speed.
Though I’ll note that you don’t really need to do all of the radicals on the first day, because you ultimately only need to unlock 90% of the kanji to level up. So, as long as you unlock enough of those to unlock 90% of the kanji, you can go max speed.
Take level 10 for example. It has 7 radicals and 39 kanji. Thus 90% of 39 = 36 kanji are needed to level up. Then, 23 of those kanji are unlocked without radicals. Meaning you only need to have an additional 13 kanji unlocked after those 3 days. The geoduck, turkey, alcohol, kiss, and landslide radicals unlock enough. All of that to say is you only need to do those 5 radicals on the first day for this case.
Some levels though, like level 2 and 4 are the worst levels in terms of having the highest number of radicals.
True, you’re right and I really should clarify that it’s close to max speed without reordering. IIRC northpilot ran some simulations and it was only off the max speed by less than a month doing reviews 3 times a day
It would be nice to have a small simulator using the new algorithm details to check it all out though to be able to definitely answer these types of questions.
1 Like
I am not against going full speed at all, only that going by the Lesson Limit isn’t going to make it much slower. Maybe within 2 years or something, if you manage to clear the Reviews everyday.
The real deal is whether Reviews are able to be dealt with, and leech and such. When there is too many Reviews, or predicted to be, Lessons should be slowed down or stopped, imo.
Even with max speed, it might eventually be slower because of the Reviews, and it takes time to clear.
Memorization can be improved by understanding, and that takes additional time.
I missed the info of a new system, gonna check that out.
And I concur, max speed wasn’t that a good of an idea.
Good point. Not all radicals are needed immediately.
I’m pretty sure some of these numbers are wrong (I could be wrong though…) I just looked through the level 10 items, and I see 15 radicals total. At the beginning of the level you should have 20 kanji already unlocked, so you need enough guru’d radicals to unlock another 16. Some of the radicals you mentioned do indeed unlock multiple kanji. The minimum radicals I count to pass the level is 11.
Even if either of our numbers are off, that brings up an interesting question: will the algorithm choose the most efficient radicals? Even level 10 has a radical (乃 stairs) that doesn’t unlock any kanji until you get to level 23.
2 Likes
Anyways…to answer OP’s question
Without using lesson picker, if you set your total daily reviews to 30, do all your reviews in a timely manner (4 hours after lessons, 8 hours after that, etc…), don’t fail any radical or kanji reviews, it seems you will level up in 8 or 9 days.
So like @MikeyDC65 said, “close to max speed”.
Things seem to get a little weird with the so-called “fast levels” in the 40’s and 50’s. Let’s ignore those for now…
By comparison, if you stuck with the default 15 total daily lessons, did all your reviews in a timely manner and didn’t fail radicals/kanji, it looks like you’ll level up every 10 days or so. That’s a pretty decent pace.
4 Likes
You mean lessons, right? 
1 Like
Nice catch. I had a typo in the script I was pulling from the API where the number of radicals was incorrect. I’m pretty sure the total and unlocked kanji numbers are accurate though since it’s coming right out of the WK API.
Totals:
| Radicals | Total Kanji | Total Vocab | Kana Vocab |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | 39 | 132 | 7 |
Initial Unlocked:
| Radicals | Kanji | Vocab | Kana Vocab |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | 23 | 35 | 7 |
With those updates, the numbers show you’d need to do 8 radicals on the first day, specifically including the aforementioned ones that unlock multiple kanji.
Definitely a good question. One would hope it prioritizes the most efficient radicals, though that wasn’t mentioned in the algorithm details breakdown by the WK engineer, so probably not.
1 Like
If you go to the app settings and change the preferred lesson batch size to 10, with the new changes WK just rolled out, that will result in up to 30 lessons per day. You can actually go max speed with 25 lessons per day, so long as you do all the reviews as soon as they’re ready.
Oh I didn’t realize the batch size controlled the total number of lessons per day. Is the total number 3 x the batch size?
2 Likes
As of their most recent update, and for the time being, yes.
2 Likes
You will burn out. I’m just saying that while it IS technically possible, you should know early on that language learning is not a race, it’s a marathon. Unless it is the only thing you do and focus on it like a hawk for an entire year, no interruptions, going in with the mentality of “I want to learn 2000 Kanji in a year, as fast as possible”, is honestly setting yourself up for failure.
But the other point, why the rush? It’s fun, I know when you start you’re so excited to learn the language that you have what feels like limitless energy to just go hard af on it, but coming from someone that started almost 2 years ago with a mix of Duolingo + later on Wanikani, sitting at lvl 12, pace yourself. I’m at over 800 reviews now because life got in the way, as it is like to happen. I would be upset if I had set my goal to get to the end in a year, but just enjoy the lifelong ride. The small victories when you find you can read more Japanese that you encounter in the wild keeps me going. It’s a hobby, not a “I’m going to ‘’‘finish’‘’’ learning the language in a year.”
Just my opinion but it’s not a great mentality.
1 Like