So I’m at level 10, stopped around August 2020. Do I reset a few levels (or the whole thing) maybe, because I feel like I know like 10% of the stuff at worst. Would you recommend resetting maybe a few levels or do I just try the reviews?
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speaking as someone who reset from the mid-20s down to level 2, i’d recommend doing several hundred reviews just to get a sense of how much you remember . . . but then resetting. after all, the point of the exercise is actually to learn kanji, not to achieve some random, artificial level.
that said, i have a lifetime subscription; so if you’re paying on a regular basis maybe you have more incentive to try to get through it more quickly. it really depends on your priorities i suppose.
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I would say it really depends how dedicated you are.
If you slowly get through the reviews, and ALSO use wani-kani self study quiz, you could salvage it.
Just don’t progress till you feel comfortable.
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I have a lifetime subscription and am against resetting (having done it) - unless you remember NOTHING, resetting is counterproductive.
No new lessons until things are under control.
Don’t do more reviews per day than you will be able to handle when they come back for later reviews.
Potato-san mentioned the Self-study Quiz, or you could try BishBashBosh which is a separate webpage that uses your API key rather than being a script.
頑張れ❕
@Joeni -san: we have a first-time poster, do your thang!
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I was in a similar situation last year. I got to level 14, stopped around June 2020, then tried to pick it back up in December but was failing most every review. Then I reset to 1, and I have been going full speed ever since. If you go that route, it’ll take you a little over 2 months or so to get back to where you were, but you’ll be surprised by how much you remember and how easy it is to go through it. Plus you’ll probably relearn the content from those first 10 levels a lot better than if you just tried pushing through your review pile right now.
The initial feeling of resetting felt terrible for me, but after that the positive emotion of solidifying stuff I already kind of knew helped me get into a routine that has persisted past levels I was familiar with. I would say resetting is probably worth it if you’re feeling bad after every review you have now and don’t feel like you’re making progress, even if you actually are progressing through failure. Sometimes too much failure kills motivation and will hurt you in the long run.
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salutes
\textcolor{pink}{\huge \textsf{WELCOME! ^-^}}
Even if you’ve been a member for a while, so aren’t really new hehe
Take the time to check out the FAQ and GUIDE if you haven’t already…
…but you probably have, because you seem like you’re diligent and awesome like that ^-^
There’s also a lot of good stuff on the forum to help you…
…that you’ve likewise probably already seen, but it still worth mentiioning!
The Ultimate Guide for WK
The Ultimate Additional Japanese Resource List
The New and Improved List of API and Third-Party Apps
I hope that you continue to enjoy WaniKani that your worship of the Crabigator is eternal!
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I think you should first look through the items and decide for yourself, which you do remember well enough and which you don’t.
Then you would be able to decide whether to do a reset (and to which level) or not
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I also hadn’t looked into wk for months and went through all the radicals first. I was able to remember some of the mnemonics with that, but for the kanji which I couldn’t remember at all, I just wrote them down to a notebook and highlighted the ones I struggle with. While doing the reviews, I also wrote down the similar kanji i mix up a lot, together as a group, so that when I look at the notebook again I can easily make up the differences.
I personally wouldn’t recommend resetting the whole thing, as I believe you could remember most of the fundamentals you built upon just by studying a bit through the archive. Though resetting a few levels seems logical if you’re overwhelmed by the reviews.
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I’ve been in this situation a few times already, and I’ve used the Ultimate Reorder script to find out where to reset. That is, I used the script to order my reviews by level, and then I worked my way up by reviewing only the lowest levels first, then increasing the levels once the lower levels were cleared for good. For the lower levels, I usually remembered most of the items, but at some point it flipped and I barely remembered anything. That was a good level for me to reset to.
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I realise I was too busy following @Rowena’s call to greet that I forgot to answer the actual question, which is one that I am qualified to answer, I feel, having gone through a very similar thing.
I first did WaniKani up to level 7 and left it for around 9 months. I came back and didn’t remember anything, so I reset to level 1. I think got up to level ten and took a break for a similar length of time. I came back to over around 2000 reviews. In that instance, having gone over the content twice already, I decided to go through all the reviews. I kind of wish I hadn’t, because it took a very long time and meant I wasn’t levelling during that time.
If this is your first time going to 10, I’d recommend just resetting to 0, to be honest, there is no harm going over the content again and you’ll do better in the long term with the lessons fresher in your mind, in my opinion.
It doesn’t take all that long to go from 1-10, really, a few months, and you’ll be better for it overall.
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First things first.
Do. Not. Reset.
There is no benefit to resetting at level 10, why? because you’ll be locking away all of the lessons and Kanji you have previously done for several weeks until you get back to that level.
Why not reset? well here is why:
You’re level 10, and it’s an SRS based system, the information is still inside you somewhere we just need to get it out.
You need to find some scripts that let you manage your lessons by SRS stage + that allows you to hide the amount of reviews available so you don’t feel overwhelmed.
The benefit of WK being SRS based is that guess what, you can go do your old reviews and get them all wrong and they’ll keep popping back up until you remember them or get them right again.
You can use self-study scripts as advised for those Kanji and Vocab you really are not remembering.
The main reason you don’t want to reset is because you’re not a beginner by any means because you’ve made it to level 10, what happens if you find that after a weekof getting back into WK you’re smashing it and you start to remember stuff a lot more? you’ll be stuck waiting weeks to get back to 10.
To start:
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Look at what stuff you can remember either through the wkstats where you can see every Kanji / Vocab / Radical you’ve done. Or through the WK page as @trunklayer suggested.
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set a “goal” amount of reviews to do per day, 100? 50 ? whatever you can manage.
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Go. Go. Go! with or without scripts, the fact WK is a SRS based system means that resetting doesn’t really have much benefit (I don’t think at level 10 anyway) - as long as you’re setting your workload to something you can manage.
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the difference in opinion! 
They’re both totally valid, and as someone who has reset (you) thank you for your take, was interesting!
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I disagree with this, because if you’ve reached the point that you have 1400 reviews, you’ve left it long enough that most of the information needs going over fresh.
The issue here isn’t remembering the items, it’s more the knock-on effect of the reviews. In order to begin levelling again, there are two paths to take and both have negatives:
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Do large review batches to start levelling again quickly - the con of this is that you then have large review batches re-appear in shockwaves. I have taken this exact path in the past and regretted it.
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Do small review batches over several weeks - at this point, you may as well have just reset anyway, because the time you spend doing reviews and the subsequent smaller waves of reviews that come back over the following weeks and months would be better served just going over the content fresh.
Haha, quite a contrast, yes, haha.
It’s also a time using the system issue as well, I think. Having reset from 7-1 and from 24-10 in the past, I’ve generally got a different impression of the effect of resetting ten levels. Having done it, I’ve found that while I was a bit sad about dropping down to a lower level, there were two benefits; the lessons were much faster as I’d already done the content and I end up with less blank spots in my memory. WaniKani is a marathon, not a sprint, and since all the content builds on early stuff, it’s best to have a strong foundation.
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My thinking was, if they hit level 4 for example, and they remember most of that content, then they’re going to have to spend a whole boring week with nothing fresh, just going through the motions of doing the reviews purely to level up. (this would be very demotivating for me personally).
Where as if they stick with level 10, and slowly go through the reviews with the SRS system (in small batches) it shouldn’t be different to resetting really? - except the stuff they know will be out the way, and the stuff they need to re-learn will be constantly be brought up in reviews* they just will stay on level 10 and not get that dopamine of going from level 1-10 again (levelling up) I know for me personally it wouldn’t feel as good going from 1-10 a second time.
Editted: added some bits, made it bold to be clear what is new.
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After six months away, I’d argue while it may be a case of going through the motions for certain items, it’s also a matter of strengthening recollection. You’ll be fairly certain that you’ll recall certain lower level items, but there’s a bunch of stuff from levels 5-10 that increases in complexity based on the stuff you’ve learned before and having a strong grasp of the readings and radicals will really help going forward.
It’s the constantly being brought up in reviews stuff that I feel is more demotivating than re-learning the items. Look at it this way, the chances are that around 50% of items (optimistically) will be dropped down a few SRS levels. Over 1400 reviews, that’s a lot of items to go back over. When I was doing my massive pile of reviews at level ten after nine months, that is the thing that I found most demoralising.
Doing the lessons again means that you get the items fresh on the SRS scale, which is where the ones you don’t know are likely to fall back to anyway, while getting the satisfaction of getting more things right going forward.
One thing I’ve found has been great going from 10 again after being 24 is that the lessons are super quick and the reviews have a much higher pass rate, meaning that I feel better about them.
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Resetting 1-2 levels back may be a good thing to get back on track. Resetting to level 1 is a really bad idea. I’ve done it twice and I don’t recommend it.
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as a pleb level 4, I wasn’t aware of that, useful to know! and in that case I can now understand why resetting may be more of a benefit, thanks.
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There’s a lot of stuff I see come back from review even now (having had the pre-level 10 items in my review queues for nearly two years) from levels 6,7, and 8, that still catch me out 
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I stopped for a quite a while, due to medical issues mostly, I don’t even know for how long. When I was trying to come back I had around 1000 reviews. I set a goal of completing 200 reviews each day. I didn’t touch the lessons until I only had around 70 new reviews to drop each day. It took roughly a fortnight to get back on track. I would have averaged an accuracy rate of 60%.
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I was at level 31 when for reasons I stopped and when I came back I had around 200+ new lessons and over 3000 reviews. I knew I had been doing lessons and reviews very liberally before stopping altogether, so later when I decided to start again, I checked from which level I hardly remember anything and then I reset to level 13. It was a big drop but the second time around it was sooo much easier to learn everything. It may have hurt a bit in the beginning because having made progress and then losing that progress always hurts, but I’d always do it again. Resetting means no stress seeing that large number you have to go through. Levels are much easier and you can start getting excited for the levels you haven’t seen before.
I’d say, just check if you maybe remember stuff from level 1,2,3 and maybe don’t reset to 1. However, resetting can be very freeing. And up to 10 levels really doesn’t take that long to work through again if you do a 7 day cycle.
Btw now I remember xD when I reset I still had an item pile of about 1400 reviews. But those weren’t that hard so I went through them and after about a week I finally got a 0 and then started new lessons and the 7 day cycle I wanted to keep.
And another thing - some might argue that it’s faster to go through a pile than resetting and that might be true; however, had I not reset but worked through my 3000 reviews, maybe done 200 per day, those would have come back quite quickly. So it would look, for a really long time, like I wasn’t making any progress. To me that’s a motivation killer because it made me feel overwhelmed seeing that huge number. I would have stopped pretty quickly again, I’m sure.
So ask yourself. Are you demotivated by that huge number? Then reset. If not, you can try going through it day by day and not doing new lessons until you hit the big zero.
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