I just leveled up (haven’t done my new lessons yet) and just wanted to check if this would be an opportune time to set up a reordering script. Right now, I have my new unlocks for vocab from the kanji that I just guru’d to level up first, and I believe after those it would give me the radicals. To my understanding, reordering would give me the new radicals and kanji first before the older vocab, correct? And this would be more efficient since I can start making progress on newer material faster, and guru the radicals quicker - is that right? Also, is there any disadvantage I need to know about when using a reording script?
Yes, a reordering script can give you the new radicals and kanji before the vocab from the previous level, which can help you level up faster and allow you to potentially progress through WK at max speed.
However, it’s possible to abuse the script and skip a bunch of vocab lessons and only do the kanji and radicals (since guru-ing the vocab isn’t necessary to level up), and this can lead to massive problems later on. Some people will accumulate hundreds of vocab lessons from two or three levels back that they haven’t done yet. The vocab lessons are really important because they teach the other readings of the kanji, as well as reinforcing the readings you learn with the kanji, so if you do use a reordering script, you have to make sure you’re also getting the vocab lessons done in a relatively timely manner and don’t let yourself put them off until several levels later (or never). I guess the main disadvantage is that with great power comes great responsibility, haha!
My recommendation would be to figure out what speed you want to go through WK and calculate how many lessons you need to do a day in order to level up on schedule. If you’re not going full speed, maximum efficiency might not be necessary, though there are some other advantages to being able to reorder your lessons. I’m going twice as slow as full speed, so each level takes me about two weeks. I do about 10-13 lessons a day, and I use the lesson filter script to spread out the kanji lessons so that I’m not doing them in huge batches (generally, I do all the radicals at the beginning of the level, then I do 10 vocab + 3 kanji lessons each day, then 10 vocab lessons a day after I run out of kanji lessons).
fallynleaf has said most of what there’s to say, really
you only need to reorder your lessons if you’re going fast (and don’t want to do all the previous-level vocab all at once). if you’re doing more than about 10 days per level, you probably don’t get any speed advantage from reordeing.
the big danger is in not doing your vocab. vocab are important for reinforcing meanings and readings, and teaching alternate readings. and they are best learned shortly after learning their kanji. so if you re-order your lessons, it’s important to keep an eye on your vocab (e.g. using wkstats). what’s working for me is making sure i have all vocab done before i start guruing the current level’s kanji (aiming for 0/0 when i guru the radicals). i also take as few lessons from the previous level with me as possible (aiming for 0/0 just before level-up). both of these ensure that i don’t have a backlog of vocab lessons ^^
Thank you for the in-depth reply! I’m trying to finish in ~1.5 years so I believe I need to do around 15-20 lessons a day. However, I slacked off during the beginning of May so the past week or two I have done upwards of 30 some days. This past level (level 6) I had a good amount of days without any available lessons. Would I be okay with this pace? Would it even be worth using a script?
This is helpful, thank you! I’ve been pretty good about my vocab for this lesson, so in theory I could just front load the 44 new vocab unlocks (all unlocked after I guru’d my last kanji) this morning and then do my radicals later today. It’s a lot for one day but if I am only doing this the day I level up it seems manageable, and then (it sounds) like I wouldn’t need to worry about a re-ordering script (bad idea?). Is this doable, or do the amount of new lessons I get after each level progressively increase?
I reorder in the reverse order to most. Vocab first. I’m in no rush (clearly, I’ve been here far too long for where I am) and if vocab reinforces the learned kanji, that seems more important to me than getting more kanji.
the remaining vocab from previous levels actually have a sharp drop around level 13.
from level 13 on you have a max of 8 radicals per level, so the second batch of kanji after you guru them is also much smaller. in level 20 there’s only 6 kanji in the second batch, when i guru those tonight i’ll unlock just 24 more vocab lessons. overall i’d say going full-speed (even without any scripts) becomes much more manageable after level 13.
but numbers do peak around level 10 or so, so it might get harder before it gets easier…
One way to use the reorder script would be to set a mix for each lesson. For example: 3 radicals, 5 kanji, and the remaining vocab. Then you can work through the current level and the vocab list at the same time.
I’d caution you against doing 30+ lesson days (or front loading all 44 new vocab lessons), because those 30+ reviews are going to all come back at the same time, so you’ll be dealing with a huge batch of reviews at each apprentice stage, then guru, master, enlightened, etc. It’s not just a lot for the day that you do the lessons, but it’s a lot for those future days as well. If you’re able to handle the review load, you can take on a bunch of lessons at once, but if you were slacking when you were doing 15-20 lessons a day, 30+ is probably going to be hard! The easiest thing I’ve found for being able to motivate yourself to keep up with your lessons and reviews every day is to keep the number of them fairly consistent. If you have 50 reviews some days and 300 other days, you’re going to start dreading those 300 review days.
I think 10 day level up times might be on the edge of whether or not a script is necessary, but reordering might give you a little more flexibility (and let you avoid front-loading 40+ vocab). The only things that determine your level up speed are guruing the radicals and the kanji as soon as possible, which means doing the lessons for those as soon as you can (and getting high accuracy on your reviews). In my opinion, the vocab lessons are best done by distributing them evenly throughout the level, instead of doing 40 lessons when your kanji batch comes through, then 0, 0, 0, then another huge batch when the next group of kanji makes it to guru, then 0, 0, etc.
I think it might benefit you to try getting into the habit of doing 15-20 lessons a day (without having periods where you slack off for a while), first, before trying to use a script. If you can’t keep up that habit on a daily basis, you’re going to have a really hard time reaching level 60 in 1.5 years, no matter how well you optimize your lesson order! But if you manage to consistently do lessons at that speed for an entire level or two and are interested in shaving off a little more time, you can try out a script and see if it allows you to level more efficiently. If you try to go too fast or take on too much at once, you risk burning out, and quitting at level 10 due to burnout is a much worse outcome than doing this for 1.5 years and only making it to level 40 or 50 instead of your goal of 60!
It sounds like in this case if I am alright with managing my vocab as it is it may make since for me to just push through without scripts for these next few levels while going full speed so I don’t have to worry about them later on. If I need to take another day or two on levels because I went fast on the first batch of vocab and forgot some of then during reviews, I’m okay with that, especially since having the radicals early on may cancel that out a bit. Thanks for the further insight!
I see how that could be a problem. Most of my slacking off was due to outside commitments and not having a good routine about two weeks after starting WK. But for the next few months I’ll have a lot more time to build a routine that will hopefully stick which has been going well so far. For reference, levels 1-5 took me 5, 6, 27, 12, and 23 days. This past level took me 11.
Do you mean if I’m already leveling up in 10 days I wouldn’t need a script or that I would need a script?
I definitely like this idea. Since I’m still early on, it might be beneficial for me to do another couple levels without a script and see how I do, and then reasess.
if aiming for a steady rate of about 15 lessons a day/10 days a level (works for most levels after the late teens), it’s not intuitively obvious if you’d need to use a reorder script to be able to achieve that. but but i just levelled up, and have 24 vocab from the previous level remaining. so with 15 lessons a day and no reordering, i’d be doing the radicals on day 2, leaving 8 more days. so 10-day levels ought to be fairly achievable with a steady rate of lessons and without reordering scripts…
fallynleaf, sorry for answering for you, but it’s kind of what i’d been pondering earlier, so was all in my head already ^^
Hey, I just saw this and I wanted to see if you’re still using the reordering script and if so what advice you might have?
Similar to you, I have a time limit (goal) of around 1 year that I’d like to be progressed somewhere near level 60 and I’m looking to level up quicker. I am pretty consistent and don’t see myself quitting on my goal since it’s not realistic to, so would you recommend I use this?
if you want to speedrun WK, and want to spread your lessons relatively evenly over the course of a level, you definitely need a script to re-order lessons. you can speedrun without such a script, but it implies doing large clumps of lessons on level-up days (all the remaining vocab from the previous level, plus the radicals of this level).
personally, i’ve long ago stopped speedrunning, but still reorder my lessons. i like to do 10 lessons a day, up to 3 kanji, and the rest vocab. (and radicals on top of that). all in all, re-ordering gives me just a bit more flexibility than vanilla WK allows.