Need advice on how to best tackle this review pile. I quit cold turkey for 3 months after going full speed for 5 months and now my accuracy on reviews is very poor. Do I level reset?
edit: I have been going through reviews slowly for almost 2 weeks now, sorted from level 1, with radicals then kanji then vocab. But I feel like I am burning things I should not be.
I had a 3-month break as well but to be fair I was doing reviews once in a while, so the pile I got back to was just over 500 items.
I just decided to plunge right in and was doing several 30-40 minute review sessions per day. No reordering, no tricks.
As you say sometemise I burned items that felt shaky but if I could remember them - it counts.
From what I read in the forms before resetting a few levels doesnât reduce the reviews by much. So, youâd have to reset to maybe lvl 10 to feel it.
But Iâd try to do 300 - 500 reviews a day (split them of course) for a week and see where you will be.
After this initial push you will figure out how many items you really donât remember and you will clear all the items you do know.
Seconding the idea that you set some daily goal for a while and try to power through it. As long as youâre doing more reviews in one day than are piled up for the next, youâll make progress.
If you still feel stuck after a while, then I might consider dropping levels, one at a time, until you feel comfortable again.
Also, if you feel like youâre burning things you shouldnât be, you can âresurrectâ those cards individually at the bottom of the radical/kanji/vocab page. 
Went to Japan and didnât do any WKâŠWhen I returned home my accuracy was so low, I just couldnât remember anything! Well, I want to remember, thatâs my goal right? So I seset 6 levels back, slowed down to no more than 90 appr.levels at any time. Never regretted it, allthough it will take me a long time! Just took the lifelong offer so I can enjoy my learning process and relax, whilst still making progress and having time to do grammar, writing, reading and best of all: actually speaking Japanese. Dontât feel stuck, relax!
I recommend not using the reorder script but rather this one:
(Because, with the reorder script you WILL be burning things you shouldnât)
(Remember to disable it once youâve caught up!)
Other than that, Iâll second @Grawlix - do more reviews than you have due the next day, and youâll slowly be seeing progress. If you donât do any new lessons (seriously, donât), even 10 reviews a day will eventually get you to the bottom of your pile. Use the wrap up button liberally.
I would advise against both resetting (been there, done that, regretted it) and doing as many as 300-500 reviews a day to get caught up. Do now as you mean to go on - if you do massive chunks, they will come back to you in massive chunks. How many reviews were you doing daily before your break? You could add 5-10%, but I wouldnât do any more than that.
As others have written, no new lessons until reviews at or near 0.
I agree wholeheartedly with konekush regarding the prioritisation script, except for this bit:
No real need to do this; once you are caught up and are afterwards keeping your reviews at 0, it wonât make much of a difference.
(Sorry @konekush - didnât mean to reply to you, just to the thread in general).
P.S. If you do end up with a lot of leaches, you could use the self-study script on leech mode to get some extra review on just those items.
I do think there is. If you read the script thread, youâll see me and a couple of others discussing it:
If you increase the randomness and what counts as overdue, you can minimise the possible issues that might arise from long-term usage.
Sorry, Iâve never been in this situation and have no advice for you. (And I hope I never need the advice you get! Good luck!)
Iâve been in your situation a few times. I just sort my reviews by level and try to clear it bottom up. Every day I do a few hundred reviews, until Iâm done.
I have read the thread - unless you are hyperaware of exactly which items you did when (which I am not), it is still just a bunch of vocab, kanji and rads that need reviewing, so do your best.
That said, it is easily toggled on and off, each to their own.
I have had a few long absences from WaniKani, and I recently did a reset from 20 down to 15 and am back up to nearly 20 again. I donât regret it, but I also donât think it was really necessary now that Iâve done it and gotten back up to nearly where I was again. Kumireiâs approach of sorting reviews by level has helped a lot in the past. I would just focus on one level at a time, and only do reviews for that level until they get to Guru or something along those lines. Itâs sort of mimicking a reset without fully committing to one. 
Plus you can always un-burn things that you feel like you burned unintentionally.
The main thing with the reset is that itâs kind of a bummer to lose the forward progress, so it probably depends on your personality if this will bother you or not.
One thing thatâs also helped A LOT this time around now that Iâm back to consistently doing reviews is using the Self Study script to review old items that are getting stuck in Guru or Apprentice. In the past, I had a lot of leeches or items that would go back and forth between those categories, so now I have a few self study lists for Apprentice Items under {my current level minus 1 or 2}, for example. That helps prevent them from piling up. Anyways good luck with whatever you decide to do!!
I was in a similar situation a while back. Hereâs what I did (itâs debatable what the best way is)
It turns out youâre still going to have to go easy on lessons for a long while even once the review count gets to zero, because youâll have a big Guru pile full of leeches piling on you every day, and you donât want to add too much to that. It was about 6 weeks total for me to be back to full speed ahead. With that considered, it may not be that much faster than a reset of a few levels, to be honest, but at least the speed is in your control.
Well, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The remaining reviews are basically lessons but I plan to do finish them tomorrow. Thank you all for the encouragement!
Congrats! Feels good, I bet.
But I still recommend holding off on lessons for two more weeks. That should get you through that 1000-item Apprentice+Guru wave. Unless youâre getting used to several hundred reviews per day, and starting to like it. 
Itâs winter break right now for me, so I have a lot of time. But Iâll probably wait to do lessons until apprentice is under 200 and guru under 500 at least.
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