Try to keep review sessions shorter.
If you realize you don’t recall the meaning of a kanji in vocab take the time to review the mnemonic for it again.
Don’t try to blaze through the twenties.
Put more energy into time spent learning new items. Repeat the mnemonics over and over.
I didn’t do either of these and wound up with 400 leeches with ever decreasing review accuracy that ultimately made me take a break from WK.
I hit my wall in the 20s. Then I left my ego at the door and allowed myself to make frequent mistakes. Turns out being kind to myself was the answer to progress for my case.
That’s good advice, I’ve noticed that there are some burns coming up from the teens that I must have really blown through because they’re pinging absolutely nothing in my brain when they pop up. Don’t skimp on the mnemonics, folks! It will come back to kick your ass in sixth months 
For me it was at level 9. I don’t know what happened but it took me over a month to reach level 10. I wasn’t getting bad review scores or anything but I was just taking things a bit wayy to slowly. I guess I felt a bit overwhelmed and wanted to make sure things sink in before I learn new stuffs.
reset? Wym by this. As in WaniKani resets your whole progress to level 1 if you do very poorly?
Exactly.
One doesn’t have to reset all the way to level 1 though - it’s possible to reset to any previous level.
Just to clarify, WK does NOT punish you and resets you for not getting things right. This is not a test or a game, there is nothing to “fail”.
It is entirely in your own control, can be done at any time, and to any previous level you desire.
There is regularly discussions about whether one should reset or not, and there are varying opinions on it. Some swear to it, others refuse it entirely.
It’s usually done when one feels completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of reviews, but a lot of people also just power through and chip away at it while not doing new lessons.
I hit a wall at lvl 18.
Had too much reviews to handle on a daily basis. Started to slow down, didn’t force me anymore to do all the reviews and lessons at once. Still, I never skipped a day. Just kept going.
Started to treat Wanikani as a support to learn japanese instead of the main focus.
Currently been doing grammar the last half year, started following japanese classes (I recommend!) and recently started practicing kanji writing with a book (Kanji from zero, it has all the kanji I already learned with wanikani. With my currently lvl of japanese language it is a pleasure to do) .
Being at current lvl appeared to be a major help when I started japanese classes. It doesn’t feel so overwhelming as I hear from fellow students.
OP here, I actually hit the wall myself at L26, I have just logged in after going strong since the start, work got in the way and have been away for about four months, I have a review pile of 3000 to get through. Lets keep each other motivated.
Level 1.
38, lol. Frustrating to get back to it.
I’m slowing down now so it doesn’t happen. I went to level 30 in a 7d19h average, but since I’m also doing KaniWani and some other things, now that I have to burn both WaniKani and KaniWani reviews, there’s just no way I can keep that up without burning out.
The next level will probably be the first one that will have taken me two digit days to complete, but I’m happy about it. The relief is incredible. Especially now that I know how much pressure it takes away later, when you have to burn it all.
I can now focus more on reading and listening and with the kanji and grammar I know so far, that’s gotten a lot less frustrating than before.
To me, every level is a wall!
10 and 17. I thought I was taking it slow the second time, but it still accumulated into something unmanageable. So now I’m going even slower. Third time is the charm.
I kind of felt like that in high 10s but that was partly due to life stuff. I was in the middle of moving and getting ready to go back to university so I just didn’t have the focus that I had before and currently. Even now, the items that I “learned” back then are some of my weakest and I fail at them on the reviews all the time.
If you have such scores on that level then I may take a guess that you may want to dedicate more time to learning. By that I mean that you have to do an extensive research of every item (especially kanji!!!) you learn.
Currently I reached such level of preparation that I have personalized mnemonics for 95% of kanji I learn, also research of which ones are related to it, finding families of kanjis without caring whether it matches WK logic and radicals (Wolverine on a stool family: 寝 侵 浸; Turkey on a stool in flowers family 護 獲 穫) and double checking meanings of kanji in my native language and checking english meaning in merriam-webster for funs. Also I want to add that personal mnemonics have a connected story: wolverine on a stool gets hit by an icicle from a canopy in a forehead and wakes up, then he sees the leader while still sitting on a stool and gets information that while he slept they got invaded, then during or after an invasion whole battlefield gets washed away by a tsunami, thus submerging the werewolf with his stool.
That helped me to get faster and less inaccurate.
Outside research might be just the thing I need to start setting aside time for. I do have my own mnemonics for many of the kanji, and of course I remember those much more easily than some of the WK ones. I joined WK after looking into the Heisig method because it seemed faster to just have someone create mnemonics for me, but obviously it’s going to stick better if I actually do the imaginative effort to come up with my own.
Stupid brain, just remember things immediately, learning a new language with a completely different alphabet is such a time sink, jeeeez 
Level 25, where I am right now. It feels like my brain is demanding a rest, so I’m doing nothing but reviews until it recovers.
Are these always the same apprentice, or do they move up and others drop down? Sounds frustrating!
I found it difficult to ever get it below 50 apprentice even when not doing lessons honestly. I have this hypothesis that some things refuse to stick unless learning more items on the side for the brain to munch on (something like giving more things for the brain to distinguish it from, but not too many). For that reason i did only 3 lessons a day for a month. about a week ago i increased it to 5 a day and im currently at 57 apprentice.
