Year 2
Can't believe it's been 2 years! I'm so happy I'm actually able to keep this up for this long. Let's talk about it. While I'm generally having fun, there are some parts that I struggle with. Yeah, it's Anki.
Reading
The part where I improved the most. Last year, my reading speed was around 1.5 hours per episode. I'm happy to say I've cut that down to around 30 minutes per episode! The biggest contributor to this is discovering that almost every single story in this game has a raw text version in the Estertion side. This means that an entire "step" in understanding the story is just pretty much cut because I don't have to scan the text with OCR to look up the words I don't understand. Although that's the biggest contributor, I also like to think I improved somewhat as well, heh. After all, if you've been keeping up with my blog posts, you'll probably notice that my comprehension is a consistent 99-100%.
Still, I think I'm going to keep only reading 1 episode per day, something something consistency is better in the long run. As always, I may read more than 1 episode per day if a story particularly excites me. Maybe it'll happen with the And I Will event.
Anki
Still takes around 15 minutes for me to finish, so I'm able to keep that up, at least...not really.
There are days where I decrease new cards to 0 because either I:
- am busy and need to get my reps over with ASAP.
- am overloaded with reviews and need to cut it down by decreasing new cards
I'm not happy with having to decrease my number of new cards, it is still better than just outright skipping my reps, but I'm still not happy with it. I want consistent decent-ish results, but I feel like I'm just not built for it. I may sound like a doomer here, but Anki results don't matter THAT much. It's supposed to be a supplement to your reading reps to help you retain shit. But still, not happy with the result. I'm not going to quit Anki, just not happy with how things are going right now. The fact that my reading speed and comprehension are improving is prove I'm improving in general, but still...agh, this is so frustrating!
You keep talking about number of new cards, what's usually the recommended number?
That's the thing, most people say "as much as you can handle". The default is 20 new cards per day, and people recommend sticking with that at first and then decreasing or increasing depend on how you perform.
Okay, how do you gauge performance?
By paying attention to your retention rate. The higher the percentage, the more cards you were able to recall. An ideal retention rate is around 80%. Less than that means you're being overwhelmed and should decrease your load. More than that means you remember too much because you keep seeing the same cards over and over and you should increase your load.
Anki has a new feature where you can set your desired retention rate. Higher number means recent cards show up more often, making you see them more and thus usually making you remember better. Lower number means you see the same cards less often. Higher number also means more review load because the same cards show up more often, lower number, less review load. I'm like a broken record here, you should get the gist by now.
So...what's your retention rate.
60%, usually. Yeah...it's bad. And I've been tinkering with settings and nothing seem to stick so far.
Right now, I'm doing 5 new cards a day, it was 10 but my retention rate was 50%, and decreasing my new cards seemed to work at first. But it never rose above 60%.
I increased desired retention to 90%, and there were waaay to much reviews, retention rate dropped back down to 50%.
Okay, let's try 70%. But the Anki app outright told me that I set my desired retention way too low, so I bumped it to 80%.
Had several days where I reached 70% retention, but it didn't last long.
And that's where I am now. Desired retention is 80% with 5 new cards a day. 60% retention in reality. I'm going to keep these settings for a bit and see how things pan out.
For those who are currently learning Japanese or are planning to, please don't let my ramblings discourage you. As I said in the beginning, your reading progress matters much more than your Anki progress. Better reading and worse Anki is normal, better Anki but worse reading is concerning. As long as that isn't the case, just keep going.
Future Plans
I figure this is as good time as any to finally tackle this. No, no. I'm not quitting. Bear with me here...
Up until now, I usually release 2 blogposts per month. One for a new event, one for an old event. The one for new events will continue for as long as this game is up.
However, I am now starting to run out of old events to read. As of writing this, I'm reading the Debutante's Shangri-La event (the XSaren event), this is a year 3 event, which means I'm getting closer to the point where EN EoS'd, the The Four Farming Warriors event. I'm 8 events away from finishing reading old events, and after that, naturally, the number of blogposts per month will go down from 2 to 1 per month.
However, this doesn't mean I'm gonna slack off whenever I'm done reading a new event because I'll be using the gap between events to finally catch up with Arc 2! It's been on the backburner for way too long now.
I don't usually write blogposts for main story because for me to form an opinion on a story it needs a beginning, a middle and an end. And main story is designed to never end. Obviously, I don't want it to end either! I want Priconne to stay alive, previous Cygames game (Dragalia, Flipper, Shadoba 1) prove that end of main story = end of game or sequel time. A Re: Re Dive might sound nice, but look at how they cranked up the jewishness of Shadowverse Worlds Beyond. In the end, the backlash was overblown and the economy isn't that bad, but the fact that there was a backlash in the first place...
You don't actually play Shadowverse Worlds Beyond you gacha-hopping SEAnigger!
Oh, but I do. I've reached Master Diamond! That's the highest tier you can get in the game, pushing further means competing in the leaderboards which...I'm not going to do. Yes, I used Sword and yes, I dropped back to Sapphire just 2 days later. But my point is, I've played the game enough to form an opinion on it.
Ninja edit: Yeah, nevermind. Fuck this rigged ass game. I'll stick around because a Priconne collab is likely considering the Evolve collab, but it sucks knowing rigged events like this will be a mainstay because this was only volume one...next time I'll join the team I want to lose and just start throwing games. It probably won't change a thing, but the game has already shown that it's pointless to actually try, might as well do the thing that requires less effort.
Er...getting off topic there. Back to Arc 2. I may write a big rentry about my thoughts on Arc 2 as a whole, but this isn't 100% set in stone. Depends on my feelings on it after I'm done, I guess. We'll see.
JPFagging Rentry Changelog
I'm adding this section because I've been forgetting to update this thing other than the Events section. You might notice anything's barely changed if you obsessively refresh, which I doubt any of you do, but nothing's changing because I simply have been forgetting to update it, sorry!
Here are the updates that I did to each section other than the Events one, because that one's still up to date.
Yearly Report 2
You're reading it right now!
Main Story
Now is updated up until the Vision Empress chapter...but I've been forgetting to keep track of my of comprehension...
My short thoughts are there now, but I think I'll only start tracking again after the next chapter is done because I kinda don't want to reread things...
This part is just me being lazy, do pardon me.
Characters
Now is updated up until the admin characters, portraits for Aira and Shinatsu pending. And also better organized, no more "???" guild. Although I did make up some new categories (Admins, Fairies, Cygames imports sorted by game) for "Other" characters so everyone belong to somewhere. This does result in some wacky shit like Muimi being in her own category alone.
Priconne Immersion Guide
All event IDs up until Summer Qualia, Summer Anemos are added. Updated the Birthday section since now that part gets actual stories. Added Alces to the Guild Stories section, because they're stored differently than other guilds for some reason.
Events/Characters Awards?
I want to keep doing this but honestly, nothing much changes much since last year. Nephi still kicks my ass, Rino and Mahiru are easy with curveballs sometimes, and all my reading except for Summer Dream Refrain went smoothly. However, I still want to discuss characters that are hard in the beginning, but get easier as time passes. Those characters are...!
Characters-That-Were-Hard-In-The Beginning-But-Got-Easier-As-Time-Passes-"Awards"
First up...it's Riri!
She's basically in the same tier as Rino and Mahiru for me now. Easy character that throws curveballs every now and then. Although Riri is definitely the hardest out of the three because she's the most formal one.
Second is another representative from Alter Maiden...Precia!
Her not using kanji was a massive roadblock in the beginning. However, with more listening practice, I now realize she really never uses any rare words. Still requires quite a bit of listening practice, which I have now.
Third is someone that may or may not become playable soon...Tia!
Her full body portrait is unreleased, purisu undastand.
Tia is your designated exposition dumper in the beginning of arc 3, which means she'll throw a lot of Priconne-exclusive phrases that relates to the lore. Gets easier as you understand more of da lore of the game because Tia herself speaks pretty plainly. If a little bit sassy.
And that's all for this year. See ya next August.
Looking forward to the And I Will event because it seems it's going to tackle the complain I had with the I Wish event.