I won Duolingo
Oct. 12th, 2020 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelDuolingo has a league system -- the closest thing to pvp it has -- where each week you're in a group of 50 people, and at the end of the week you get ranked according to how much XP you've done. The top 10 advance to the next league level; bottom 5 drop a league level; the other 35 remain in the same league rank. There are 10 levels (bronze, silver, gold, blue, red, green, amythest (purple), pearl (pink), obsidian (black), and diamond (light aqua).
Now, I tend to loathe pvp. Even pvp that's just competing with other people indirectly. But thee were achievements, and I'm a huge completionist, so ... doomed.
Most of the achievements just involved getting to the league level (once); there was one for being first in your league at any level; but there was one for being first at diamond league specifically. And it's darn near impossible to *accidentally* get to diamond league, so most of the people would be vying for top slot.
For a while I had trouble even staying at diamond, until my sister taught me a trick to get in slightly less cutthroat leagues without losing my daily streak: do Sunday's daily lesson before the league week ended, and then wait until Monday night to do anything. The leagues are based on when you first get xp, which means waiting until Monday night puts you in league with other people who also waited until Monday night, some of whom are slacking off that week. It was still out of my reach to hit first -- ohh, it was theoretically possible, but I type enough more slowly than other people that I can't catch up to anyone -- if someone's at 1000 and I try climbing, by the time I have 500 they have 1550; by the time I have 1000, they have 2100; etc.
Then I found another strategy: set yourself to private for the first few days (to maintain streak without being assigned a league), then go public Wednesday or Thursday or so. The stuff you do while private doesn't count for weekly xp, but it's a shorter amount of time. And by Thursday, most of the "trying really hard" people have done a lesson, so it's either people using the same strategy or people who don't care much. Definitely less competition for staying in diamond. Still competition for the top slot, of course, but.
I figured my main chance was to wait for one of the weeks where I was one of the early members (so a very new league that I was one of the first few assigned to), take off *hard* and hope that I got enough lead that a) most people wouldn't bother challenging me, and b) if anyone did, I had plenty of buffer space to make it obvious that I wasn't going to give up easily, thus hopefully further deterring challengers.
This last Thursday? I was the third person assigned to the league. So I did several hours and about 900 points. (When I went to sleep, the next highest person had 450.) Friday, I did almost 1800 *additional* points. (When I went to sleep, I had at least 2600 total points, with next highest being 748.) Saturday ... was kind of agonizing, because on the one hand I had a 2000-point lead, but I had done SO MUCH that I didn't want someone to charge up and pass me so that I'd have to do it again some week.
Sunday, the numbers pretty much didn't change.
Let me tell you, 3k points was ... not easy. Lessons are 10 points, sometimes doubled. Stories are up to 28 points, but are rather tedious and quite often stupid. (i.a. Eduardo confronts his wife because she's been acting weird and bought a swimsuit and made a hotel reservation, ~clearly~ she wants a divorce... whoops she was actually preparing a surprise for their anniversary, ~lol~) So 3000 points is. Um. A lot.
But I did it.
And now I don't have to care about leagues -- or duo stories -- ever again.
Now, I tend to loathe pvp. Even pvp that's just competing with other people indirectly. But thee were achievements, and I'm a huge completionist, so ... doomed.
Most of the achievements just involved getting to the league level (once); there was one for being first in your league at any level; but there was one for being first at diamond league specifically. And it's darn near impossible to *accidentally* get to diamond league, so most of the people would be vying for top slot.
For a while I had trouble even staying at diamond, until my sister taught me a trick to get in slightly less cutthroat leagues without losing my daily streak: do Sunday's daily lesson before the league week ended, and then wait until Monday night to do anything. The leagues are based on when you first get xp, which means waiting until Monday night puts you in league with other people who also waited until Monday night, some of whom are slacking off that week. It was still out of my reach to hit first -- ohh, it was theoretically possible, but I type enough more slowly than other people that I can't catch up to anyone -- if someone's at 1000 and I try climbing, by the time I have 500 they have 1550; by the time I have 1000, they have 2100; etc.
Then I found another strategy: set yourself to private for the first few days (to maintain streak without being assigned a league), then go public Wednesday or Thursday or so. The stuff you do while private doesn't count for weekly xp, but it's a shorter amount of time. And by Thursday, most of the "trying really hard" people have done a lesson, so it's either people using the same strategy or people who don't care much. Definitely less competition for staying in diamond. Still competition for the top slot, of course, but.
I figured my main chance was to wait for one of the weeks where I was one of the early members (so a very new league that I was one of the first few assigned to), take off *hard* and hope that I got enough lead that a) most people wouldn't bother challenging me, and b) if anyone did, I had plenty of buffer space to make it obvious that I wasn't going to give up easily, thus hopefully further deterring challengers.
This last Thursday? I was the third person assigned to the league. So I did several hours and about 900 points. (When I went to sleep, the next highest person had 450.) Friday, I did almost 1800 *additional* points. (When I went to sleep, I had at least 2600 total points, with next highest being 748.) Saturday ... was kind of agonizing, because on the one hand I had a 2000-point lead, but I had done SO MUCH that I didn't want someone to charge up and pass me so that I'd have to do it again some week.
Sunday, the numbers pretty much didn't change.
Let me tell you, 3k points was ... not easy. Lessons are 10 points, sometimes doubled. Stories are up to 28 points, but are rather tedious and quite often stupid. (i.a. Eduardo confronts his wife because she's been acting weird and bought a swimsuit and made a hotel reservation, ~clearly~ she wants a divorce... whoops she was actually preparing a surprise for their anniversary, ~lol~) So 3000 points is. Um. A lot.
But I did it.
And now I don't have to care about leagues -- or duo stories -- ever again.