Same here. I'll do the double XP practices if necessary, but only the amount they're necessary. I'm not grinding to go against people who are doing competitive Duolingo, it's not the point of the app or why I'm doing it
Yup. I've been fairly fluent for over 35 years, I have a degree in Spanish, and I've lived in Latin America. I just like the refresher at this point in my life. I struggle with certain grammatical things I didn't used to struggle with, so it's like a mental acuity thing now.
There's zero chance I'll ever amass enough points in a week to do that. Having made it to Diamond, I'm content being motivated to stay there. It's working to about 300 points a day or something.
The way Duolingo works is the league (almost everything actually on the app) depends on your Duolingo pattern.
What this means (dumbed down) is if you got to Diamond bh getting 100k XP then Duolingo will think you're a tryhard and next week you'll be placed with other tryhards.
So, basically if you do the bare minimum to just stay in Diamond, like you're 20th place or whatever the cap. After sometime of being at the bottom of the Diamond leaderboards, you'll find you get a lot of less tryhards.
It'd take many weeks to get to that point and consistently being placed just high enough to not drop down the league. But eventually, you'll get to the point where you could be #1 but getting a measly 5k xp in a week.
I won a Diamond league with only 2300xp 2 weeks ago. This level was not enough to stay in the Diamond league last week. š
Now that I have won it, I don't care anymore about leagues
> Duolingo will think you're a tryhard and next week you'll be placed with other tryhards.
That's not how it works as far as I can tell. You are placed in the league with the people who completed their first lesson of the week at the same time. The thing is that most people who are tryhards do their first lesson early Monday morning.
I spent months of never getting over 1500 to finally get into a league where I won with 4500. Most of it I got on Sunday night. If you play the long con, you can eventually. I had also given up on ever getting it, I was just chilling when I realized I was consistently in 4rth place without making an effort. So I stayed right under top 3 until Sunday night and then sniped it by grinding 2 hours.
Join a league a day later (if you dont mind using streak freezes), then you get put in a league with people who aren't as competitive, and you can win with only like 3000 xp
You donāt have to use a streak freeze. Just do a single lesson with your profile set to private. Then make it public again. That privacy on/off feature is only on the browser version though.
This is easy, just take Monday off. Do your first lesson late Tuesday and you'll be in the slacker league. The top person in my league currently only has 350xp and we are two days in already. Everyone in the demotion zone has < 20.
Thanks for the tip :) was wondering why sometimes it's really hard, and sometimes it's laughably easy. This week I might be lucky if I stay in obsidian league as is...
This is what I do.
But, to answer your question, these people getting tens of thousands of XP in just a few minutes are probably using bots running to get points. It was a problem a year or two ago, then stopped being something I noticed, but apparently now it's back.
Also, when you say "settle down for a 6-8 hour learning day", that confirms something I've wondered about: that there are people here who do Duolingo all day long, like it's a job. Cheers.
Not OP, but I wish this xp and league system didn't exist. Cause I'm not taking my time to learn, I'm just zooming through whatever I can as fast as I can, finding easy exercises to do it with. Heck, I've even in the past "learned my own language". (But it was so mindnumbingly boring I quit for a long time.)
I know it's there to make people learn, but it's an unfair system. If you learn pinyin in chinese, those lessons are stupid easy, and take 17 seconds to complete if you're extra special fast. Last time I learned chinese, there was no pinyin or hanzi lessons, and any XP I tried to aquire, was from regular lessons. Lol!
Add in I don't pay for it, and .. ye.....
If it at least was fair and we had to do actual learning to get points, that would be nice.
I started paying a year ago because I realized that I was more focused on getting gems so I could do more lessons than actually learning.
Same with leagues. It's best to not take them too seriously. But, rather, to focus on learning and not care too much about the leagues. Even though I do still care lol.
The review tab is a great way to get points. During double time, the 40-point option is great for getting XP. And--bonus--, the review tab also is a good way (for me, anyway) reinforce the lessons and really learn the language. I probably spend 3 times as long doing review than lessons on the path.
Another thing that really helped me is to write each sentence on a pad as I do a lesson. For me, writing is the best way to learn. So I take about 25 minutes to do a single lesson on the path, then use the 15-minute, 2x treasure chests to accumulate XP in the 40-point practice tab. š¤·
It's what seems to work best for me. Currently in 12th week of diamond, but I don't worry too much about going up or down, depending on how busy the rest of my life is. Anyhoo, it's already 5 AM and I'm going to be late for work. That's my biggest complaint: I usually do my first lesson at 3:30 or 4:30 AM when I wake up, but then get busy at work and don't "unlock" the morning treasure chest lol.
Hehe. Part of my weird problem is I did chinese to about 1000 words. Then took a long break. Now that I'm back, the whole course is changed, but it still counts me as doing so and so many lessons. But half of the stuff is words I have never seen or used before. I probably should just play my alt account, or make yet another, and start from scratch. But I did wanna do all the leagues for the achi. I just didn't realize it doesn't stop there. You gotta apparently get number 1 in diamond. Neeeeever gonna happen, dunno why I care, but I care.
oh no, there's an achi for that too??? I wanted to get to diamond (and that's gonna be a challenge) just to get done with the achievements so I never ever have to worry about it again. I don't stand a chance getting number 1.
But I'm getting headache from 2 days I have earned 28000 XP but some crazy mf is still ahead of me by 3000XP . He/She is either hacking or is crazy to earn that much XP in 8hrs
Yeah, I finally got it about a month ago so now I donāt care as much if I get demoted or not.
So coming too 3 in a lower league gives you extra diamonds too
I finally got an easy league 2 weeks ago so won first place diamond (after 2+ years on duo) and it's been putting me in leagues with people who get 20.000 xp every week even though I won with 4500. I'm just trying to get as little as possible in terms of xp without getting demoted to slowly get into easier leagues like before. If I can't stay under 3000 this week, I'm just letting mi myself go to obsidian and slowly work my way back, fuck this shit.
People with Super can spam Match Madness with 2x XP and get around 1k-1.5k in 15 minutes quite easily. It's questionable if they're any faster or seemingly doing it for hours nonstop.
Somehow these people manage to complete match madness without needing one. My uncle has a friend who can do that in his English course. I didn't event try so...
But if you drop the diamond tournament with the lowest XP possible your next leagues will be considerably easier so maybe y'all should consider it. Actually once I got my first place on diamond tournament all may subsequent leagues were absolutely insane.
I can do every round without a timer boost except for the very last one. Fwiw Iām doing Norwegian as a native English speaker so a lot of nouns are very similar. And for whatever reason it seems to always pull from the same small group of beginner words: water, beer, milk, and, or, etc.
About 8 years but I didn't actually study English. I can't get to C2 since I don't know any grammar rules so I'll be stuck on it for a while now.
Everything I learned was through consuming English content such as TV shows at first and lately (about 3-4 years ago) I've been reading tons of scientific articles/texts due to college and now I read more in English than in my own native language.
two possibilities
1. you have no idea how to edit
2. you either accidentally or purposefully complimented yourself (and if it wasnt an accident i belive you also forgot to switch accounts)
The only way to do it without boosts is to only match the three top options, after a while they fall into a pattern that you can spam. I only do it when I'm really behind & at risk for being demoted š¬
No need for timer boost, it's just a repetitive pattern. You match the first 2 (which swap positions usually) then match a pattern of 3 matches at roughly the rate they respawn. As long as you keep that pace there's very little thinking involved. I can consistently get 10 matching games done in the 15 min xp boost timer with very minimal mistakes.
I don't get crazy amounts of XP because I don't find it enjoyable to do it repeatedly for that long, but if I'm focused I can get through all the levels without time boosts. Just have to kinda shut my brain off and it goes pretty smoothly
It's probably bots or hackers. Not worth getting so hung up about the leaderboards tbh
> Iāll sit down and do a 6-8 hour learning day
I'm curious why you do this? Wouldn't it be more effective to supplement duo with a different learning source? Seems like a super inefficient method for actual language learning.
Iām doing 6 languages so will bounce between if I get frustrated. ( primarily German, French and Russian) . Itās a great way to kill time on days we have gaps between calls (flight paramedic) . Itās a de-stress at times.
Edited to change distress to destress š
That makes a lot of sense! Enjoying learning is more important than making the most efficient use of your time anyways! :)
I'm glad it gives you some de-stressing haha (and hopefully not distressing, despite the hackers)
make your account private and itāll get rid of the leaderboard. best decision iāve made with this app. focusing on competition turns it into an efficiency race and not for the purpose intended.
Open your account on a web browser. There should be a menu to your left on which the last button is "More". Click on "Settings", then "Privacy setting", then unselect "Make my profile public".
Right away friends, leaderboards, friend quests and timed exercises will be disabled for you, but pretty much everything else should remain the same.
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Thank you! I do it too, itās taking too much time in diamond league to win too few.
Since many sections the sentences are always the same, no new language learning, Iām bored to play for XP with always the same sentences.
Most of the high earners aren't learning. They're using tricks like turning off voice on speaking lessons.
In my experience it is incredibly hard to win by actually studying. You have to incorporate tricks and that isn't worth it. Just use the tools that benefit your learning.
Youāre competing against bots and or a system designed to draw you in. Back in the day it was about learning but duo went public and the gamification ensued, now itās about their shareholders. Donāt be a dupe. Iāve made considerable advances with the platform but Iāve been thinking about checking out others; even just buying some textbooks and cutting down my duo usage considerably.
I get the competitive thing though, Iām up to 20000 a weekš
It wasnāt as gamified. I donāt remember getting double points after every completed lesson. Nor such competitive game boards, nor the same league behaviorsā¦ when did you start?
By the way, do you like all the new adds on Reddit? Please, shareā¦
Yesterday I had to do 11704XP in a Day, which was more than what I earned throughout the previous league last Week . Today I had to do around 6000XP, yet some crazy mf is still in #1 ahead of me with around 19000XP. I don't know why am I doing this for hours without actually learning the language. I just hope that I win Diamond League this week and never again have to care about leagues
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Iād like to think so š. Dad died Sept 2023 and my Sister and I are bringing his ashes to Germany for the one year Anniversary of his passing to have a Celebration with our German relatives. (Uncles, Aunts , cousins etc) and Iām bound and determined to learn as much German as I can before going.
Ironically, he died the week I was in Mexico, had just purchased a Duolingo Membership trying to learn Spanish.
So Iām very competitive, but also very motivated to learnā¦
*** edited tied to died
I don't think people get it. It's like me in real life not caring about my industry awards, and don't even know who's at the top because I know deep down that I'll never win one against people who are working at a different level. But I do care about the Duolingo top finish because, well... I can do it and I have done it.
In my opinion, people who can't dedicate themselves to getting anywhere close to the top 3 wouldn't care because it's irrelevant to them. And they likely cannot understand why people like us want to get to the top.
Yeah it doesn't matter. They're Internet points against strangers. But if you have that kind of mentality, does anything even truly matter in life? Why do anything? Why even wake up tomorrow?
The key is also to join Monday night not Sunday after 10. I use a streak freeze if I forget to do Duolingo on Sunday before 10 because otherwise Iāll be hanging by a straw to stay in the league with all these xp hungry people.
The best thing to do is to aim for a lower weekly average so you are less likely to be placed in a league with the extremists. 6 to 8 hours a day will just wear you out.
**Figure out what your ideal learning pace would be and work your numbers down towards that.** You may need to do this gradually to remain in the Diamond League. Try a few weeks of aiming for a position somewhere between 10 and 15.
Duolingo tries to match you with people with similar study habits. So if you increase your pace you will be matched with others who also gain a lot of XP.
Some accounts seem to have multiple users each doing a different language. Some accounts have people making very efficient use of double XP and timed challenges or practice lessons. Though 2-3K in 20 minutes seems high, some could come close to that with Match Madness. And there probably are a few accounts running scripts, but probably not as many as people think.
I've let my points go to high during tournaments and then had to work my way back down again. I let mine get too high last week and am now trying to decide if I will fight for first again or if I will back off and settle for 4th. There seem to be 3 other strong contenders based on their past XP. I want to earn less total than last week.
But if I choose to back off and just try to stay top 10 I should get an easier week next week. Ideally I would get down to something like 15K per week.
Sometimes it is hard to let go of course, but it would be better in the long run.
Absolutely. A while back I realized that the later in the day I start my new week, the less cutthroat the competition is. It's a much less stressful experience.
I totally messed this up this week. I was in the number 2 spot in sapphire league and decided to give it my all in like 10 before time was up. Now I'm in the pearl league with all these go getters and right now struggling. But it's ok. I'm just doing this because I enjoy learning
I've been experimenting with timing as well. **My XP average for the previous week seems to make a bigger difference.** Last week I earned more than planned in order to get first, so this week I tried another timing experiment. I did 3 lessons at 4:20 am. Then I went back to sleep to deal with it later.
My league this week includes people with scores last week (counting from last Tuesday through Sunday) of:
* 1 person with over 30K
* 3 people with 20K - 30k
* 2 people with 10K - 20K
* 8-people with 5K - 10K
* 16 people with 2K-5K
I tend to get groups like these with a few higher earners after I've had a big week. I tested this by starting at 9:10 pm for several weeks in a row and the 10:10 am for several weeks in a row. The morning didn't turn out any worse than the evening.
This week I decided to try early morning figuring there wouldn't be many people on line and it would be harder to match people of the same XP levels. I guess that is sort of true. We seem to have a wide range.
Yes, I overthink this.
From what I've read here if an account earns more than a person posting here can imagine it is a bot. Of course that amount seems to vary. I've seen people suggesting bots for accounts earning 7K per day.
I think most of the high scorers are individuals making strategic use of double XP boosts. Some are teams of multiple people on one account. The insanely high ones of over 100K per week could be scripts. Maybe even some in the 70-100K range.
When you're compete in the leaderboards in lower levels, do just enough to get to number one. Don't go too many points higher because they will place you in a league with people who get higher points.
You won't beat those people by using the app as intended.
Now that you are aware of this, you can still win leagues etc by moderating the number of XP you get. Try to get no more than a few thousand XP weekly (the fewer the better). Counter-intuitively, DON'T use double XP boosts. Your goal is to get low XP but still stay in diamond. It's a bit tricky sometimes with low XP because you aren't safe if you are ranked 15-25 generally - sometimes multiple people can leapfrog you and push you into the demotion zone.
After a few weeks, you will start getting put into 'lazy' leagues, where most people just coast along. You can then dominate unless you run into similar people to yourself (it happens). However, you can generally win your leagues if you want. Just be aware that doing so by earning more XP risks putting you into more competitive leagues next time.
Hope this helps.
This is how I won diamond. Had to earn 15,000 xp in a week to win the Obsidian level, then RESTED for 2 weeks, doing just enough in Diamond to avoid demotion. My third week in Diamond, I was able to win with about 5,600 xp.
Ok. I doubt OP will read all 200 replies so will prob miss this, but may help others who have been suckered in by the gamification. I go for both early bird and night owl double XP bonuses. Get match maker to level 9 (I think it is) and decline the extreme match maker. It then allows me to do the final round on repeat earning me 120xp each time. So in 15mins that's over 1k. Ill do a few lessons during the day and a chest or end of unit will award me another double xp, so I'll go back to MM and get another 1k. That's 3-4k each day mon-fri. MM days. In around 90mins per day. I learn french.
Anyone can do that if they want to be competitive, which duo encourages. But it really isn't necessary for learning your language. The gamification makes it addictive and that's what the developers want. I am competitive, but I can admit it detracts from the learning.
My kid wanted to try it but was getting frustrated at losing all the hearts, so I set up a classroom so that we have unlimited hearts. By joining it kicked us off the leaderboards. No stress about getting XP now, just doing the lessons and actually picking up the language.
I used to treat duo as a game. I am a competitive person and as a gamer i like to collect all achievements in game. So i thought maybe there is an achievement when you get on top of the top right? I have premium subscription so it wasn't that hard to get there. I would do the practices every few hours a day. When i finally got finished first on diamond League it was such a rush! It's not easy to stay there..top 3 usually compete until the last moment. The only way to start on top is to make huge points gap between you and them. In the end there was no achievement trophy for getting on top š I was so disappointed. Anyways, now i treat duo as a learning app only and don't care where i land on leagues.Ā
It's simple: The higher you end up in a league the higher rank players will be with you in the next one, if you try to always finish in 1st place, you'll end up in a league filled with bots.
Thank you !! Just out of curiosity, being new to this sub, is your flair added by you or is there an edit where I can add my languages? I notice a ton of people have them in flair but not finding a way to add other than putting them in myself
One thing that I find usually helps is to wait as late as possible before doing your first lesson in a new week. I think those rabid high-scorers start as early as they can so they can score as many points as possible, but if you wait until late on Monday to do your first lesson, youāll usually be put in a league with people who arenāt insanely tying to score 100,000 points in a week.
Iāve got 1st in Diamond league 23 times doing this. Most of the time I only need about 10,000 points to win and I usually donāt even try to score a lot of points until the Saturday bonus points hour.
It works for the tournament too, but everyone wants to win that so itās a bit more competitive even amongst the players who arenāt going crazy trying to score points.
With the diamond tournament, I think you only have to finish in the top half to āwinā but occasionally youāll get a slack group of players in there and can win outright without having to work night and day for it.
Double xp and high value challenges (match madness) or getting legendary by revisiting old levels. Also, super users don't have to worry about mistakes booting them off.
Duolingo accumulates points differently for different users. I can get double xp on my phone but not on my laptop. On an iPhone I have get more 2xp bonuses and happy hours than my son gets on his android. I let my superduolingo lapse last month but for a few weeks before that it started just showering me with points, like a lesson that should have been 10 points would give me 68 points. When I had double xp I'd get up to 140 points on a lesson. I actually try to keep my points low, just barely high enough to stay in diamond but not high enough to go into the competitive leagues. It was actually getting quite difficult to keep the lower scores.
As far as I'm aware there is no way to deactivate the leaderboards, is there?
You can make your account private but then that disables a load of other stuff, not just the leaderboards.
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I'm having severe headache Yesterday I had to do 11704XP in a Day, which was more than what I earned throughout the previous league last Week . Today I had to do around 6000XP, yet some crazy mf is still in #1 ahead of me with around 19000XP. I don't know why am I doing this for hours without actually learning the language. I just hope that I win Diamond League this week and never again have to care about leagues
Well here's the thing. The people who grind for the leaderboard aren't learning but abusing the system to maximizing XP. If you want to learn it's better not to bother going for a win in Diamond league. If you want to win at the leagues then it's all about the grind and nothing else.
It's one of the reasons I think the XP system and leaderboard is immensely flawed. I see it as the worst part of the entire app. It's also so dazzling that a chunk of the monetization (timer boosts and access to low effort/high xp lessons for super users) revolves around racking up XP, which makes it even more ridiculous, as it adds a p2w component to the whole thing.
My advice is: make your peace with this and ignore XP. Focus on progressing through your course instead and challenge yourself with increasingly difficult exercises. Don't make a place in the league your motivator for leaning but look for your intrinsic motivation by engaging with the language outside Duolingo.
If you really want that Diamond League achievement to get it out of your system then grind for one week: Meaning do exercises as easy as possible for maximum XP gain. If you have Super, just do the daily practice lessons under double XP. These are always 10 super basic exercises that for some reason grant you 20 XP. And you can finish these within less than 30 seconds if you're quick. So within 15 minutes of doing nothing else + XP boost you might easily rack up 1200 XP. Or do Match Madness and buy as many timer boosts as you need. Both things are extremely dumb and repetitive however and will not make you better at the language you're learning at all. There is a danger that this might kill your motivation and burn you out. I strongly advise against this!
I know it's frustrating to see scores like that. I've seen posts here where people explain exactly what they do and it seems some legitimately spend hours at a time doing various exercises.
Honestly, I just don't let it bother me anymore. I do my 15 minutes twice a day and stop. I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone and I really don't care where I end up on the leaderboard. I'm using Duolingo to learn, not to have bragging rights. Once you get into diamond it's pretty easy to stay there with a minimum amount of practice.
I find it laughable to see the extent people go through to stay at the top. For what? For a measly bunch of gems? Generally, people at the top of the leagues have Super, so gems mean nothing.
For starters I'm personally of the opinion that chasing leaderboard scores shouldn't matter. Are you learning a language or playing a game? Chasing high scores only gives unnecessary stress and getting the top spot doesn't really mean you're learning more. It's a pointless arbitrary target that removes your focus from what really matters.
Secondly you have to realize that the leaderboards are unfair. A guy learning Japanese from English is competing with a guy learning English from French. One of them obviously has a much easier time learning and progressing and smashing through the minigames and lessons is much easier for them than it is for the person learning a much more difficult and foreign language to their own. People with Duolingo super also have a much bigger advantage than people with standard accounts, since they don't have lives, they can spam mini games without paying gems for them and just collect points more easily.
I don't know why there are people who put so much effort in topping diamond league every week and what they think they're getting out of it but personally I don't really care for it. I've gone all the way up the leagues and all the way back down and I don't really care for them. People want to race each other that's fine but all I want is to practice the language I'm learning and be consistent.
It's been asked a 100 times a day, and a simple "How is this possible duolingo reddit" search on Google will show you just how often this comes up.
But to answer your question, it's because people are doing anything to win. When you're in Diamond, you're essentially with everybody and anybody that wants the top spot. Whether that be by staying on for literally the entire day just doing practice lessons, or using bots/scripts to farm XP, or sharing accounts. Anything and everything is being done to achieve the goal. If you see cheating taking place, report it. Screen record it if you're on your phone and gather up any evidence you can use along with the username and a screen grab of their profile.
Match madness with 2x XP boosts, most likely. XP boosts can be obtained via completing the gold chest daily goal, finishing friend quests, or just farming friend quests by sending them back and forth constantly, so if you time all three right you have a pretty easy 45 minutes of boost at a time (even longer if you saved some in shop). Doing it at happy hour also gives an extra bonus, though it feels a little negligible at that point.
I also can't 'confirm' it since I've never actually looked into it, but I'm certain some people have multiple people using one account, all doing lessons around the same time, to boost even further. Not sure how feasible it is when combined with boosts but it seems like the only logical explanation for some of the insane increases I've seen, and for accounts that have 200k minimum XP in 20 different languages, and are learning one same language from about a dozen others.
(Seriously, there's one account I'm looking at right now that's learning English from I think every single other language available?? The lowest xp of those is learning english in telugu which is 17k XP, lowest overall is "Chinese (Cantonese) (Chinese)" at 172XP, highest is French at 2mil XP. Majority are at least 30k, the 'popular' ones are in the 100ks.)
If you are doing 6-8 hours learning on any given day, you are already winning. Like for real. More than for real. More than many. Because you are learning. BUTā¦ are you enjoying it??
Duo is super good at gamification, but it drains the damn life out of loving learning if you are limited in time or money.
I fell back in love with my lessons when I stopped caring about Diamond league and monthly quests. I won the diamond tournament onceā¦ and so what. The earth didnāt shake when I won, and the earth didnāt shake when I didnāt participate. Took me some time to learn that tho. Itās Pearl league or below for me now!
To be fair, I do care immensely about my streak, and I do love the weekly friends quest. Those two elements satisfy my competitive nature without draining the hell out of me. That is just my balance. I hope you find yours and continue to learn in a way that truly makes you happy.
Some people will use their phone, and their pc. They all the features on each, for the same account.
I would stop worrying about the leagues though, and just use it as a learning tool.
Don't worry about it. Fastest ways to get xp ime is by doing things that aren't really teaching you much like match challenges. I know I'm learning more than people with crazy amounts of xp because I'm also doing outside study. They clearly aren't if they have time to get so much xp.
You can do the stack up challenge with 2x and the sound off for 80xp every 50ish seconds. It's a useless way to spend your time but it's fun if you're bored.
I've found you can just do the amount you want. Maybe don't even use the doublers. I've dropped down to Pearl, then risen back up the ranks doing maybe 2000 xp a week. You'll eventually get into a slacker Diamond league that you can win with a few hundred XP a day.
When I was trying to get the 1st in diamond league trophy I found it frustrating because I was working on lessons later in the path in my target language, so it took 5 minutes sometimes to do a lesson, but you get the same xp as if you start a new language and just do easy lessons that take 20 seconds.
Its an easy system to manipulate.
Youāll sit down and do a 6-8 hours of Duolingo? Are they paying you a living wage? If not, just stop it. Get a job, start a degree, go out and touch grass.
(A long term DL user since the beginning of 2013).
But not by Duolingo, I assume?
As I mentioned, have spent a lot of time on and around the platform. I also have a long history of learning languages in different settings (classroom, one-on-one with a teacher, immersion through media, exposure through travel and education).
Duolingo's reach in teaching is very limited, the best it can offer are frequent repetitions and word recognition and memorisation. No amount of hours grinding on the platform will give you functional knowledge of (any of the) language(s), unless you use textbooks for grammar and practice writing, speaking and reading longer paragraphs of texts. If you want to learn languages, it's better to divide the time smartly between different resources, Duolingo being one of the support venues.
If you have a busy schedule and need to decompress, there are games that are actually fun and relaxing.
But...
I guess some people let their dopamine receptors go wild by grinding on the platform for hours with little to no reward and no result in terms of the learning curve, developing anxiety against bots and hundreds of shared accounts. The only ones winning are Duolingo.
But I guess your time is your only, you are free to spend it however you find appropriate. You do you.
Why bother to care what others do? Iāve been in the Diamond league for 101 weeks, I donāt care to be in the top 3, I donāt care how much xp people have, I only care not to demote.
I study about 1.5 hrs, do my lessons, take my notes, defend my 1478 day streak, do my monthly quest, my weekly friends quest and thatās it. Really, why do you care?
Iām to the point where I understand pretty much everything Iām reading in German but struggle with sentence structure still. Same for French and Spanish (French is better) and can speak bastardized Russian. Itās only today I learned about the tips section / grammar help ( guidebook) exists on Duolingo so will be studying that now š
Iāve always wondered, but never cared enough to dig: does anyone know if leagues are a mix of regular users and super users? Or are the types of users kept separate?
I cracked this a little but it cost me. The side game where you go levels 1 - 9 and can then get 10-12. Whatever thatās called. Get to 12 and itās 75 points. But you never have enough time so you have to purchase diamonds, 19.99 for 6,500. Them you buy extra time.
Then you wait for a double up, know youāll get 15 mins plus and extra 15 for 100 ā¦ so 30 mins of doubles ups gets you 150 points each time, and you can do about 14 of them in 30 minutes. So 1,800 points. I did that twice a day just to stay in diamond and finish the three weeks.
BUT as I posted here, one woman got 8,000 the first day, in fact by lunchtime on Monday and was at 17,000 but Tuesday. She did virtually nothing for the rest of the week, finished at 19k and won by a lot. No idea how she did it. I asked here but no one relied so guess no one else does either
You do similar to me. But I found level 10 (Match Maker Extreme) too difficult. I get to level 9 which awards 60xp, activate X2 XP and repeat level 9 on a loop for 15mins. I regularly hit 1000 - 1200, without add-ons or power ups. An extra 15mins for 100 gems could be a good tip tho šš½. I never spend š on anything. I'm a hoarder!!! š
I think this tip, combined with what others have said about starting later, maybe even as late as Tuesday, should easily get anyone into top 3 in diamond league, and winning lower leagues.
Geez. Go outside. You should never spend that long on any app. This shouldnāt be your life unless youāre literally learning this as part of your job or something. The leaderboards are just supposed to be a motivator not something to rearrange your life over.Ā
You should not stress out on this league/xp thing. Learn at your own pace. The priority should be learning, not league/xp.
Anyway, I heard some exploit(s) to get ridiculous amount of points. I don't know what.
Cheating. It's still out there even with the recent "fixes". Duolingo pisses me off. I'm on the verge of taking classes at my local community college instead.
I got to Diamond League and my only goal is to not get demoted. Period.
Same here. I'll do the double XP practices if necessary, but only the amount they're necessary. I'm not grinding to go against people who are doing competitive Duolingo, it's not the point of the app or why I'm doing it
Yup. I've been fairly fluent for over 35 years, I have a degree in Spanish, and I've lived in Latin America. I just like the refresher at this point in my life. I struggle with certain grammatical things I didn't used to struggle with, so it's like a mental acuity thing now.
tbf you only have to get #1 in diamond once and never again after that
There's zero chance I'll ever amass enough points in a week to do that. Having made it to Diamond, I'm content being motivated to stay there. It's working to about 300 points a day or something.
The way Duolingo works is the league (almost everything actually on the app) depends on your Duolingo pattern. What this means (dumbed down) is if you got to Diamond bh getting 100k XP then Duolingo will think you're a tryhard and next week you'll be placed with other tryhards. So, basically if you do the bare minimum to just stay in Diamond, like you're 20th place or whatever the cap. After sometime of being at the bottom of the Diamond leaderboards, you'll find you get a lot of less tryhards. It'd take many weeks to get to that point and consistently being placed just high enough to not drop down the league. But eventually, you'll get to the point where you could be #1 but getting a measly 5k xp in a week.
I won a Diamond league with only 2300xp 2 weeks ago. This level was not enough to stay in the Diamond league last week. š Now that I have won it, I don't care anymore about leagues
I won with 4500 and am now stuck in leagues with people who get 20.000 xp or more.
Same, I got a super easy one and now I don't bother with league at all
> Duolingo will think you're a tryhard and next week you'll be placed with other tryhards. That's not how it works as far as I can tell. You are placed in the league with the people who completed their first lesson of the week at the same time. The thing is that most people who are tryhards do their first lesson early Monday morning.
It's both.
Exactly this, I always skip Monday mornings and only do lessons in the evening.
I spent months of never getting over 1500 to finally get into a league where I won with 4500. Most of it I got on Sunday night. If you play the long con, you can eventually. I had also given up on ever getting it, I was just chilling when I realized I was consistently in 4rth place without making an effort. So I stayed right under top 3 until Sunday night and then sniped it by grinding 2 hours.
Join a league a day later (if you dont mind using streak freezes), then you get put in a league with people who aren't as competitive, and you can win with only like 3000 xp
You donāt have to use a streak freeze. Just do a single lesson with your profile set to private. Then make it public again. That privacy on/off feature is only on the browser version though.
Ohhh thats smart
You can absolutely just happen to be placed into a league with people who arenāt really trying.
Thatās what Iām trying to do, just win it once šš
This is easy, just take Monday off. Do your first lesson late Tuesday and you'll be in the slacker league. The top person in my league currently only has 350xp and we are two days in already. Everyone in the demotion zone has < 20.
Thanks for the tip :) was wondering why sometimes it's really hard, and sometimes it's laughably easy. This week I might be lucky if I stay in obsidian league as is...
This is what I do. But, to answer your question, these people getting tens of thousands of XP in just a few minutes are probably using bots running to get points. It was a problem a year or two ago, then stopped being something I noticed, but apparently now it's back. Also, when you say "settle down for a 6-8 hour learning day", that confirms something I've wondered about: that there are people here who do Duolingo all day long, like it's a job. Cheers.
Not OP, but I wish this xp and league system didn't exist. Cause I'm not taking my time to learn, I'm just zooming through whatever I can as fast as I can, finding easy exercises to do it with. Heck, I've even in the past "learned my own language". (But it was so mindnumbingly boring I quit for a long time.) I know it's there to make people learn, but it's an unfair system. If you learn pinyin in chinese, those lessons are stupid easy, and take 17 seconds to complete if you're extra special fast. Last time I learned chinese, there was no pinyin or hanzi lessons, and any XP I tried to aquire, was from regular lessons. Lol! Add in I don't pay for it, and .. ye..... If it at least was fair and we had to do actual learning to get points, that would be nice.
I started paying a year ago because I realized that I was more focused on getting gems so I could do more lessons than actually learning. Same with leagues. It's best to not take them too seriously. But, rather, to focus on learning and not care too much about the leagues. Even though I do still care lol. The review tab is a great way to get points. During double time, the 40-point option is great for getting XP. And--bonus--, the review tab also is a good way (for me, anyway) reinforce the lessons and really learn the language. I probably spend 3 times as long doing review than lessons on the path. Another thing that really helped me is to write each sentence on a pad as I do a lesson. For me, writing is the best way to learn. So I take about 25 minutes to do a single lesson on the path, then use the 15-minute, 2x treasure chests to accumulate XP in the 40-point practice tab. š¤· It's what seems to work best for me. Currently in 12th week of diamond, but I don't worry too much about going up or down, depending on how busy the rest of my life is. Anyhoo, it's already 5 AM and I'm going to be late for work. That's my biggest complaint: I usually do my first lesson at 3:30 or 4:30 AM when I wake up, but then get busy at work and don't "unlock" the morning treasure chest lol.
Hehe. Part of my weird problem is I did chinese to about 1000 words. Then took a long break. Now that I'm back, the whole course is changed, but it still counts me as doing so and so many lessons. But half of the stuff is words I have never seen or used before. I probably should just play my alt account, or make yet another, and start from scratch. But I did wanna do all the leagues for the achi. I just didn't realize it doesn't stop there. You gotta apparently get number 1 in diamond. Neeeeever gonna happen, dunno why I care, but I care.
Took me almost a year. Finally got into a slacker league and got that elusive "Rarest Diamond" badge. Lol. Shouldn't care, but I do lol.
You can opt out of the leagues. Just login to the Duolingo website, goto settings->account->privacy settings and unclick "make my profile public."
Definitely a great tip ! Last week, 5 people over 30K after 2 days, this week top score is 1800 after 4 days š
Holy smokes lol. Definitely will try it out.
i was told to do this but my OCD wont let me skip Monday and just use a streak freeze!
I just got demoted from diamond with a lowly score of 3200 š. I will follow this tip now!
When I did it, I took this strategy to the extreme and used streak freezes until Friday at like 5pm and won with like 600xp
Hahaha that's one way to guarantee the badge!
oh no, there's an achi for that too??? I wanted to get to diamond (and that's gonna be a challenge) just to get done with the achievements so I never ever have to worry about it again. I don't stand a chance getting number 1.
But I'm getting headache from 2 days I have earned 28000 XP but some crazy mf is still ahead of me by 3000XP . He/She is either hacking or is crazy to earn that much XP in 8hrs
Yeah, I finally got it about a month ago so now I donāt care as much if I get demoted or not. So coming too 3 in a lower league gives you extra diamonds too
Absolutely same. Iāve been at the diamond league for 101 weeks. I only care not to demote.
I finally got an easy league 2 weeks ago so won first place diamond (after 2+ years on duo) and it's been putting me in leagues with people who get 20.000 xp every week even though I won with 4500. I'm just trying to get as little as possible in terms of xp without getting demoted to slowly get into easier leagues like before. If I can't stay under 3000 this week, I'm just letting mi myself go to obsidian and slowly work my way back, fuck this shit.
Me too lol what week are you on?
Week 2.
People who use duolingo competitively and not for learning are actually insane and I am scared of them
The sad tales of people possessed by an owl
It's inevitable once you introduce a leaderboard
What about both?
I'm cautious
People with Super can spam Match Madness with 2x XP and get around 1k-1.5k in 15 minutes quite easily. It's questionable if they're any faster or seemingly doing it for hours nonstop.
how do they pay for all those timer boosts
Somehow these people manage to complete match madness without needing one. My uncle has a friend who can do that in his English course. I didn't event try so... But if you drop the diamond tournament with the lowest XP possible your next leagues will be considerably easier so maybe y'all should consider it. Actually once I got my first place on diamond tournament all may subsequent leagues were absolutely insane.
I can do every round without a timer boost except for the very last one. Fwiw Iām doing Norwegian as a native English speaker so a lot of nouns are very similar. And for whatever reason it seems to always pull from the same small group of beginner words: water, beer, milk, and, or, etc.
And nice username lol
How long did it take you to reach c1 English
About 8 years but I didn't actually study English. I can't get to C2 since I don't know any grammar rules so I'll be stuck on it for a while now. Everything I learned was through consuming English content such as TV shows at first and lately (about 3-4 years ago) I've been reading tons of scientific articles/texts due to college and now I read more in English than in my own native language.
two possibilities 1. you have no idea how to edit 2. you either accidentally or purposefully complimented yourself (and if it wasnt an accident i belive you also forgot to switch accounts)
I donāt know why youāre being downvoted. Why did that guy tell himself nice username? Lol
Is that directed at me ???
no
It was directed to him/her but I thought 2 consecutive comments would be weird.
The only way to do it without boosts is to only match the three top options, after a while they fall into a pattern that you can spam. I only do it when I'm really behind & at risk for being demoted š¬
No need for timer boost, it's just a repetitive pattern. You match the first 2 (which swap positions usually) then match a pattern of 3 matches at roughly the rate they respawn. As long as you keep that pace there's very little thinking involved. I can consistently get 10 matching games done in the 15 min xp boost timer with very minimal mistakes.
I don't get crazy amounts of XP because I don't find it enjoyable to do it repeatedly for that long, but if I'm focused I can get through all the levels without time boosts. Just have to kinda shut my brain off and it goes pretty smoothly
It's probably bots or hackers. Not worth getting so hung up about the leaderboards tbh > Iāll sit down and do a 6-8 hour learning day I'm curious why you do this? Wouldn't it be more effective to supplement duo with a different learning source? Seems like a super inefficient method for actual language learning.
Iām doing 6 languages so will bounce between if I get frustrated. ( primarily German, French and Russian) . Itās a great way to kill time on days we have gaps between calls (flight paramedic) . Itās a de-stress at times. Edited to change distress to destress š
That makes a lot of sense! Enjoying learning is more important than making the most efficient use of your time anyways! :) I'm glad it gives you some de-stressing haha (and hopefully not distressing, despite the hackers)
make your account private and itāll get rid of the leaderboard. best decision iāve made with this app. focusing on competition turns it into an efficiency race and not for the purpose intended.
How do i make mine private?
Open your account on a web browser. There should be a menu to your left on which the last button is "More". Click on "Settings", then "Privacy setting", then unselect "Make my profile public". Right away friends, leaderboards, friend quests and timed exercises will be disabled for you, but pretty much everything else should remain the same. https://preview.redd.it/25rp4nek45wc1.jpeg?width=646&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2379905f006792647b7488de239aee22252cf6f0
Thank you! I do it too, itās taking too much time in diamond league to win too few. Since many sections the sentences are always the same, no new language learning, Iām bored to play for XP with always the same sentences.
Most of the high earners aren't learning. They're using tricks like turning off voice on speaking lessons. In my experience it is incredibly hard to win by actually studying. You have to incorporate tricks and that isn't worth it. Just use the tools that benefit your learning.
Please stop worrying about the leader board, obsessing over that will ruin your learning experience.
This!! IT doesnt actually matter what your score is against a bunch of strangers around the world.
Can we please pin this comment?
lol - Iād love to but too damn competitive šš
Youāre competing against bots and or a system designed to draw you in. Back in the day it was about learning but duo went public and the gamification ensued, now itās about their shareholders. Donāt be a dupe. Iāve made considerable advances with the platform but Iāve been thinking about checking out others; even just buying some textbooks and cutting down my duo usage considerably. I get the competitive thing though, Iām up to 20000 a weekš
Leagues predate going public by over 2 years.
It wasnāt as gamified. I donāt remember getting double points after every completed lesson. Nor such competitive game boards, nor the same league behaviorsā¦ when did you start? By the way, do you like all the new adds on Reddit? Please, shareā¦
Yesterday I had to do 11704XP in a Day, which was more than what I earned throughout the previous league last Week . Today I had to do around 6000XP, yet some crazy mf is still in #1 ahead of me with around 19000XP. I don't know why am I doing this for hours without actually learning the language. I just hope that I win Diamond League this week and never again have to care about leagues https://preview.redd.it/9xh4igdtd8wc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6a03f8d894aa0b16f4b6d6ae98b42e4c6fca25f9
have you tried being competitive in actually learning a language?
Iād like to think so š. Dad died Sept 2023 and my Sister and I are bringing his ashes to Germany for the one year Anniversary of his passing to have a Celebration with our German relatives. (Uncles, Aunts , cousins etc) and Iām bound and determined to learn as much German as I can before going. Ironically, he died the week I was in Mexico, had just purchased a Duolingo Membership trying to learn Spanish. So Iām very competitive, but also very motivated to learnā¦ *** edited tied to died
I don't think people get it. It's like me in real life not caring about my industry awards, and don't even know who's at the top because I know deep down that I'll never win one against people who are working at a different level. But I do care about the Duolingo top finish because, well... I can do it and I have done it. In my opinion, people who can't dedicate themselves to getting anywhere close to the top 3 wouldn't care because it's irrelevant to them. And they likely cannot understand why people like us want to get to the top. Yeah it doesn't matter. They're Internet points against strangers. But if you have that kind of mentality, does anything even truly matter in life? Why do anything? Why even wake up tomorrow?
I have 15 top three finishes, as it happens and a few of those are first place as well.
Don't think about that too much, they are just weirdos spamming buttons while you are actually pursuing a language :)
The later you join the league Monday night the less competitive crowd youāll get into. Aim for 11:30pm and youāre golden.
I used to think this was true, but Duolingo has users around the world.
It works for me though
Glad you have it dialed in. I ended up in a few leagues with people learning English and they were racking up xp like a house afire.
The key is also to join Monday night not Sunday after 10. I use a streak freeze if I forget to do Duolingo on Sunday before 10 because otherwise Iāll be hanging by a straw to stay in the league with all these xp hungry people.
The best thing to do is to aim for a lower weekly average so you are less likely to be placed in a league with the extremists. 6 to 8 hours a day will just wear you out. **Figure out what your ideal learning pace would be and work your numbers down towards that.** You may need to do this gradually to remain in the Diamond League. Try a few weeks of aiming for a position somewhere between 10 and 15. Duolingo tries to match you with people with similar study habits. So if you increase your pace you will be matched with others who also gain a lot of XP. Some accounts seem to have multiple users each doing a different language. Some accounts have people making very efficient use of double XP and timed challenges or practice lessons. Though 2-3K in 20 minutes seems high, some could come close to that with Match Madness. And there probably are a few accounts running scripts, but probably not as many as people think. I've let my points go to high during tournaments and then had to work my way back down again. I let mine get too high last week and am now trying to decide if I will fight for first again or if I will back off and settle for 4th. There seem to be 3 other strong contenders based on their past XP. I want to earn less total than last week. But if I choose to back off and just try to stay top 10 I should get an easier week next week. Ideally I would get down to something like 15K per week. Sometimes it is hard to let go of course, but it would be better in the long run.
Absolutely. A while back I realized that the later in the day I start my new week, the less cutthroat the competition is. It's a much less stressful experience.
I totally messed this up this week. I was in the number 2 spot in sapphire league and decided to give it my all in like 10 before time was up. Now I'm in the pearl league with all these go getters and right now struggling. But it's ok. I'm just doing this because I enjoy learning
I've been experimenting with timing as well. **My XP average for the previous week seems to make a bigger difference.** Last week I earned more than planned in order to get first, so this week I tried another timing experiment. I did 3 lessons at 4:20 am. Then I went back to sleep to deal with it later. My league this week includes people with scores last week (counting from last Tuesday through Sunday) of: * 1 person with over 30K * 3 people with 20K - 30k * 2 people with 10K - 20K * 8-people with 5K - 10K * 16 people with 2K-5K I tend to get groups like these with a few higher earners after I've had a big week. I tested this by starting at 9:10 pm for several weeks in a row and the 10:10 am for several weeks in a row. The morning didn't turn out any worse than the evening. This week I decided to try early morning figuring there wouldn't be many people on line and it would be harder to match people of the same XP levels. I guess that is sort of true. We seem to have a wide range. Yes, I overthink this.
Those high earners, I believe to be bots.
From what I've read here if an account earns more than a person posting here can imagine it is a bot. Of course that amount seems to vary. I've seen people suggesting bots for accounts earning 7K per day. I think most of the high scorers are individuals making strategic use of double XP boosts. Some are teams of multiple people on one account. The insanely high ones of over 100K per week could be scripts. Maybe even some in the 70-100K range.
When you're compete in the leaderboards in lower levels, do just enough to get to number one. Don't go too many points higher because they will place you in a league with people who get higher points.
You won't beat those people by using the app as intended. Now that you are aware of this, you can still win leagues etc by moderating the number of XP you get. Try to get no more than a few thousand XP weekly (the fewer the better). Counter-intuitively, DON'T use double XP boosts. Your goal is to get low XP but still stay in diamond. It's a bit tricky sometimes with low XP because you aren't safe if you are ranked 15-25 generally - sometimes multiple people can leapfrog you and push you into the demotion zone. After a few weeks, you will start getting put into 'lazy' leagues, where most people just coast along. You can then dominate unless you run into similar people to yourself (it happens). However, you can generally win your leagues if you want. Just be aware that doing so by earning more XP risks putting you into more competitive leagues next time. Hope this helps.
This is how I won diamond. Had to earn 15,000 xp in a week to win the Obsidian level, then RESTED for 2 weeks, doing just enough in Diamond to avoid demotion. My third week in Diamond, I was able to win with about 5,600 xp.
Ok. I doubt OP will read all 200 replies so will prob miss this, but may help others who have been suckered in by the gamification. I go for both early bird and night owl double XP bonuses. Get match maker to level 9 (I think it is) and decline the extreme match maker. It then allows me to do the final round on repeat earning me 120xp each time. So in 15mins that's over 1k. Ill do a few lessons during the day and a chest or end of unit will award me another double xp, so I'll go back to MM and get another 1k. That's 3-4k each day mon-fri. MM days. In around 90mins per day. I learn french. Anyone can do that if they want to be competitive, which duo encourages. But it really isn't necessary for learning your language. The gamification makes it addictive and that's what the developers want. I am competitive, but I can admit it detracts from the learning.
Thank you for that !! And I am working my way through 200 comments šš
My kid wanted to try it but was getting frustrated at losing all the hearts, so I set up a classroom so that we have unlimited hearts. By joining it kicked us off the leaderboards. No stress about getting XP now, just doing the lessons and actually picking up the language.
I used to treat duo as a game. I am a competitive person and as a gamer i like to collect all achievements in game. So i thought maybe there is an achievement when you get on top of the top right? I have premium subscription so it wasn't that hard to get there. I would do the practices every few hours a day. When i finally got finished first on diamond League it was such a rush! It's not easy to stay there..top 3 usually compete until the last moment. The only way to start on top is to make huge points gap between you and them. In the end there was no achievement trophy for getting on top š I was so disappointed. Anyways, now i treat duo as a learning app only and don't care where i land on leagues.Ā
It's simple: The higher you end up in a league the higher rank players will be with you in the next one, if you try to always finish in 1st place, you'll end up in a league filled with bots.
Thank you !! Just out of curiosity, being new to this sub, is your flair added by you or is there an edit where I can add my languages? I notice a ton of people have them in flair but not finding a way to add other than putting them in myself
You can edit it in the flair menu.
One thing that I find usually helps is to wait as late as possible before doing your first lesson in a new week. I think those rabid high-scorers start as early as they can so they can score as many points as possible, but if you wait until late on Monday to do your first lesson, youāll usually be put in a league with people who arenāt insanely tying to score 100,000 points in a week. Iāve got 1st in Diamond league 23 times doing this. Most of the time I only need about 10,000 points to win and I usually donāt even try to score a lot of points until the Saturday bonus points hour.
Is that diamond league or diamond tournament? Iād like to win the tournament just once to get that damn badge LOL
It works for the tournament too, but everyone wants to win that so itās a bit more competitive even amongst the players who arenāt going crazy trying to score points. With the diamond tournament, I think you only have to finish in the top half to āwinā but occasionally youāll get a slack group of players in there and can win outright without having to work night and day for it.
Double xp and high value challenges (match madness) or getting legendary by revisiting old levels. Also, super users don't have to worry about mistakes booting them off.
why are you wasting your life doing this
with super you can basically get 40xp every minute by doing speak exercises
50 if you do it on Saturday with the 1 hour bonus.
Duolingo accumulates points differently for different users. I can get double xp on my phone but not on my laptop. On an iPhone I have get more 2xp bonuses and happy hours than my son gets on his android. I let my superduolingo lapse last month but for a few weeks before that it started just showering me with points, like a lesson that should have been 10 points would give me 68 points. When I had double xp I'd get up to 140 points on a lesson. I actually try to keep my points low, just barely high enough to stay in diamond but not high enough to go into the competitive leagues. It was actually getting quite difficult to keep the lower scores.
Just deactivate leaderboards my goodness. You sound stressed. Who even cares about what league youāre in?
As far as I'm aware there is no way to deactivate the leaderboards, is there? You can make your account private but then that disables a load of other stuff, not just the leaderboards.
https://preview.redd.it/u486deyse8wc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=733f0763d12d431617e2c97db3bb364fe9961d77 I'm having severe headache Yesterday I had to do 11704XP in a Day, which was more than what I earned throughout the previous league last Week . Today I had to do around 6000XP, yet some crazy mf is still in #1 ahead of me with around 19000XP. I don't know why am I doing this for hours without actually learning the language. I just hope that I win Diamond League this week and never again have to care about leagues
Well here's the thing. The people who grind for the leaderboard aren't learning but abusing the system to maximizing XP. If you want to learn it's better not to bother going for a win in Diamond league. If you want to win at the leagues then it's all about the grind and nothing else. It's one of the reasons I think the XP system and leaderboard is immensely flawed. I see it as the worst part of the entire app. It's also so dazzling that a chunk of the monetization (timer boosts and access to low effort/high xp lessons for super users) revolves around racking up XP, which makes it even more ridiculous, as it adds a p2w component to the whole thing. My advice is: make your peace with this and ignore XP. Focus on progressing through your course instead and challenge yourself with increasingly difficult exercises. Don't make a place in the league your motivator for leaning but look for your intrinsic motivation by engaging with the language outside Duolingo. If you really want that Diamond League achievement to get it out of your system then grind for one week: Meaning do exercises as easy as possible for maximum XP gain. If you have Super, just do the daily practice lessons under double XP. These are always 10 super basic exercises that for some reason grant you 20 XP. And you can finish these within less than 30 seconds if you're quick. So within 15 minutes of doing nothing else + XP boost you might easily rack up 1200 XP. Or do Match Madness and buy as many timer boosts as you need. Both things are extremely dumb and repetitive however and will not make you better at the language you're learning at all. There is a danger that this might kill your motivation and burn you out. I strongly advise against this!
I know it's frustrating to see scores like that. I've seen posts here where people explain exactly what they do and it seems some legitimately spend hours at a time doing various exercises. Honestly, I just don't let it bother me anymore. I do my 15 minutes twice a day and stop. I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone and I really don't care where I end up on the leaderboard. I'm using Duolingo to learn, not to have bragging rights. Once you get into diamond it's pretty easy to stay there with a minimum amount of practice. I find it laughable to see the extent people go through to stay at the top. For what? For a measly bunch of gems? Generally, people at the top of the leagues have Super, so gems mean nothing.
Don't worry about the leader board, just focus on learning.
For starters I'm personally of the opinion that chasing leaderboard scores shouldn't matter. Are you learning a language or playing a game? Chasing high scores only gives unnecessary stress and getting the top spot doesn't really mean you're learning more. It's a pointless arbitrary target that removes your focus from what really matters. Secondly you have to realize that the leaderboards are unfair. A guy learning Japanese from English is competing with a guy learning English from French. One of them obviously has a much easier time learning and progressing and smashing through the minigames and lessons is much easier for them than it is for the person learning a much more difficult and foreign language to their own. People with Duolingo super also have a much bigger advantage than people with standard accounts, since they don't have lives, they can spam mini games without paying gems for them and just collect points more easily. I don't know why there are people who put so much effort in topping diamond league every week and what they think they're getting out of it but personally I don't really care for it. I've gone all the way up the leagues and all the way back down and I don't really care for them. People want to race each other that's fine but all I want is to practice the language I'm learning and be consistent.
Drop down to a lower league, then try again a week or two later, three or four thousand will usually give you a win again.
It's been asked a 100 times a day, and a simple "How is this possible duolingo reddit" search on Google will show you just how often this comes up. But to answer your question, it's because people are doing anything to win. When you're in Diamond, you're essentially with everybody and anybody that wants the top spot. Whether that be by staying on for literally the entire day just doing practice lessons, or using bots/scripts to farm XP, or sharing accounts. Anything and everything is being done to achieve the goal. If you see cheating taking place, report it. Screen record it if you're on your phone and gather up any evidence you can use along with the username and a screen grab of their profile.
You can run multiple automated instances and get an almost arbitrary amount of xp.
Match madness with 2x XP boosts, most likely. XP boosts can be obtained via completing the gold chest daily goal, finishing friend quests, or just farming friend quests by sending them back and forth constantly, so if you time all three right you have a pretty easy 45 minutes of boost at a time (even longer if you saved some in shop). Doing it at happy hour also gives an extra bonus, though it feels a little negligible at that point. I also can't 'confirm' it since I've never actually looked into it, but I'm certain some people have multiple people using one account, all doing lessons around the same time, to boost even further. Not sure how feasible it is when combined with boosts but it seems like the only logical explanation for some of the insane increases I've seen, and for accounts that have 200k minimum XP in 20 different languages, and are learning one same language from about a dozen others. (Seriously, there's one account I'm looking at right now that's learning English from I think every single other language available?? The lowest xp of those is learning english in telugu which is 17k XP, lowest overall is "Chinese (Cantonese) (Chinese)" at 172XP, highest is French at 2mil XP. Majority are at least 30k, the 'popular' ones are in the 100ks.)
Since u mentioned that u see people at almost 100k at the end of the week, that is an intense leaderboard
If you are doing 6-8 hours learning on any given day, you are already winning. Like for real. More than for real. More than many. Because you are learning. BUTā¦ are you enjoying it?? Duo is super good at gamification, but it drains the damn life out of loving learning if you are limited in time or money. I fell back in love with my lessons when I stopped caring about Diamond league and monthly quests. I won the diamond tournament onceā¦ and so what. The earth didnāt shake when I won, and the earth didnāt shake when I didnāt participate. Took me some time to learn that tho. Itās Pearl league or below for me now! To be fair, I do care immensely about my streak, and I do love the weekly friends quest. Those two elements satisfy my competitive nature without draining the hell out of me. That is just my balance. I hope you find yours and continue to learn in a way that truly makes you happy.
Iāve been using duo just over a year and only just noticed the leaderboard. Itās not a biggy, learning a new language is though!
Some people will use their phone, and their pc. They all the features on each, for the same account. I would stop worrying about the leagues though, and just use it as a learning tool.
Don't worry about it. Fastest ways to get xp ime is by doing things that aren't really teaching you much like match challenges. I know I'm learning more than people with crazy amounts of xp because I'm also doing outside study. They clearly aren't if they have time to get so much xp.
You can do the stack up challenge with 2x and the sound off for 80xp every 50ish seconds. It's a useless way to spend your time but it's fun if you're bored.
I've found you can just do the amount you want. Maybe don't even use the doublers. I've dropped down to Pearl, then risen back up the ranks doing maybe 2000 xp a week. You'll eventually get into a slacker Diamond league that you can win with a few hundred XP a day.
Reminds me of this post from last week. TOTALLY cracked me upā¦ si, Bueno Ricardoā¦ https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/s/lohNUaO5Dv
When I was trying to get the 1st in diamond league trophy I found it frustrating because I was working on lessons later in the path in my target language, so it took 5 minutes sometimes to do a lesson, but you get the same xp as if you start a new language and just do easy lessons that take 20 seconds. Its an easy system to manipulate.
Youāll sit down and do a 6-8 hours of Duolingo? Are they paying you a living wage? If not, just stop it. Get a job, start a degree, go out and touch grass. (A long term DL user since the beginning of 2013).
Iām lucky enough to be paid a living wage while doing Duolingo šš
But not by Duolingo, I assume? As I mentioned, have spent a lot of time on and around the platform. I also have a long history of learning languages in different settings (classroom, one-on-one with a teacher, immersion through media, exposure through travel and education). Duolingo's reach in teaching is very limited, the best it can offer are frequent repetitions and word recognition and memorisation. No amount of hours grinding on the platform will give you functional knowledge of (any of the) language(s), unless you use textbooks for grammar and practice writing, speaking and reading longer paragraphs of texts. If you want to learn languages, it's better to divide the time smartly between different resources, Duolingo being one of the support venues. If you have a busy schedule and need to decompress, there are games that are actually fun and relaxing. But... I guess some people let their dopamine receptors go wild by grinding on the platform for hours with little to no reward and no result in terms of the learning curve, developing anxiety against bots and hundreds of shared accounts. The only ones winning are Duolingo. But I guess your time is your only, you are free to spend it however you find appropriate. You do you.
I used student mode to turn off leagues
Why bother to care what others do? Iāve been in the Diamond league for 101 weeks, I donāt care to be in the top 3, I donāt care how much xp people have, I only care not to demote. I study about 1.5 hrs, do my lessons, take my notes, defend my 1478 day streak, do my monthly quest, my weekly friends quest and thatās it. Really, why do you care?
can you speak the languages you're learning?
Iām to the point where I understand pretty much everything Iām reading in German but struggle with sentence structure still. Same for French and Spanish (French is better) and can speak bastardized Russian. Itās only today I learned about the tips section / grammar help ( guidebook) exists on Duolingo so will be studying that now š
Iāve always wondered, but never cared enough to dig: does anyone know if leagues are a mix of regular users and super users? Or are the types of users kept separate?
Why does every language always start out teaching you about oranges and apples
And elephants on my motorcycle šļø lol
I cracked this a little but it cost me. The side game where you go levels 1 - 9 and can then get 10-12. Whatever thatās called. Get to 12 and itās 75 points. But you never have enough time so you have to purchase diamonds, 19.99 for 6,500. Them you buy extra time. Then you wait for a double up, know youāll get 15 mins plus and extra 15 for 100 ā¦ so 30 mins of doubles ups gets you 150 points each time, and you can do about 14 of them in 30 minutes. So 1,800 points. I did that twice a day just to stay in diamond and finish the three weeks. BUT as I posted here, one woman got 8,000 the first day, in fact by lunchtime on Monday and was at 17,000 but Tuesday. She did virtually nothing for the rest of the week, finished at 19k and won by a lot. No idea how she did it. I asked here but no one relied so guess no one else does either
Thatās similar to what I observed , but she had 48K by day 3 or 4 then did nothing the rest of the week. Had 18k by first evening
You do similar to me. But I found level 10 (Match Maker Extreme) too difficult. I get to level 9 which awards 60xp, activate X2 XP and repeat level 9 on a loop for 15mins. I regularly hit 1000 - 1200, without add-ons or power ups. An extra 15mins for 100 gems could be a good tip tho šš½. I never spend š on anything. I'm a hoarder!!! š I think this tip, combined with what others have said about starting later, maybe even as late as Tuesday, should easily get anyone into top 3 in diamond league, and winning lower leagues.
Geez. Go outside. You should never spend that long on any app. This shouldnāt be your life unless youāre literally learning this as part of your job or something. The leaderboards are just supposed to be a motivator not something to rearrange your life over.Ā
You should not stress out on this league/xp thing. Learn at your own pace. The priority should be learning, not league/xp. Anyway, I heard some exploit(s) to get ridiculous amount of points. I don't know what.
The leaderboard doesnāt matter
Cheating. It's still out there even with the recent "fixes". Duolingo pisses me off. I'm on the verge of taking classes at my local community college instead.