To those that remember me, I started RTK once, got to Frame 1500 with the site alone, and stopped. Even then I could only recall half of what I remembered. I used this site but never really made my own stories and kinda stopped reviewing after awhile, stupid, we all know.

Anyway, I got the book 3 weeks ago and did 30 a day until I got to lesson 11 where it tells you to evaluate yourself studying the kanji. I pretty much stopped adding 30 a day and went back to review the stories and method like the book said, because to be honest, some kanji were not sticking. So it helped with some kanji I was mixing up, but there are still some kanji I cannot grasp it seems. The main point of that section in the book is to identify problems with the method and correct them yourself, but it seems like I'm having problems mixing up some Kanji and forgetting others. Not sure what the problem is exactly, but my stroke order skill is up.<_<

Back to the topic's question. Should I use the site to review or use the RTK 1 and 3 Deck that Nuke suggests in his thread? I understand that I can make my own stories with this site, and if I do, I'm just going to delete all my current stories and start fresh by making my own, but the RTK 1/3 deck has readings and stuff. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

I'm doing Core 2000 and am on Core 4 right now, so I'm thinking that the RTK Anki deck would be useless if I'm already learning the words?

What you review with is just preference. I really like Anki, but any solid SRS system will do.

It's definitely useful to keep reviewing RTK when you've started learning the language. In fact, I've often seen recommendations not to stop reviewing until you've reached an advanced level, and by then the reviews will be minimal anyway. If you're already into vocab I do think it's very useful to have Japanese keywords in your deck; it helps reinforce vocab and can substitute for the English keyword when you don't remember the story but do remember the kanji being used in (common) words. Japanese Level Up hosts a pre-made RTK Anki deck with Japanese keywords prepared and some other modifications you may or may not like (such as hints to prevent similar keyword confusion and the deletion of relatively rare kanji).

There's an Anki deck of RtK (the most popular one, I'm pretty sure), in which the keywords are actually links to the corresponding Kanji on this site. That's what I used (that's how I found this site).

I picked my stories on this site, never even bothered copy/paste -ing them into Anki. Whenever I needed the story, I just clicked the link and it popped right up in Opera. Perfect system, gave me the best of both worlds.

I discovered Anki while at around the 1500/1600 kanji mark on this site. I by far preferred anki because of all the extra options and flexibility, plus the srs timings on anki work better for me than those on here. The only downside is that Anki was part of the reason I stopped reviewing on here in 2009 and didn't start again until late last year. If you want to switch be prepared to start again, and don't let it take 3 years like I did haha.

I used this site for RTK 1 and Anki for other study. They are very similar. I think either is a fine choice, but I don't use most of the features Anki has. No need, so far, anyway.

I used both this site and Anki, and continue to do so. When I switched decks in Anki, it was messed up for a while, and this site smoothed things considerably. I would much rather do too many reviews than too few

Something I would recommend is to prevent Anki from adding cards automatically. Separating learning from reviewing made things much more efficient for me.

I preferred the way Anki presents new cards (once added) in sequential order. This added a bit of extra context to each one, making the crucial first time review a little easier.

And I don't get this 'writing down stories' thing. AFAIK the point is to use free association to cue your (visual) memory sufficiently to reconstruct the kanji. Recording extra info to memorize seems to defeat the purpose. If you can't recall the 'story' even after seeing the kanji, what use is it?

Like you, I'm back to doing Core2k now (after a 5-week RTK hiatus), and the difference is astounding. The kanji are like old friends with amusing personalities, and the RTK-style memory strategies continue to be useful even in a wider context. RTK = definitely time well spent, though I do have a lot of free time