Read all the Mandarin Companion books, it's fair to say comprehensible input was an absolute game-changer for my progress. The other people in my class don't understand what happened, but I'm not keeping it secret, it really did work that well. Some of the grammar patterns are even beginning to yield, in the sense that I am becoming able to use them myself.

Weirdly, from doing so many flashcards, I've found myself able to read materials phonetically (including tones) without being able to fully parse the meaning unless I re-read it more slowly. I would never have expected to experience that with Chinese.

Looking for more materials now, and will jump into the HSK4 syllabus with the intention of taking this as my first actual exam. I know it's not important but would be nice to formalise my studies a little bit.

Kung Fu Hustle.

Helps with Cantonese slang, which is a bottomless pit.

Discovering graded reader books. I've been so terrified of reading long texts that I started with Finding Hua Ma, in the Mandarin Companion series. It's clearly below my level of vocabulary (it's graded for 150 and I'm in the HSK 3/4) yet I do find it a bit exhausting anyway. The boost to confidence is great though, and a wonderful change from the mind-numbing repetitions of the final lesson in Duolingo...

I'm definitely getting more graded readers! It's exactly what I needed.

西游记 （Journey to the West) the HSK 3 and HSK 4 version by Jeff Pepper and Xiao Hui Wang

It's a very entertaining way to practice that vocabulary while discovering this classic of Chinese literature.

Most of my Chinese time has been taken up recently playing a game called Murders on the Yangtze Rivers (山河旅探). It is basically an ace attorney detective style game but with the setting being in historic China. I've really enjoyed it and it has voice acting which is always a plus.

I'd say to play fully in Chinese it's something HSK5+ would enjoy, but someone could also play in English with the audio in Mandarin and get some benefit from it.

English trailer