I generally check the new posts list, my alerts, and Wraggs thread. Rarely I’ll scroll a sub forum.
That's pretty much what I do, (except for scrolling a sub forum - almost never).
Wragg's "New threads" is very valuable ... of course any newly opened thread will at first appear at the top of What's new right after it was created. But within a few hours, definitely after a day or so it gets pushed off of the first page of results, as existing frequently updated threads get new posts.
So a new thread is easy to miss especially if it's not one of those things that immediately launches lively banter and a constant stream of replies.
I've observed the same as others, that alerts sometimes stop working for me. That is also an unwanted behavior frequently reported on the Xenforo support forums. The explanation may be quite simple, as one of the XenForo guys says:
If you have already received an alert for a thread you are watching but haven't visited the thread then I don't think you will receive any more alerts.
...
That means for instance if you get an alert, but you don't act on it by visiting the thread (maybe you're not in the mood for that type of content right now, you say "I'll read the new chapter later" or there are just too many alerts) -- then you will not get any more alerts from that thread, regardless how many people post there.
But once you blunder back into the the thread for instance by clicking on it when it appears in What's new, your alerts are reset, and after that you will get one for the next update.
That has its own logic but will feel confusing.
It explains why alerts seem to only
sometimes fail, and it will give users an impression that "in the beginning, as a new user I wasn't in that many threads, back then alerts always seemed to work ... but now I'm engaged in many conversations and alerts are hit and miss". (unless one is so devoted as to meticulously click through dozens of alerts, or to constantly be online and follow each new one as it appears...)