I like skritter, but I use it for studying for quizzes and reviewing and skritter tends to stay on words longer than I would like (even when the "add word frequency" is set to fast. A lot of times it seems like it would be better for it to hurry up and move to a new word rather than trying to drill everything to perfection--I've put stuff on the list (a lot of the time) because I need to know the words on the list soon, so it would be better (it seems to be) to move quickly so I can at least some practice on everything (without having to waste time creating a bunch of small lists to study separately) rather than get an "ideal" level of practice on less than my whole assigned vocabulary.

(And my target retention rate is also set as low as possible in an attempt to speed things up, but still seems way slower than ideal for a lot of review and quiz prep purposes.)

You can always mark an item as "too easy" to kick it into the future. I wouldn't recommend doing that all the time, though, as it'll eventually end up scheduling things for the year 2100.

I just want it to rotate through things faster so I am alerted if I really don't know something at all.

Put those in a list and study only that list?

I think your main issue is that you're using Skritter for purposes other than it was really intended or designed. I work at a school that has a quiz every morning on new workds (20-200 depending on how far in the course they are) and I tell them all to use Skritter to maintain the words after they use a program like Pleco flashcards, flashcards deluxe, or anki to cram for the next day's quiz or even to study a focused list for a specific review quiz.

Skritter is going to help you with the long term retention of those words as long as you put in enough time each day, but don't try to use it to study for a specific quiz. The only function I know of that has functionality like that is the "scratchpad" feature, but it's only for the website.