Experience

In order to level a character up it is necessary to get more experience. Currently there is only one source for experience in this game, which is killing monsters. Every monster gives experience depending on the type of the monster, its rarity, the area level and certain stats affecting the monster or the area it is in. The amount for the next level increases very fast.

Experience table

The amount is the same for every character in every league. The number shows how much total experience is necessary to reach the level.

Death

In default leagues, loss of experience is incurred upon death. The penalty is a percentage of the total required for the next level and is applied as follows:

• 0% loss in Act 1 to Act 5 and normal Labyrinth
• 5% loss in Act 6 to Act 10 and cruel/merciless Labyrinth
• 10% loss in any area reached from the map device and the Eternal Labyrinth

Losing experience in this way will not cause you to lose a level.

In player-versus-player battles, the experience penalty does not apply. Likewise, a hardcore character that dies in PvP will not be lost.

Experience penalties

The player suffers a penalty to experience gained if the player is too far above or below the monster's level. There is a safe level range where no penalty is applied, which is equal to three plus one for every sixteen complete player levels:

For example, a level 24 character has a safe zone of 4 levels. Any additional level difference in excess of this safe range is the effective level difference. So from monster level 20 to 28, there is an effective difference of 0; at monster levels 19 and 29, the effective difference is 1.

A monster at a certain level will give a certain amount of experience. If the player is outside the safe zone the following multiplier will be applied to the raw experience earned from the monster, with a minimum of 1% of the raw experience:

For player levels below 95:

For player levels equal to or higher than 95:

3.1 XP Penalty is a new penalty for level 95 and above listed in the following table:

Continuing our example, a level 24 character receives 95% experience for level 19 monsters, 52.5% experience for level 17 monsters, and 20% experience for level 15 monsters.

The plot below displays how the experience penalty varies with different zone and player levels. Notice that the safe zone with no experience penalty gets larger with higher player levels and that near max level it is impossible to play with no experience penalty.

By following the safe zone recommendations for each player level a high experience gained per map ratio is guaranteed. However that does not necessarily mean it is the most efficient use of a players time. For example the difficulty in the safe zone might be too high leading to the map being cleared slowly and a low experience gained per hour even if the experience gained per map is high. Therefore to level efficiently a high experience gained per hour is necessary, not staying inside the safe zone of the experience penalty.

Areas with monster level above 70 are considered to have a lower monster level for the purpose of experience penalty calculations. This has no effect on the stats of the monsters in the area or the loot that those monsters drop.

An analytically deduced formula for the preceding table is:

Combining together the experience penalty for high level characters and the adjustment of monster level, here are some example sets of experience penalties, one for tier 8 (Effective monster level 74.10), one for tier 10 (Effective monster level 75.32), and one for tier 15 (Effective monster level 77.32).

So a level 99 player will be earning 1.9% experience for clearing tier 8 content, 2.5% experience for clearing tier 10, and 4% experience for clearing tier 15. In practical terms, this means that if the player can clear a tier 8 more than twice as fast as a tier 15, they will be much better off clearing tier 8 content when looking at experience efficiency per hour (because 4.0 is a bit more than two times 1.9). And if they can clear tier 10 content at most 31.5% slower than tier 8 content, then they are better off clearing tier 10 content (because 2.5% is 31.5% more than 1.9%). Bear in mind that this changes with player level and with the density of monsters in a map as well.

An additional consequence can be seen by the difference in XP multiplier across different levels. For example, tier 10 content at level 94 gives 9.6% experience, but at level 99 only gives 2.5% experience. This means that if a level 94 and 99 were to theoretically do the same tier 10 content (separately from each other), it would take the level 99 approximately 3.84 times longer doing the same content to gain the same absolute amount of experience. In other words, if a level 94 were to gain X million experience in tier 10 maps in one hour, then it would take the level 99 about 3 hours and 50 minutes to gain that same X million experience if they were going at the same pace.

As an example using only tier 10 content as a guideline, the penalties for level 90 and above, expressed with the amount of time relative to leveling up from level 90 to 91 (using level 90->91 as a baseline), we can come up with a table showing what share of total time from level 90 to 100 a given level will take, as well as the cumulative progress towards level 100. Looking at the below chart, level 95->96 will take about 8.41% of the total time, and once you are complete with that level (in other words, base level 96), you will be 23.58% complete with progress towards level 100. Additionally, it will take about 6.576 times longer going from level 95 to 96 than it took to go from 90 to 91, as there is 1.46 times as much absolute XP to gain for that level, and the multiplier is 4.5 times lower at level 95 than at level 90, so 4.5 times less experience gained per unit time * 1.46 times as much experience to gain = 6.57 times longer to go from 95->96 than to go from 90->91.

Note that changing the tier between 4 and 15 for the above chart does not change the percentage values very much, in each case, no matter which monster level the zone is, base level 98 will still be roughly 50% of the way from 90->100, and base level 99 will still be roughly 70% of the way. It works out this way because the XP multiplier only starts to bottom out at 1% when you're level 99 and running a tier 3 (effective monster level 70) zone; in higher level zones, the XP penalty formula decreases approximately linearly, and keeps roughly the same proportion between each level. This is where the efficiency aspect comes into play again. At level 99, if you can clear a tier 10 zone at most 2.5 times as slowly as a tier 3, you're better off running a tier 10 instead of a tier 3 (multiplier for level 99, tier 3 = 0.01, multiplier for level 99, tier 10 = 0.025). Similarly with Level 90 players, but it's more dramatic, as Level 90 tier 3 multiplier = 0.064, and Level 90 tier 10 multiplier = 0.306 [4.78 times as much]. So you'd need to clear a tier 3 at least 5 times as fast as a tier 10 on a level 90 character in order to be efficient.

Comparing experience gains at high levels

We can use the efficiency calculations from above to show how much experience a player of a given level must get per unit time in order to be achieving the same experience per unit time of another player level, taking into account experience penalties. If two characters are running tier 11 content, we can compare how much one is getting versus how much the other should be getting in order to keep pace with the other.

• For example, using the chart below: a level 91 character must get 7.00 times as much experience per unit time as a level 98 player to be keeping the same pace.
• A level 80 character must be getting 3.79 times as much experience per unit time as a level 91 character to be keeping the same pace.

Figuring out how long it will take to get from one level to a different level

We can say that if we're going a specific speed at a given level in a given tier of content, then we can compute how fast you'll move to a different level.

To use this table, find your level in the left-hand column, and then the level you would like to reach on the top row. Where they intersect gives you a "Raw XP" value (in Millions), which you can divide by your XP/hour, to see how long it'll take to get from one level to the next. You can also subtract out the XP you've gained in your current level (in Millions) from the value, and divide, in order to get a better estimate.

A few quick examples:

• Level 86 to 93, when we are going 45 million XP/hour at 86 takes 2600.81/45 = 57.80 hours.
• Level 90 to 100, when we are going 100 million XP/hour at 90 takes 12935.73/100 = 129.36 hours.
• Level 92 to 95, when we are going 30 million XP/hour at 92 takes 842.14/30 = 28.07 hours.
• If you're 83 Million XP into Level 97 and want to go to level 100, and you are gaining 25 Million XP/hour at level 97: (1259.35 - 83)/25 = 47.05 hours.

Party play

Party play experience has witnessed a revision since its first incarnation in the game. In the original system, a monster with a solo experience of 1000 would instead have PartySize * 1000 experience, which would then get split among the party members proportional to (PlayerLevel+10)^2.71. However, this system promoted lower level players boosting higher level players. To remedy this, in Patch 0.9.13e they instead took these experience values that players would get and capped them at the solo experience of the monster. This means characters can get penalized for being lower level relative to the party, but not rewarded for being higher level (both compared to solo play).

All other experience penalties and multipliers apply in addition to this party penalty.

The following formula captures the revised system, which caps out the multiplier at 1, while keeping the same effect for players who would be penalized.

In the following example a party containing a level 10 and 30 player kill a monster which gives 1000 solo experience: Percentual Old Share of experience:

• Level 10 player would receive: (10+10)^2.71 / ((10+10)^2.71 + (30+10)^2.71) = 3355/25313 = 0.132 = 13.2% of the 2*1000 XP = 264 XP

• Level 30 player would receive: (30+10)^2.71 / ((10+10)^2.71 + (30+10)^2.71) = 21957/25313 = 0.867 = 86.7% of the 2*1000XP = 1734 XP

Revised Capped System:

• Level 10 player: 264 exp

• Level 30 player: 1000 exp

The table below shows the players "share" from level 1 to 100.