Experience

Experience points are the primary reward for adventuring in Guild Wars. Whenever a player kills enemies while adventuring or completes quests or missions, they are rewarded with experience points. They represent a character becoming more experienced (and more powerful) as they achieve more in the game world. After acquiring a certain amount of experience, players can level up and become stronger in their profession.

To examine the amount of experience a character has, press 'H' to open the Hero Panel. The total experience points acquired by this character will be shown in a horizontal bar. Hovering the mouse cursor over that bar will show the amount of experience needed for the next level or Skill Point.

For an overview of experience, levels, skill points, attribute points, and related topics, see character development.

Experience Points are often referred to as XP.

Experience from killing opponents
Opponents can be monsters in an explorable area or opposing players in PvP/GvG Battles. When an opponent is killed, party members get experience for the kill. Note that only those players participating in the battle will be taken into account when dividing experience. To participate in the battle you must have been in aggro range of the enemies, used skills against the enemies or used buffs on allies which participate in the battle. If a foe receives most of its damage from other sources than the party - NPCs (not including henchmen), other foes, Edge of Extinction, etc - the party will not gain experience from that foe unless the other foe's group is killed first. The amount of experience is scaled up or down for each party member depending on his/her level compared to the the slain foe. This is the formula used by the game:



where "o" is the level of your opponent, "y" is your level, and "a" is the number of people in your party.

In other words:
 * The base xp of killing an enemy is 100.
 * If player is higher in level than foe subtract 4, if foe is higher, add 4, if equal, add nothing.
 * If player is higher in level than foe subtract 16 * level difference, if foe is higher, add that amount, if equal, add nothing.
 * The sum of the above three steps is divided by living party members (including henchmen and Heroes).
 * Every party member's XP is calculated individually.
 * The result can never be less than 0; if it would be, use 0 instead.
 * The final result is rounded to the nearest integer, half points being rounded down.

Example: A level 17 character and a level 20 character are adventuring together. They slay a level 18 monster. The experience given the level 17 character will be:
 * (100 + 4 + 16 x (18-17)) / 2 = 60 XP

The experience given the level 20 character will be:
 * (100 - 4 - 16 x (20-18)) / 2 = 32 XP

This essentially means players learn less from killing "easy" monsters than when they kill "hard" monsters. In game terms, you get more experience from higher level enemies.

Note that there does appear to be a cap on XP earned per monster (before party division) of 280 XP. This is likely to dissuade powerleveling. In practice, it means that XP for killing monsters caps out at 11 levels above your own. So if you are level 1, killing a level 12 monster nets you the same XP (before party division) as killing a level 24 monster.

Also note that XP awarded for killing level 0 mobs follow another formula: (30-5*y)/a (same rounding and no negative results). This might be because these mobs are far weaker than even level 1 ones.

Finally, up to three multiplicators can increase the final XP reward. They are taken into account after the cap and before the rounding.
 * Bosses reward double XP.
 * Insight scrolls multiply the final value by between 1.5 and 3, depending on the type of the active scroll. Only one type of scroll can be active at any time.
 * Bounties double the XP reward for killing a foe of a certain species.

The total resulting multiplicator can not be larger than 7. Therefore, the maximum amount of XP a player can gain from killing a single monster is 280XP * 7 = 1960 XP

For the results of the formula in table format, see the experience table below.

Experience from quests and missions
Experience Points rewarded by quests will be listed in the quest dialog window before accepting it and in the Quest Log after that. Tyrian missions always reward 1,000 XP for completing the primary objective and another 1,000 for the bonus objective. The experience gained from Canthan missions depends on the level of completion of that mission (standard, expert, or master's). Experience from quests and missions is for the player alone and is not shared with other party members, henchmen, or pets. Heroes, however, do get experience rewards for missions and quests when the player does. Quest rewards vary; early ones give as little as 50 XP, but up to 50,000 for the most difficult ones such as the Titan Quests.

Experience and levels
While a character's maximum level is 20, further experience will still give Skill Points. There is no limit to the number of skill points that can be gained in this way. Some people keep track of this by saying what their level would be if there was no cap. For example, level 20 with 12 extra skill points would be called a virtual level 32. However, these virtual levels do not translate into benefit in-game because the experience you get at virtual level 32 for killing say a level 26 enemy is the same as the experience you would get at virtual level 50 since you are still really level 20.

The formula for the additional experience required to level is:
 * CurrentLevel * 600 + 1,400

This is capped at a maximum of 15,000.

lvl 20: 140 600 ≤ lvl 20 ≤ 152 499 lvl 21: 152 500 ≤ lvl 21 ≤ 167 499 lvl 22: 167 500 ≤ lvl 22 ≤ 182 499 lvl 23: 182 500 ≤ lvl 23 ≤ 197 499 lvl 24: 197 500 ≤ lvl 24 ≤ 212 499 lvl 25: 212 500 ≤ lvl 25 ≤ 227 499 lvl 26: 227 500 ≤ lvl 26 ≤ 242 499 lvl 27: 242 500 ≤ lvl 27 ≤ 257 499 lvl 28: 257 500 ≤ lvl 28 ≤ 272 499 lvl 29: 272 500 ≤ lvl 29 ≤ 287 499 lvl 30: 287 500 ≤ lvl 30 ≤ 302 499 lvl 31: 302 500 ≤ lvl 31 ≤ 317 499 lvl 32: 317 500 ≤ lvl 32 ≤ 332 499 lvl 33: 332 500 ≤ lvl 33 ≤ 347 499 lvl 34: 347 500 ≤ lvl 34 ≤ 362 499 lvl 35: 362 500 ≤ lvl 35 ≤ 377 499 lvl 36: 377 500 ≤ lvl 36 ≤ 392 499 lvl 37: 392 500 ≤ lvl 37 ≤ 407 499 lvl 38: 407 500 ≤ lvl 38 ≤ 422 499 lvl 39: 422 500 ≤ lvl 39 ≤ 437 499 lvl 40: 437 500 ≤ lvl 40 ≤ 452 499 lvl 41: 452 500 ≤ lvl 41 ≤ 467 499 lvl 42: 467 500 ≤ lvl 42 ≤ 482 499 lvl 43: 482 500 ≤ lvl 43 ≤ 497 499 lvl 44: 497 500 ≤ lvl 44 ≤ 512 499 lvl 45: 512 500 ≤ lvl 45 ≤ 527 499 lvl 46: 527 500 ≤ lvl 46 ≤ 542 499 lvl 47: 542 500 ≤ lvl 47 ≤ 557 499 lvl 48: 557 500 ≤ lvl 48 ≤ 572 499 lvl 49: 572 500 ≤ lvl 49 ≤ 587 499 lvl 50: 587 500 ≤ lvl 50 ≤ 602 499 lvl 51: 602 500 ≤ lvl 51 ≤ 617 499 lvl 52: 617 500 ≤ lvl 52 ≤ 632 499 lvl 53: 632 500 ≤ lvl 53 ≤ 647 499 lvl 54: 647 500 ≤ lvl 54 ≤ 662 499 lvl 55: 662 500 ≤ lvl 55 ≤ 677 499 lvl 56: 677 500 ≤ lvl 56 ≤ 692 499 lvl 57: 692 500 ≤ lvl 57 ≤ 707 499 lvl 58: 707 500 ≤ lvl 58 ≤ 722 499 lvl 59: 722 500 ≤ lvl 59 ≤ 737 499 lvl 60: 737 500 ≤ lvl 60 ≤ 752 499 lvl 61: 752 500 ≤ lvl 61 ≤ 767 499 lvl 62: 767 500 ≤ lvl 62 ≤ 782 499 lvl 63: 782 500 ≤ lvl 63 ≤ 797 499 lvl 64: 797 500 ≤ lvl 64 ≤ 812 499 lvl 65: 812 500 ≤ lvl 65 ≤ 827 499 lvl 66: 827 500 ≤ lvl 66 ≤ 842 499 lvl 67: 842 500 ≤ lvl 67 ≤ 857 499 lvl 68: 857 500 ≤ lvl 68 ≤ 872 499 lvl 69: 872 500 ≤ lvl 69 ≤ 887 499 lvl 70: 887 500 ≤ lvl 70 ≤ 902 499 lvl 71: 902 500 ≤ lvl 71 ≤ 917 499 lvl 72: 917 500 ≤ lvl 72 ≤ 932 499 lvl 73: 932 500 ≤ lvl 73 ≤ 947 499 lvl 74: 947 500 ≤ lvl 74 ≤ 962 499 lvl 75: 962 500 ≤ lvl 75 ≤ 977 499 lvl 76: 977 500 ≤ lvl 76 ≤ 992 499 lvl 77: 992 500 ≤ lvl 77 ≤ 1 007 499 lvl 78: 1 007 500 ≤ lvl 78 ≤ 1 022 499 lvl 79: 1 022 500 ≤ lvl 79 ≤ 1 037 499 lvl 80: 1 037 500 ≤ lvl 80 ≤ 1 052 499 lvl 81: 1 052 500 ≤ lvl 81 ≤ 1 067 499 lvl 82: 1 067 500 ≤ lvl 82 ≤ 1 082 499 lvl 83: 1 082 500 ≤ lvl 83 ≤ 1 097 499 lvl 84: 1 097 500 ≤ lvl 84 ≤ 1 112 499 lvl 85: 1 112 500 ≤ lvl 85 ≤ 1 127 499 lvl 86: 1 127 500 ≤ lvl 86 ≤ 1 142 499 lvl 87: 1 142 500 ≤ lvl 87 ≤ 1 157 499 lvl 88: 1 157 500 ≤ lvl 88 ≤ 1 172 499 lvl 89: 1 172 500 ≤ lvl 89 ≤ 1 187 499 lvl 90: 1 187 500 ≤ lvl 90 ≤ 1 202 499 lvl 91: 1 202 500 ≤ lvl 91 ≤ 1 217 499 lvl 92: 1 217 500 ≤ lvl 92 ≤ 1 232 499 lvl 93: 1 232 500 ≤ lvl 93 ≤ 1 247 499 lvl 94: 1 247 500 ≤ lvl 94 ≤ 1 262 499 lvl 95: 1 262 500 ≤ lvl 95 ≤ 1 277 499 lvl 96: 1 277 500 ≤ lvl 96 ≤ 1 292 499 lvl 97: 1 292 500 ≤ lvl 97 ≤ 1 307 499 lvl 98: 1 307 500 ≤ lvl 98 ≤ 1 322 499 lvl 99: 1 322 500 ≤ lvl 99 ≤ 1 337 499 lvl 100: 1 337 500 ≤ lvl 100 ≤ 1 352 599 lvl 101: 1 352 600 ≤ lvl 101 ≤ 1 367 599

Experience table
The following shows the result of the formula listed above, in table format, with only one person in the party (a=1).