Experience

Experience (also exp and XP) is a system of character and account progression in the Player versus Environment game mode. Initially, each new character starts at level 1, and is rewarded experience for participating in various activities and completing objectives. When a character accumulates enough experience, they will gain a level, which increases character's attributes and unlocks new skills. At the maximum level 80, experience becomes an account-wide system shared by all max level characters. At this stage, experience is put towards training available Mastery tracks, or, if no Mastery tracks are available or selected, leveling past 80 will award 1 Spirit Shard. Current character/mastery level and the experience gained towards the next one is displayed on the experience bar in the user interface at the bottom of the screen.

It is possible to increase the amount of experience gained by using special boosters, food and utility consumable items, as well as Guild banners and other effects, see Experience modifiers section below. Character Adventure Guide, a special group of character-based achievements, grants experience for executing various basic gameplay tasks.

World Experience (WvW rank) and PvP Rank are the equivalent systems in the World versus World and Structured PvP game modes, respectively.

Gaining experience

Experience is awarded for completing different actions in the game. These activities are:

Open world

• Participating in a Dynamic event
• Slaying creatures
  • Bonus exploration experience is granted depending on how long a creature has been alive in the world.
  • Experience is granted to all players who participated in slaying the creature.
• Gathering from material nodes such as wood, ore, or plant nodes.
• Completing Adventures, which awards bonus experience the first time reaching requisite ranks and then standard experience afterwards. Once daily per account.
• Fishing
• Map completion objectives, including:
  • Renown Hearts
  • Hero challenges
  • Points of Interest
  • Waypoints
  • Vistas

Instanced content

• Progressing personal story or living story in both instances and open world
• Participating in Dungeons
• Participating in Fractals
• Participating in Raids

Other

• Reviving players and NPCs
• Completing Achievements
  • Character Adventure Guide
  • Daily Category Achievements
• Crafting
• Consumables:
  • Bundle of Loot
  • Tome of Knowledge
  • Tome of Mentorship
  • Writ of Experience
  • Elixir of Central Tyria Mastery
  • Elixir of Heart of Thorns Mastery
  • Elixir of Path of Fire Mastery
  • Elixir of Icebrood Saga Mastery
  • Elixir of End of Dragons Mastery
  • Elixir of Secrets of the Obscure Mastery
  • Elixir of Janthir Wilds Mastery
  • Elixir of Visions of Eternity Mastery
• Consumables (PoF only):
  • Raptor Treat
  • Springer Treat
  • Skimmer Treat
  • Jackal Treat
  • Roller Beetle Treat
  • Casino Coin
• Services (auto-consume upon acquisition):
  • Adventure Experience Award: Volume One
  • Adventure Experience Award: Volume Two
  • Adventure Experience Award: Volume Three
  • Adventure Experience Award: Volume Four
  • Adventure Experience Award: Volume Five
  • Pamphlet of Wisdom
  • Stash of Crimson Skull Coins
  • Scrap of End of Dragons Mastery
  • Scrap of Icebrood Saga Mastery
  • Shred of Sea of Jade Mastery
  • Shred of Secrets of the Obscure Mastery
  • Writ of Maguuma Mastery
  • Writ of Tyrian Mastery

Experience modifiers

For World Experience (WXP) modifiers, see: World Experience#WXP modifiers

There are several ways to increase the amount of experience earned, with different boosters affecting different types of experience gain.

All modifiers vs kill modifiers

Modifiers are split into two types:

• Those that affect all sources, including gathering, map completion, adventures, events, etc. Consumables like Casino Coins and services like Scrap of Icebrood Saga Mastery are not affected.
• Those that only affect creature kills in PvE.

These two types act multiplicatively when gaining experience from kills, think of it as the experience first being increased by the modifier to kills, then by the modifier to all sources. For example: An enemy giving a base of 1000 experience, with +300% from kills and +100% from all, will result in 8000 experience gained.

List of modifiers

Effect	+All	+Kill	Source	Notes
Consumables
50% Experience Bonus	—	50%	Communal Boost Bonfire Enchanted Reward Boost Experience Booster (fine) Kite Fortune (discontinued)	Bonfires place an object that all players can interact with.
Black Lion Boost	—	50%	Black Lion Booster	Purchased with Black Lion Statuettes
Celebration Bonus	—	100%	Birthday Booster Celebration Booster
Experience Booster	50%	0–100%	Candy Corn Gobbler Enchanted Reward Boost Experience Booster Experience Booster (masterwork) Heroic Booster	Requires killing foes to gain stacks of  Active Kill Streak!.
Enhancement	—	5%-20%	Most utility items	Chatoyant Elixir is the only item that provides a 20% bonus.
Nourishment	1%-5%	5%-15%	Various Food items	Only one type can be gained. See table below for details.
Festival Gobbler Boost	—	25%	Snowflake Gobbler Zhaitaffy Gobbler
Guild Experience Bonus  Guild Experience Banner Bonus  Guild Heroes Banner Boost	—	15%	Guild Exp Banner Guild Karma and Experience Banner Guild Heroes Banner Guild Anniversary Banner	Guild banners place an object that all players can interact with.
New Year's Gift	—	5%	Lunar New Year fireworks such as Lucky Draketail
Limited consumables
Winter's Blessing	10%	—	Winter's Blessing	Only acquireable once per day during Wintersday. Doesn't apply in WvW despite its description.
Blessings of the New Year	10%	—	Lucky Firecracker	Only acquireable once per day during Lunar New Year.
Miscellaneous
Ancient Canthan Secret	—	10%	Purchased from Grand Master Kyren	Requires completing Monastery Training
Enlightenment	20%	—	Completing Monastery Training
Rested	5%–25%	—	Resting in Arborstone, The Wizard's Tower,  Resting in Chair, or Homestead	Earn an additional 5% for each level of Arborstone Revitalization unlocked or maximum with Astral Amenities, up to a total of 25%. Player can receive the buff while logged out in Arborstone or the Wizard's Tower. Homestead resting requires respective Homesteading masteries.
Rift Essence Extractor	1%	—	Completing Convergence: Outer Nayos or Mount Balrior	Requires  Convergence Mastery
Volunteer's Blessing	—	10%	Volunteering to switch to a more populated map.	Only lasts for 10 minutes.
Persistent
Experienced Enrichment	—	20%	Enrichment slot in amulet	Only while equipped
Guild XP Gain	3%–10%	—	Guild bonus
XP Gain Account bonus	—	Up to 72%	Achievement point rewards	3% per 2,500 total achievement points earned

Nourishment

As only one  Nourishment can be active, and no food provides both types, a choice has to be made whether to modify all or kill experience.

Source	+All experience	+Kill experience
Some foods, such as Soul Pastry	—	15%
Most food	—	10%
All Ascended feasts	5%	—
Some food, often red lentil based	1%	—

Conditional bonuses

Some modifiers are mutually exclusive as they are only active in a specific map.

Effect	+All	+Kill	Where	Source	Notes
Temporary (removed upon changing map instances)
Perseverance	—	10%–50%	Ember Bay	Completing renown hearts
Seraph Morale	—	1%–10%	Lake Doric	Completing events
Blessing of the Harvest Forest	—	20%	Lake Doric	Magic-Imbued Peach	Acquired once per day from Nature's Watcher
Bane of Joko	—	20%	Domain of Istan	Killing any awakened, corsair, or loyalist	Only active for 30 seconds, but easily refreshed
Explorer's Respite	—	5%	Priory Historian Elisa's weekly map	Bonfire (Priory Historian Elisa) (for 30 minutes after the event)	Gather wood for the fire for an Experience boost (80) is only available every three hours, as it rotates with two other bonuses every hour.
Boon of the Wishing Well	—	3-15%	Domain of Vabbi	Wishing Well	Chance to gain one stack when offering coins to the Wishing Well, up to 5 stacks.
Persistent (also account wide)
Bloodstone Empowerment	10%–30%	—	Bloodstone Fen	Bought from Natto
Draconis Mons Empowerment	10%–30%	—	Draconis Mons	Bought from Supplymaster Hanjo
Empowerment	10%–30%	—	Source LWS4 map: Domain of Istan Sandswept Isles Domain of Kourna Jahai Bluffs Thunderhead Peaks Dragonfall	Bought from Volatile Magic Collectors: Alaleh Ethall Nalar Trader Hyacinth Kynon Mist Warden Quartermaster	Third stack of Jahai Bluffs is earned from In a Grain of Sand.
Lowland Spear Training   Scavenger of the Wilds	5–10%	—	Janthir	Training the Lowland Kodan mastery track

Some modifiers are only active during specific special events.

Effect	+All	+Kill	Where	Source	Notes
Extra Life Bonus	5%+	—	Everywhere	Extra Life	Stack count depends on amount raised.
Extra Life Bonus (12 stacks)	60%	—	Everywhere	Extra Life	Towards end of event, based on previous years.
New Hero Jump Start Boost	50%	—	Everywhere	New Hero Jump Start
Returning Hero Boost	30%	—	Related map(s)	Return To <Release>
Summer Game Fest Experience Boost	100%	—	Everywhere	Summer Game Fest (2025)
Summer Game Fest Boost	50%	—	Everywhere	Summer Game Fest

Discontinued consumables

Some items that are not acquirable anymore, can still be used to further increase the total amount of bonus experience if the player still has them.

Effect	+All	+Kill	Source	Notes
Explorer Boost	—	50%	Explorer's Booster	Maximum of 15 historically from Novice Explorer achievements.
30% Experience Bonus	—	30%	Laureate Experience Booster	Replaced with Experience Booster (masterwork)
Killstreak Experience Booster	—	0-100%	Killstreak Experience Booster	Does not stack with the unified  Experience Booster, but will allow gaining stacks twice as fast.
Ram's Reward	10%	—	Exploding Draketail Prismatic Rocket[verification requested] Lunar New Year Firework[verification requested] Great Guild Firework[verification requested] Visage of the Great Ram Firework[verification requested]	Were acquired during Lunar New Year 2015 (Year of the Ram). Can still be bought on the Trading Post as they are not bound.

Tips

• Some consumables can be very expensive, consider whether they are actually worth using for the current activity.
• Conversely, some effects are very cheap or even free and should be used even during casual play.
  • For example, logging out in related lounges will provide  Resting with no effort.
  • Soul Pastry only costs …/… because of its abundance.
• When doing activities that are not based on kills, such as griffon adventures, an ascended feast should be eaten.
  • For heavily kill-based farms, normal +15% kill food should be eaten if maximizing for experience gain.
• While the CFine Experience Booster and the ERare Experience Booster have the same icon, they apply different effects and can be used at the same time.
  • However, the DMasterwork Experience Booster provides an identical effect to the ERare.

Total experience bonus

• Maximum when not including map bonuses, timed special event bonuses, account bonuses, or discontinued consumables:
  • All bonuses: +131%
  • Kill bonuses: +410%
  • At these values, the bonus experience from a kill is about +1078%.
• Theoretically, the maximum possible values are:
  • All bonuses: +231%, which includes map bonus (30%), timed bonus (60%), and discontinued consumables (10%).
  • Kill bonuses: +622%, which includes map bonus (50%), volunteer (10%), max account bonus (72%), and discontinued consumables (80%).
  • This gives a total of +2091% bonus experience from kills, in a 30% all map and using 15% kill food.
  • At this unrealistic maximum, killing a level 80 enemy (~500 xp) with max exploration bonus (+235%) would give a total of about 36 700 xp.

Leveling mechanics

World activities award a dynamic amount of experience to different players of different levels. The goal of this approach was to make gaining the experience required for each level take a similar amount of time, provided the player sticks to activities and areas appropriate for their level.

For example, getting the "gold" participation reward for a dynamic event will award 7% of the XP required for reaching next level, which for a level 16 player completing a level 16 event gives 616 XP out of the 8,790 XP needed to reach level 17, and for a level 26 player completing a level 26 event it gives 1043 of the 14,900 XP needed to reach 27.

Experience gained is modified by the difference in the content level and your character level. This modifier begins with a base of 50% and scales linearly as the difficulty decreases. For example, a level 50 character completing a level 25 event will receive 52,500 * 0.07 * 0.75 = 2757 XP. This does mean a high level character will receive more experience for the same content as a low-level character, but the percentage of a level gained is higher for the lower level character. For example, a level 25 character completing the same event will receive 14,100 * 0.07 = 987 XP. While this is almost one third that of the level 50 character, it is 7% towards the next level compared to the 5.25% the level 50 receives.

Leveling table

Experience Graph Per Level

The following is the table of experience needed to level up.

Level	Experience to next level	Cumulative experience required for the next level
1	2,000	2,000
2	2,110	4,110
3	2,379	6,489
4	2,674	9,163
5	2,999	12,162
6	3,343	15,505
7	3,719	19,224
8	4,129	23,353
9	4,567	27,920
10	5,044	32,964
11	5,553	38,517
12	6,111	44,628
13	6,705	51,333
14	7,354	58,687
15	8,042	66,729
16	8,790	75,519
17	9,270	84,789
18	9,770	94,559
19	10,300	104,859
20	10,900	115,759
21	11,400	127,159
22	12,100	139,259
23	12,700	151,959
24	13,400	165,359
25	14,100	179,459
26	14,900	194,359
27	15,700	210,059
28	16,500	226,559
29	17,400	243,959
30	18,300	262,259
31	19,300	281,559
32	20,400	301,959
33	21,500	323,459
34	22,600	346,059
35	23,900	369,959
36	25,100	395,059
37	26,500	421,559
38	27,900	449,459
39	29,400	478,859
40	31,000	509,859
41	32,700	542,559
42	34,500	577,059
43	36,300	613,359
44	38,300	651,659
45	40,300	691,959
46	42,500	734,459
47	44,800	779,259
48	47,200	826,459
49	49,800	876,259
50	52,500	928,759
51	55,300	984,059
52	58,300	1,042,359
53	61,400	1,103,759
54	64,700	1,168,459
55	68,200	1,236,659
56	71,900	1,308,559
57	75,800	1,384,359
58	79,800	1,464,159
59	84,100	1,548,259
60	88,700	1,636,959
61	93,500	1,730,459
62	98,500	1,828,959
63	104,000	1,932,959
64	109,000	2,041,959
65	115,000	2,156,959
66	122,000	2,278,959
67	128,000	2,406,959
68	135,000	2,541,959
69	142,000	2,683,959
70	150,000	2,833,959
71	158,000	2,991,959
72	167,000	3,158,959
73	176,000	3,334,959
74	185,000	3,519,959
75	195,000	3,714,959
76	205,000	3,919,959
77	217,000	4,136,959
78	228,000	4,364,959
79	241,000	4,605,959
80	254,000 *	—

Experience per activity

The following are percentages used for various activities. Area levels are not stated directly but can be determined by the creatures, hearts, and events in the area, or subtracting one from the player's dynamic level.

Activity	Percentage
Dynamic events
Success (gold)	10.5% of the event level
Success (silver)	75% of the gold reward
Success (bronze)	50% of the gold reward
Failure	Half of event success
Completing instances
Storyline	27% of the storyline level
Dungeon (storyline)	35% of the character level
Dungeon (explorable)	70% of the character level
Fractal (via Writ of Tyrian Mastery)	20-120% of the character level depending on scale and masteries
Map completion
Uncovering a new area	1.04% of area level
Renown Heart	Varies
Hero challenge	Varies
Waypoint	2.61% of area level
Point of Interest	1.56% of area level
Vista	3.75% of area level
City completion chest	10% of character level
Explorable completion chest	10% of character level
Gathering
Harvesting	0.5% of the area level
Logging	0.15% of the area level per swing
Mining	0.15% of the area level per swing
Defeating foes
Standard	0.125% of the foe's level + bonus
Veteran (bronze frame) & Elite (silver frame)	0.25% of the foe's level + bonus
Champion (gold frame)	~0.45% of the foe's level + bonus[verification requested]
Crafting
Per Crafting Level (1-125)	1% of the character level
Per Crafting Level (126-250)	2% of the character level
Per Crafting Level (251-375)	3% of the character level
Per Crafting Level (376-500)	4% of the character level
Miscellaneous
Reviving a Player or NPC	0.25% of the area level
Consumables
Bundle of Loot / Casino Coin	0.25% of the character level
Writ of Experience	5% of the character level
Mount treats (Rap, Spr, Ski, Jac, Rol, War)	15% of the character level
Black Lion Mastery Coffer elixirs	90% of the character level
Tome of Knowledge / Tome of Mentorship	100% of the character level
Auto-consumed services
Shred (EoD, SotO, JW, VoE)	1% of the character level
Scrap (HoT, PoF, IBS, EoD, SotO, JW, VoE)	5% of the character level
Writ of Tyrian Mastery / Pamphlet of Wisdom	10% of the character level
Stash (EoD, SotO, JW)	10% of the character level
Large Stash (EoD, SotO, JW)	50% of the character level

Anomaly:

When earning experience below level 80 from sources of mastery experience, such as Volatile Magic (object) or Casino Coin, it will double dip giving both mastery and normal experience, possibly allowing Spirit Shards to be earned below level 80.

Bug:

This anomaly can make a level reward not be rewarded.

Bonus exploration experience

Creatures in the world build up a bonus experience the longer it is alive without being killed. Neutral monsters especially will often give maximum bonus experience because they are ignored by many players. This bonus starts building after having been alive for 3 minutes, and maxes out after 30 minutes, at about +235% experience^{[verification requested]}.

Effective leveling table for level 1-15

When calculating experience rewards for the first fifteen levels, the following table is used instead. This is due to changes made in the September 9, 2014 game update, where the total experience required to level up was reduced, but the rewards were kept as percentage of the previous experience required, such that the rate of leveling was accelerated. ^{[verification requested]}

Level	Effective experience required for level reward calculations
1	4,000
2	4,220
3	4,440
4	4,680
5	4,940
6	5,200
7	5,480
8	5,780
9	6,090
10	6,420
11	6,760
12	7,130
13	7,510
14	7,920
15	8,340

After max level

As the maximum level is 80, gaining experience when at level 80 will not provide further levels.

If a mastery track is selected and incomplete, experience goes towards that. Once all mastery tracks for a region have been filled, or if the player hasn't unlocked masteries yet, gaining 254,000 experience will instead grant a Spirit Shard.

While the selected mastery track is full, experience goes to your normal, account wide, spirit shard experience bar. This is normally covered up by any active mastery unlocks but will show in regions you've fully unlocked avalible mastery tracks for. When this bar is filled it will award a spirit shard, this shows up like normal item gains and can be easily missed.

Bug:

You earn no experience in Quickplay mode raids for fights that you don't own the expansion to