Experience points (XP). That tiny little white bar beneath your abilities. Yep, things in the game have experience values. Before today, that has all been somewhat of a mystery. Wait no longer, for SurpriseBirthday (SEMC Co-Founder) has revealed the secrets of XP in Vainglory!

Lane

A full wave in lane is worth 30 XP. You do not need to get the last hit to gain experience, but you do need to last-hit to earn gold. Waves spawn once every 25 seconds, so you gain roughly 60 XP / minute if you stay in lane. SurpriseBirthday didn’t specifically say, but if we extrapolate the gold values (42 gold for small lane minions, and 88 gold for large minion without taking Minion Mines), we can expect the small ones to be worth about 6 XP each (x3) and the large minion to be worth 12 XP, for a total of 30.

Jungle

A full jungle clear grants 104 XP, roughly once per minute. Jungle camps are worth as follows: 25/25 XP (Double Big camp), 10/10 XP (Shop small camp), and 17 XP (healing camp).

For the first ten minutes of the game, the large minions in the back and the healing minions respawn every 55 seconds. The small minions near the jungle shop spawn every 45 seconds. Add 15 seconds to the respawn after every ten minutes.

XP Trickle and Levels

Starting from 0:10, you get an “XP trickle” of 0.6 XP per second, or 36 XP per minute. It takes 90 XP to reach level two, and eight more per level thereafter. So it will take 98 XP to reach level three, and 106 XP to reach level four. It takes a total of 1608 XP to get to level 12.

In jungle, XP is always given to the last hitter, and is shared with allies within a 5.6 meter range. The last hitter gets 50%, and remaining allies split the other 50% of experience. So, for example, killing the two large minions with all three teammates, would equal the last hitter getting 25 XP, and the other two 12.5 XP (50% of 25) each.

In lane, XP is given and evenly shared to anyone within 14 meter range of the dying minion. So if there are all three teammates in Lane, each would get 33% of the experience.

Suggested Level One Jungle Rotations

One possible rotation to start the game that I learned from GrassDudeEU, competitive analyst for R3D: clear starting from the mid healing minion. Work your way back to the double big minion camp, then the top healing minion. This will net you a total of 17+17+50 = (84) / 2 = 44 XP.

After clearing these camps, head to lane to gank. Stay there for one wave, and you will receive an additional 10 XP (30 / 3). After 60 seconds of XP trickle, both the support and the Jungler will hit level two at the 1:10 mark. Gank away! Then head back to the jungle for the next round of farm. This is an interesting rotation for heroes that may want to avoid early skirmishes in the jungle until level three or higher!

I learned of another rotation from wailmer, Captain of the competitive team Ardent Axiom. The team will be competing this Saturday in the VGL round of 16.

In this rotation, the ROAM will begin the large two minions behind the minion miner as soon as they spawn. They will damage them just enough and then move out of the 5.6 meter range required to gain experience. Ironguard Contract has a larger range than jungle XP and the ROAM will still earn gold. By killing the two minions without the ROAM in range, the jungle carry will earn 50 XP. At this point, the support has already begun attacking the mid-healer minion, and will also then move out of range for the jungle carry to gain all of the experience (17 XP). The ROAM then moves on to the shop to purchase mines and flares and skips the bottom two shop minions. This nets the Jungle carry 67 XP with a clear time of around 50 seconds. If we add the XP trickle of 0.6 * 40 seconds = 24 XP. This is JUST enough for the Jungle carry to hit level two (91 out of 90 required XP).

From this data, we can conclude that the above rotation is an optimal rotation if your goals are:

Get level two on the jungle carry Get to jungle shop as early as possible

Many thanks to SurpriseBirthday for sharing this information about experience points! Can you think of another rotation or strategy with this data? Share it in the comments!