For a page listing experience needed to reach the next level, see /Table

For augmented item experience, see Equipment level

Experience, commonly abbreviated as XP or exp, is a measure of progress in a certain skill. It is generally obtained by performing tasks related to that skill. After gaining a certain amount of experience, players will advance to the next level in that skill, which can result in new abilities, items, and other achievements. You can earn experience by training skills, completing quests, and participating in activities such as Distractions and Diversions and Minigames. The minimum experience needed to max all skills is 374,968,717 (601,991,332 with level 120 Dungeoneering, Invention, and Slayer).

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Gaining experience

Experience in a skill is obtained by performing a task related to that skill. Experience can also be gained by completing a daily challenge, completing a quest or a miniquest, or by playing a minigame.

For skills where failure is a possibility, experience is usually only granted on completion of a successful action. For example, if a player cooks a lobster, rather than burning it, they will gain a minimum of 120 Cooking experience. Experience gains can be increased in a variety of ways, including bonus experience, certain clothing, and the effect of bonfires on Cooking and Firemaking.

Players who help others using the Assist System can earn a maximum of 30,000 total experience every 24 hours, although the experience may be shared among many skills. Some skills cannot be shared through the Assist System (namely combat and gathering skills, such as Attack and Mining).

Players can continue receiving experience after level 99 in a skill, up to a maximum of 200 million experience. Once a player reaches this limit, they can continue using the skill, but receive no additional experience. The maximum total experience possible is 5 billion 400 million (5,400,000,000) when a player has 200 million experience in all 27 skills.

Until the Skills Interface update (on 12 November 2007), players with a level 99 skill could view the experience it would take them to earn level 100. However, even when "level 100" was "reached", the actual level remained at 99, and it would not show the experience required to achieve level 101.

The experience gain rates one may obtain varies very much between skills. For example, most Agility training methods give under 75,000 experience per hour, while making summoning pouches can give over 800,000 Summoning experience per hour.

Setting targets

It is possible to set an individual level target for each level. You can set a level target or a target experience for each level individually. Setting two different targets for two different skills will not affect either of the levels.

Relationship with level

This section discusses regular skills: elite skills use a different formula.

Exponential growth

The amount of experience between levels rises by a factor $ 2^{1/7} \approx 1.10409 $, or 10.4%, each level. This exponential growth means that level 99 requires about 13 million experience and level 120 requires about 104 million experience.

The increasing experience needed to get from one level to another has some surprising consequences; getting from level 98 to 99 requires approximately the same experience as from level 1 to level 75. Higher level activities award more experience than lower level ones, so going from level 98 to 99 is usually quicker than going from level 1 to 75.

Total experience required for a level approximately doubles every 7 levels (disregarding the first 20 levels), triples every 11 levels, quadruples every 14 levels, and increases almost 10-fold every 23 levels. 200,000,000 experience in a skill would put the level between 126 and 127.

Equations

The minimum total experience needed for a given level, L, is given by:

$ \text{xp}( L ) = \left \lfloor \frac{1}{4}\sum_{n = 1}^{L-1} \left\lfloor n + 300 \times 2^{n/7} \right\rfloor \right\rfloor \ $ Note: $ \lfloor x\rfloor $ means the greatest integer less than or equal to $ x $ . This is also known as the 'floor' function.

This equation can be rewritten as:

$ \begin{align} \text{xp}(L) &= \frac{1}{4}\sum_{n = 1} ^ {L - 1} n + 75 \sum_{n = 1} ^ {L - 1} 2 ^ {n/7} + \text{truncationerror}(L)\\ &= \frac{1}{8}L(L-1) + 75 \frac{2^{(L-1)/7} - 1}{1 - 2^{-1/7}} + \text{truncationerror}(L) \end{align} $

The $ \text{truncationerror}(L) $ function is the error made by not rounding each term of the sum down. The rounding error is at most 1 for each term, so a good estimate is

$ \text{truncationerror}(L) \approx -aL $ ,

where a is some number between 0 and 1. Using $ a = 0.109 $ gives an error less than 1 XP for any level between 1 and 120. Omitting the term gives an error of at most 13 XP. Omitting the $ \tfrac{1}{8}L(L-1) $ term gives an error of at most 2% (peaking at around level 16).

The middle term always dominates. The total experience between consecutive levels is therefore

$ \text{xp}( L + 1 )-\text{xp}( L ) \approx 75 \times 2 ^ {L/7} \approx 75 \times 1.10409^L $

The experience to next level increases by 10.4% from the previous experience to next level.

For all levels above about 20 (i.e. for levels where 83 XP is negligible), doubling your experience after reaching a given level will result in rising seven levels, since $ 2^{(L+7)/7} = 2 \times 2^{L/7} $.

Table

Graph

Graph of Level vs. Experience Needed A graph of Level vs. Experience Needed and Experience to Next Level, zoomed in from levels 1 - 50

Click an image to enlarge

Gaining experience summary

While the main method of gaining experience is practice in the skill (including combat) substantial amounts of experience are available from other sources.

One-off

Quests and related one-off events award several million XP.

Achievements offer a total of 2,385,500 XP.

Opening the balloon system up gives 8,000 Firemaking XP.

After killing 4,000 chompy birds, the player is awarded 30,000 Ranged XP.

Resource dungeons give 247,600 Dungeoneering XP after entering them all at least once.

Showing Wizard Elriss talismans or tiaras to obtain the omni-talisman gives a total of 13,605 Runecrafting experience.

Daily events

The Jack of Trades aura gives the player an experience reward book if they can gain experience in any 10 skills within 3 hours. It can be used every 24 hours. Upgraded versions of the Jack of Trades gives greater experience rewards when training 15 or 20 skills within 3 hours.

Distractions and Diversions

Boosts

Special events

Double XP Weekend is generally active twice a year.

The Hati paws, available for a limited time in the beginning of 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 gave additional combat experience to the wearer.

On 25 October 2011 an event was held in celebration of the release of ClusterFlutterer, which gave players triple Slayer experience.

From 12 November to 14 November 2011, double Dungeoneering experience and tokens were awarded "to celebrate [the] continued success in the war against bots."

On 31 August 2012, 350,000 XP was given to players who had been a member all month.

On 30 September 2012, 700,000 XP was given to players who had been a member all month, and all the previous month. The combined award of 1.05 million XP would get a new character to around level 41 in all skills, but is not enough to go from level 98 to 99 in one skill.

From 15 December to 16 December 2012, double Dungeoneering experience was awarded during one of the Winter Weekends.

Gallery

Trivia