Experience

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Experience (EXP or XP for short) can be gained from defeating mobs or performing many kinds of other actions. Experience has no direct effect on the player character, but it can be used to enhance their equipment through enchanting, or by using an anvil to repair, rename, or combine enchantments on equipment. Most sources of experience are produced in the form of experience orbs. In Java Edition, experience gained affects the player's score on the death screen.

Experience orbs also recover durability on items with Mending that are being worn or are in-hand.

Experience can be gained from several different sources. Most sources drop experience in the form of orbs, which can be claimed by any player, while a few methods directly award the player experience upon completing the action.

• From killing most mobs, which drop experience orbs along with any other items. However, mobs will only drop experience points if they are killed by a player, and not, for example, falling off a cliff.
  • A mob does not drop experience orbs unless it dies within five seconds (100 game ticks) of an attack registered as a player hit (including tamed wolves, player thrown fireballs, and TNT). This allows gaining experience orbs from, say, knocking a monster off a cliff, lighting a mob on fire, etc. (fetching the orbs might be another question). The player can also try to "claim" a burning monster by hitting or shooting it once—even if the blow doesn't kill it, if the mob dies within 5 seconds, it drops experience orbs.
  • Mobs killed by TNT activated by a player using flint and steel or a flaming arrow drop XP as usual; however, mobs killed by TNT that was activated by fire, redstone, or an explosion that wasn't player activated does not drop any experience orbs.
  • Mobs drop a random number of experience orbs, which can have different values. However, the total value always remains within the values given below, regardless of difficulty setting.
  • Hostile mobs give more experience orbs than passive ones. Baby animals, bats, golems, and villagers give no experience orbs at all. The ender dragon gives experience orbs totaling 12,000 XP the first time a player kills it—12 times more than anything else in the game—and 500 XP in subsequent defeats.
    • Some hostile mobs spawn with weapons, or can spawn with weapons and/or armor. These mobs give an extra 1–3 points (randomly) per piece of equipment that they spawned with if the piece is not dropped. Equipment picked up after spawning doesn't count.
  • Mining a monster spawner block gives 15–43 points of experience orbs.
  • Mining a naturally-generated creaking heart drops 20–24 experience.
  • While they do not drop experience orbs normally, baby mobs as well as mobs killed by non-player means are accepted by the sculk catalyst, allowing for experience orbs to be obtained in a more indirect way.
• From mining any ore that drops a resource, rather than raw metals or themselves. The experience orbs are produced along with the mineral item(s). If a Silk Touch pickaxe is used to mine the ore block, the experience is not dropped, but the block can later be placed and mined normally to release the mineral and the experience.
  • The ore still produces orbs if destroyed by an explosion, whether or not it was caused by player activated TNT.
• From mining sculk, sculk sensors, sculk shriekers, and sculk catalysts. If a Silk Touch tool is used to mine it, the experience is not dropped, but it can later be placed and mined normally to release the experience.
• From smelting any of various items.
  • Smelting any ore yields some experience, but normally only nether gold ore and ancient debris are worthwhile. For all other ores, mining them is better.
  • Moderate amounts are gained by smelting/cooking other materials: food, clay balls or blocks, cactus, wood logs, sand, or cobblestone, cactus giving the most.‌^{[JE only]}
  • The smelted material must be taken from the furnace through its GUI window. If the player uses a hopper to unload the furnace, it is possible to retrieve all experience produced by the furnace by smelting an extra item and taking it from the GUI. Breaking the furnace drops all stored experience as collectable experience orbs.
• From breeding animals.
  • Orbs are produced where the parents are, along with the baby animal. Breaking eggs does not give experience.
• From fishing.
  • The experience is awarded directly upon reeling in the fish, even if the fish itself is not picked up.
• From trading with villagers.
• A bottle o' enchanting releases orbs when broken.
• From the /experience command.
• From disenchanting items in a grindstone.
• From completing a challenge advancement.‌^{[JE only]}

Gathering experience points increases the player's experience level by gradually filling a bar on the bottom of the screen until a new level is achieved when the bar is full. When the player dies, they drop experience orbs worth 7 * current level experience points, up to a maximum of 100 points (enough to reach approximately 7.5 levels), and all of the other experience vanishes. If the gamerule keepInventory is set to true, the experience is kept even if the player dies.

Most experience sources drop experience in the form of experience orbs, which can then be claimed by any player.

Experience orbs fade between green and yellow colors and float or glide toward the player up to a distance of 7.25 blocks (calculated from the center of player's feet and the center of the experience orb), speeding up as they get nearer to the player. Experience orbs pulled toward a player are slowed by cobwebs. Experience orbs can also be pulled around or away from the player by running water currents.

When collected, experience orbs make a bell-like sound for a split second. Unlike items, experience points are picked up gradually: no matter how many orbs are in the range of the player, they are added to the player's experience one at a time (10 orbs/second). In extreme cases, this can result in the player being followed by a swarm of orbs for many seconds. If an experience orb isn't collected within 5 minutes of its appearance, it despawns.

Experience orbs vary in value. The general worth of an orb is reflected by its size, with eleven possible sizes corresponding to specific values. The three smallest sizes are the most commonly encountered, as the majority of experience dropped by mobs and blocks is less than ten. Dense experience orbs with values 17 or higher have orange "eyes" or "cores", and are less frequently encountered, most commonly from defeating the ender dragon, wither and other players, disenchanting objects on a grindstone, breaking spawners, and collecting items from high-traffic furnaces. For performance improvement, experience orbs of the same value can merge into a single entity, but they do not create a higher value orb.

Naturally spawned orbs always have an integer value of 1–11, 17, 37, 73, 149, 307, 617, 1237, or 2477. Fishing, breeding, and trading drop a single orb with a random value in the appropriate range. Breaking blocks, killing mobs and players, smelting items, and bottles o' enchanting calculate their total experience amount and then split it into the base values of orbs by size (1, 3, 7, 17, 37, 73, 149, 307, 617, 1237, and 2477).

Higher values are chosen first, so, for example, a total value of 1000 would be dropped as orbs with values 617, 307, 73, and 3. While the first ender dragon in a world drops 12,000 experience, it is dropped in 10 waves of 1000 and one of 2000, so no orbs of value 2477 are dropped. Such orbs can exist in the world via furnaces that have had a lot of traffic.

Like items, experience orbs float when on water. Experience orbs can be destroyed by fire, lava, explosions, and cacti, and can trigger pressure plates and tripwires.

In Bedrock Edition, although mob drops spawn the instant the final blow is dealt to the mob, experience orbs do not appear until the mob entity disappears and the smoke appears. In Java Edition, experience orbs appear in the same spatial and temporal location as loot when an entity is killed.

Orbs with negative values can be created using the /summon command, either using values below 0 or above 32767 due to 16-bit integer overflow. They use the smallest texture of experience orb.

Negative orbs behave differently from positive orbs, namely that they do not deduct experience when collected by the player.

They deduct durability from a tool enchanted with Mending, provided the tool is already damaged prior to collection of the orbs.^[3]

The following mobs and similar entities do not drop experience when killed:

👁 Image

The formulas for figuring out how many experience orbs needed to get to the next level are as follows:

Experience required =

2 × current_level + 7 (for levels 0–15)

5 × current_level – 38 (for levels 16–30)

9 × current_level – 158 (for levels 31+)

One can determine how much experience has been collected to reach a level using the equations:

Total experience =

level² + 6 × level (at levels 0–16)

2.5 × level² – 40.5 × level + 360 (at levels 17–31)

4.5 × level² – 162.5 × level + 2220 (at levels 32+)

Likewise, to get the number of levels from the total experience value, one can utilize the following inverse equations:

Total Levels =

At levels 0-16 (totals 0 to 352):

At levels 17–31 (totals 353 to 1507):

At levels 32+ (totals 1508+):

• Getting from level 0 to level 1 requires 7 experience.
• Getting from level 0 to level 30 requires 1395 experience.
• Getting from level 27 to level 30 requires 306 experience.
• Killing one large slime and all the slimes that split from it yield from 12 to 28 experience, with an average of 19.
• Killing a slime of the largest size that can be spawned using the /summon command and all slimes that split from it yield 448 to 8128 experience, with an average of 3025.
• The maximum level required for using an enchanting table is level 30, while the anvil accepts jobs up to level 39 (in creative mode the anvil limit is removed).
• Level 16 is a quarter of the way to level 30, while level 22 is about halfway there. Level 30, in turn, is halfway to level 39.
• Killing the ender dragon the first time gives approximately 68 XP levels. The ender dragon actually drops 10 waves of orbs worth a total of 1,000 experience points per wave, and another worth a total of 2,000. Taken separately, the smaller waves could take a player from zero to level 26, while the big wave would take a player from zero to level 34. The largest orb dropped has a value of 1237 experience points, and can take a player from zero to level 28 all by itself.
  • However, it is practically impossible to collect all of the experience points as some of it will fall into the return portal, requiring you to go to the world origin to collect the remaining experience.
• The maximum XP-level that players can get legitimately in Bedrock Edition is 24,791.^[5]
• The maximum XP that players can get legitimately in Java Edition is 238,609,312, and at this level the experience bar disappears, because reaching the next level would require more XP than the 32-bit integer limit (2,147,483,647, which is 2³¹ - 1). However, it is possible to reach level 2,147,483,647 using commands. In this case, the experience bar may disappear and reappear.^[6]

The score is the number of experience the player has collected since their last death. This number is the total experience the player has collected, rather than the amount of experience they had upon death. When the player dies, the score is displayed on the death screen.

Java Edition:
Experience orbs do not use entity-dependent sound events.

Bedrock Edition:

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

Experience orbs have entity data associated with them that contain various properties.

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

• Before Beta 1.9 Prerelease 2, the score on the death screen always read &e0.
  • This was caused by an error with coloring the text. In Java Edition Classic (including the Survival Test versions that featured the original score system), the '&' character was used to color text, so '&e0' would produce '0' in bright yellow. This was later changed to instead use the '§' character for colored text, but because the death screen hadn't been updated with this, the raw formatting code was shown.

The experience level costs were heavily revised in snapshot 12w22a and 12w23a, and again in version 1.8. Before these, reaching level 50 (the maximum usable on a single enchantment) required 4625 experience, corresponding to defeating 925 hostile mobs (assuming the "common" ones.) Afterward, considerably less experience is needed to get into higher levels. Higher levels cost more experience than lower ones, but the levels are still easier to get than in 1.2.5. Now, level 30 is the maximum for enchantments, and that cost is equivalent of 279 "common" enemies, less than 1/3 the old price.

A player dropping excessive experience orbs upon death may cause performance degradation in the game.

Issues relating to "Experience" or "Orb" are maintained on the bug tracker. Issues should be reported and viewed there.

• It was mentioned by Jeb in The World of Minecraft that he would have preferred the name "enchantment orbs" even though it is not in the code.^[18]
• If a player kills a mob by firing potions out of a dispenser, no experience is dropped.
• Using experience on enchanting or repairing does not decrease the score that is shown upon death.
• If the player gains experience points exceeding 238,609,311, the experience bar and level counter completely disappear from the HUD.^[19]
• The maximum XP that can be gained from the /xp command is 2,147,483,647 levels or 2³¹−1, the largest value representable by a 32-bit signed integer.
• The texture file for experience orbs contains an additional five orb sprites that are all identical to the size 3 sprite.
• The process of dropping orbs by base value prioritizing the highest applicable sizes is an example of the change-making problem. The coin system is the set of base values of orbs by size. It is the set {1, 3, 7, 17, 37, 73, 149, 307, 617, 1237, 2477}. It is not a canonical coin system.

• 👁 -32768–2
  
  -32768–2
• 👁 3–6
  
  3–6
• 👁 7–16
  
  7–16
• 👁 17–36
  
  17–36
• 👁 37–72
  
  37–72
• 👁 73–148
  
  73–148
• 👁 149–306
  
  149–306
• 👁 307–616
  
  307–616
• 👁 617–1236
  
  617–1236
• 👁 1237–2476
  
  1237–2476
• 👁 2477–32767
  
  2477–32767
• 👁 Experience bar background
  
  Experience bar background
• 👁 Experience bar progress
  
  Experience bar progress

• 👁 Raw file of the experience orb texture. Note the white sections, which are tinted accordingly green/yellow, the orange sections, which are tinted to a lesser degree, and the five unused orb sprites beyond size 11.
  
  Raw file of the experience orb texture. Note the white sections, which are tinted accordingly green/yellow, the orange sections, which are tinted to a lesser degree, and the five unused orb sprites beyond size 11.

• 👁 The first picture of the Orb. Notice, it is on the very left side of the page not the torch in the middle.
  
  The first picture of the Orb. Notice, it is on the very left side of the page not the torch in the middle.
• 👁 Notch later uploaded another version of the image, claiming the Orb was a "small error".
  
  Notch later uploaded another version of the image, claiming the Orb was a "small error".
• 👁 Orb in the first picture, enlarged.
  
  Orb in the first picture, enlarged.
• 👁 Different sized experience orbs dropped by a skeleton upon death.
  
  Different sized experience orbs dropped by a skeleton upon death.
• 👁 Lots of experience orbs blocking the player's view.
  
  Lots of experience orbs blocking the player's view.
• 👁 Coin change problem for orbs up to 12000 XP.
  
  Coin change problem for orbs up to 12000 XP.
• 👁 Coin change problem for orbs up to 2500XP.
  
  Coin change problem for orbs up to 2500XP.
• 👁 Coin change problem for orbs up to 500 XP.
  
  Coin change problem for orbs up to 500 XP.