Experience



Experience, commonly abbreviated as Exp or XP, 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 XP (experience) by training skills, completing quests, doing activities, and finishing random events.

Gaining Experience
Experience in a skill is obtained by performing a task related to that skill. Experience can also be gained by performing a task unrelated to the skill, such as completing a quest, participating in a random event, or playing an activity or miniquest.


 * When a player successfully cooks a piece of food, they gain pre-determined amounts of Cooking experience. (E.g. if a player cooks a lobster, rather than burning it, the player gains 120 Cooking experience.)
 * When a player rubs a lamp from a random event gift, the player gains experience equal to the level of the skill they select times 10. (E.g. a player's Woodcutting level is 50; they rub the lamp, choose Woodcutting, and receive 500 Woodcutting experience.)
 * When a player reads the Book of knowledge from the Surprise Exam random event, they receive to their chosen skill their current level times 15. (E.g. if a player's Attack level is 50, they would receive 750 experience from reading the book if they chose Attack.)

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 gathering and combat 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 is 5 billion (5,000,000,000) when a player has 200 million experience in all 25 skills. Currently, no player has reached this.

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.

The experience gain rates one may obtain varies very much between skills. For example, with 99 agility it is difficult to get much over 70k agility xp per hour without brawling gloves, while making summoning pouches can give over 800k summoning xp per hour.

Exponential Growth
The amount of experience needed for the next level increases by approximately 10% each level. In fact, as a player's level increases, the growth factor rapidly approaches $$2^{1/7}$$, or approximately 1.10409 (which is an increase of 10.409%). Note that a 10.409% growth factor may seem slow, but, as with all exponential growth, it expands rapidly to a massive 13,034,431 for level 99, and then to 104,273,163 experience needed for level 120.

The varying amount of experience needed to get from one level to another can cause some surprising experience rates to get from one level to another. For example, getting from level 98 to 99 requires approximately the same experience from level 1 to level 75. However, it is worth noting that higher level activities in many cases award more experience than lower level ones, so getting from level 98 to 99 will likely not take as long as getting from level 1 to 75. However, the experience per hour rates still usually increase linearly when moving to a faster training method.

In general, if the difference between two levels is x, then the experience at the higher level will be approximately $$2^{x/7}$$ times the experience at the lower level. In particular, the experience doubles every 7 levels, triples every 11 levels, quadruples every 14 levels, and increases 10-fold every 23 levels.



It is now 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 levels will not affect either of the levels.

Attack, Strength, Defence, Ranged
To calculate the experience gain for combat skills above, a simple equation can be used:
 * Experience earned $$ = \frac {d} {2.5} $$
 * where d = damage dealt to an opponent

The resulting experience for this equation, as well as for constitution and the damage section of the magic experience formula, is then multiplied by a number unique to each monster (which is usually 1, in which case the formulas can be used as is), which is why some monsters give different amounts of experience. For example, monsters in random events have an experience multiplier of 0, and thus yield no combat experience. On the other hand, some bosses have a multiplier of greater than 1, with Nex giving double the usual amount of combat experience.

Magic
To calculate the experience gain for the casting combat spells in Magic, another simple equation can be used:
 * Experience earned $$ = b\times n+\frac {d} {5} $$
 * where b = base experience of the combat spell cast
 * and n = number of spells cast
 * and d = damage dealt to an opponent in casting spells

For curses and other spells not dealing any damage, treat d as 0.

Constitution
To calculate the experience gain for Constitution, the following simple equation can be used:
 * Experience earned $$ = \frac {d} {7.5} $$
 * where d = damage dealt to an opponent

Monster Experience
An upper bound to the number of monsters required to level up a combat skill can be calculated as follows:
 * Number of monsters $$ = \left\lceil\displaystyle\frac {E} {0.4 \times L}\right\rceil$$
 * where E = experience required to level up
 * and L = monster's number of life points

Note that this only gives an upper bound because monsters may recover some life points during the battle, in which case more than L life points are dealt.

This formula also assumes that you are the only one dealing damage to the monster in question.

Equations
The equation below calculates exactly the minimum experience needed for a given level:


 * Experience Required $$ = \left \lfloor \frac{1}{4}\displaystyle\sum_{n = 1}^{L-1} \left\lfloor n + 300 \times 2^{n/7} \right\rfloor \right\rfloor $$, where L = current skill level
 * Note that $$\lfloor x\rfloor$$ means the greatest integer less than or equal to x.

A Javascript implementation of this formula: /*integer level: calculate the required experience for this level*/ function getXPByLevel(level){ /*Start at xp=0; start counting from n=1 to n=level to calculate the required experience*/ for(var xp=0,n=1; n<level; n++){ /*Implementation of the formula*/ xp += Math.floor(n + 300*Math.pow(2, n/7)); }   /*The function returns the calculated required experience*/ return Math.floor(xp/4); }

Copy and paste the following code in the address bar if you want to calculate the required experience for a certain level. You can bookmark it for later use as well javascript:void(function getXPByLevel(level){for(var xp=0,n=1;n<level;n++)xp+=Math.floor(n+300*Math.pow(2,n/7));alert("Level "+level+" requires "+Math.floor(xp/4)+" experience.")})(prompt("Enter the level of which you want to know the experience.","99"))

The above equation can be approximated with minimal rounding error as:


 * Approximate Experience Required $$ = \sum_{n = 1} ^ {L - 1} \left( \frac {n} {4} + 75 \times 2 ^ {n/7} \right) $$, where L = skill level

This approximation can then be used to find the maximum additional experience required to level up:


 * Additional Experience Required to Level Up $$ = \frac {L} {4} + 75 \times 2 ^ {L/7} $$, where L = current level

Example
You want to find the experience that it would take to level up from 28 Strength to 29 Strength:


 * Additional Experience Required to Level Up $$ = \frac { \left( 28 \right) } {4} + 75 \times 2 ^ { \left( 28 \right) /7} = 7 + 75 \times 2 ^ {4} = 7 + 75 \times 16 = 1207 $$

So it would take at most 1207 experience points to get from level 28 to level 29.

Table
The following table shows the relationship between level, the experience required for that level, and the experience difference from the previous level:

Levels 100-120
On 12 April 2010, Jagex added the Dungeoneering skill, which has a maximum level of 120, rather than the maximum for previous skills, which is 99.

Graph


For higher levels, to raise 23 levels, about 10 times the original experience is needed.

Also, 200,000,000 experience would put the level at approximately 56.535% between level 126 and level 127 in any skill.

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

One off

 * Quests and related one off events award a total of XP
 * Achievement diaries offer a total of XP, 200,000 XP for the Ardougne elite tasks alone.
 * Opening the balloon system up gives 8,000 firemaking XP
 * Chompy champion gives 30,000 ranged XP

Experience awards from random events

 * Lamps award experience equal to 10 times the level of the chosen skill, giving 10-1200 experience.
 * Book of Knowledge award experience equal to 15 times the level of the chosen skill, giving 15-1800 experience.

Distractions and Diversions
(You can gain more penguin points per week upon the completion of the Cold War quest and The Hunt for Red Raktuber)
 * The maximum experience you can gain from the circus a week is 52,922.5 (around 17,710 Ranged, 25,006 Magic and 10,531 Agility).
 * From Shattered Heart up to 9,703 per non-combat skill per week for an absolute maximum of 0 XP per week, and 0 XP over the time to build a full statue.
 * From Tears of Guthix the maximum seen is about 12,000 per seven days
 * From Penguin Points points x 25 x skill level per week (maximum 48,000xp for finding all penguins and using the points on level 120 dungeoneering).
 * From the Troll Defence distraction and diversion.

Boosts

 * Various sacred clay and other degradable items will give XP boosts, generally they require more time to earn than is saved, but might make financial sense.
 * A Penance Horn from Barbarian Assault can be charged by playing and used to get double XP in either Agility, Firemaking or Mining.
 * Over doubled Smithing XP smelting gold bars with the Goldsmithing gauntlets.
 * Extra Woodcutting XP can be earned by wearing the lumberjack clothing.
 * Extra Mining XP can be earned by wearing the Golden mining suit.
 * Extra Firemaking XP can be earned by wearing the Flame Gloves and Ring of Fire
 * Using Firelighters from clue scrolls will grant an extra 10 XP per log. NOTE: Firelighters can only be used with normal logs.
 * When burning logs, you can use your Pyrelord or Forge Regent to light the logs for 10 additional firemaking XP. NOTE - Both Familiars will increase the time it takes to light each log, meaning in virtually all cases it is not worth it.
 * Runecrafting gloves obtained from Fist of Guthix provide double experience when crafting air runes, water runes or earth runes.
 * Swordfish gloves provide 100 extra XP when fishing swordfish.
 * Shark gloves provide 100 extra XP when fishing shark.
 * Wearing a Seer's headband 2, 3 or 4 gives 10 bonus XP per log when chopping maple trees.
 * Saradomin's blessing, Guthix's gift, and Zamorak's favour provide 10% xp boosts to Farming, Herblore, and Hunter, respectively, when participating in the Herblore Habitat.
 * Urns provide bonus experience while training Cooking, Fishing, Mining, Prayer, Smithing, and Woodcutting.

Special events

 * From 12 March to 15 March 2010, from 3 September to 6 September 2010 and from 11 March to 13 March 2011, there were events called Bonus XP weekend.
 * The Hati paws, available for a limited time in the beginning of 2011, give additional combat experience to the wearer.

Trivia

 * If levels were capped at the point where 2,147,483,647 experience was reached in that skill, you could get up to level 150, needing ~2,034million experience, at which point you would be ~54% of the way to level 151, which you would need ~2,245million experience to acquire.
 * Experience is capped at 200,000,000 because experience is handled with an imaginary tenths place, which means the real experience would look like 200,000,000.0 and is stored as 2,000,000,000 (2 billion). Since the max a 32 Bit integer can hold is 2.14 billion, it was cleaner to round it down to 2 billion (shown as 200m after the invisible decimal place) for the cap.
 * The experience counter that was added to RuneScape recently will count any experience gained in combat for your Constitution level first, then the experience for whatever Combat levels you are training. It will "fall" from the counter at the same time, but if you watch closely you will see it make the short Constitution xp jump first, then that for other experience.
 * The equation for the maximum integer size in RuneScape is 2³¹-1, which equals 2,147,483,647. Because Runescape uses 32 Bit (java standard integer) integers at the moment, if RuneScape was to switch to 64 bit integers (java long) the maximum value would be 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (9.2 quintillion on the short scale, or 9.2 trillion on the long scale). Should this happen, no one would be able to achieve a "Max Cash" pile anymore as this would be effectively impossible to achieve, and having such an amount of exp would be equivalent to that of level 374.
 * In the past, while using ranged attacks, you could see the experience gain from your attack (by hovering your mouse over the skill) before the hitsplat occurred allowing people to predict the amount of damaged done before the animation is seen. It is still possible to do this if you have the Experience Counter open.
 * The total amount of experience in any given skill approximately doubles every seven levels (This doesn't remain accurate for skills below level 20, since starting with 0 experience takes a while to adjust).