Experience

Experience Orbs (EXP or XP for short) can be obtained by gathering experience orbs from mining, defeating mobs, breeding, trading, fishing, completing advancements,‌^{[Java Edition only]} and using grindstones and furnaces. Experience orbs gained during a player's life affects the player's score on the death screen. While having no direct effect on the player character, it can be used to enhance their equipment through enchanting, or by using an anvil to repair, rename, or combine enchantments on equipment. Experience orbs also recovers durability on items with Mending that are being worn or are in-hand.

Sources[]

Experience orbs can be gained from several different sources:

• From killing most mobs, which drop experience orbs along with any other items.
  • 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.
  • Deaths of zombified piglins always register as kills by the player they are targeting, regardless of whether that player ever touched that zombified piglin.^[1]
  • 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. Equipment picked up after spawning doesn't count.
  • Mining (destroying) a spawner block gives 15–43 points of experience orbs.
  • 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 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, which produces orbs where the parents are, along with the baby animal. Breaking eggs does not give experience.
• From fishing. The experience is awarded immediately 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 from experience orbs 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 level 7), and all of the other experience vanishes. If the gamerule keepInventory is set to true, the experience is kept even if the player dies.

Experience orbs[]

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 resources, 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 disappears.

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, from values 17 and up, 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 values of 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. Note that 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 only exist in the world via furnaces that have had a lot of traffic.

Experience 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 have the smallest texture of experience orb. While collecting them does not affect the player's experience bar in any way, they can deduct durability from a tool enchanted with Mending, provided the tool is already damaged prior to collection of the orbs.^[3]

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. Experience orbs can also stop minecarts.

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.

Experience amounts by source[]

Source	Experience
Passive mobs
All baby animals, Agent, Allay, Bat, NPC, Snow Golem, Tadpole, Villager, Wandering Trader	0
Axolotl, Camel, Cat, Chicken, Cod, Cow, Donkey, Fox, Frog,Glow Squid, Horse, Mooshroom, Ocelot, Parrot, Pig, Pufferfish, Rabbit, Salmon, Sheep, Skeleton Horse, Sniffer, Squid, Strider‌[BE only], Tropical Fish, Turtle, Zombie Horse	1–3
Strider‌[JE only]	1–2
Neutral mobs
All baby animals, Iron Golem	0
Baby Zombified Piglin	12 + 1–3 (per equipment)
Bee, Dolphin, Goat, Llama, Panda, Polar Bear, Trader Llama, Wolf	1-3
Cave Spider, Enderman, Piglin, Spider, Zombified Piglin	5 + 1–3 (per equipment)
Hostile mobs
Baby Zombie	12 + 1–3 (per equipment)
Blaze, Evoker, Elder Guardian, Guardian	10
Chicken Jockey[note 1]	12 (baby zombie) + 1–3 (per equipment) + 10 (hostile chicken)
Creeper, Drowned, Ghast, Hoglin, Husk, Illusioner, Phantom, Pillager, Shulker, Silverfish, Skeleton, Stray, Vex, Vindicator, Warden, Witch, Wither Skeleton, Zombie, Zombie Villager,Zoglin	5 + 1–3 (per equipment)
Ender Dragon	12,000 (500 if respawned with end crystals)
Endermite	3
Skeleton Horseman [note 1]	5 (skeleton) + 1–3 (per equipment) + 1-3 (skeleton horse)
Large Slime and Magma Cube[note 2]	4
Medium Slime and Magma Cube[note 2]	2
Small Slime and Magma Cube	1
Spider Jockey [note 1]	5 (skeleton) + 1–3 (per equipment) + 5 (spider)
Ravager, Piglin Brute	20
Wither	50
Other
Player	7 per level, up to 100
Mining blocks
Coal Ore	0–2
Nether Gold Ore	0–1
Diamond Ore, Emerald Ore	3–7
Lapis Lazuli Ore, Nether Quartz Ore	2–5
Redstone Ore	1–5
Monster Spawner	15–43
Sculk	1
Sculk Sensor, Sculk Shrieker, Sculk Catalyst, Calibrated Sculk Sensor	5
Smelting/Cooking
Ancient Debris	2
Cactus‌[JE only][4], Diamond Ore, Emerald Ore, Gold Ore, Nether Gold Ore	1
Copper Ore, Iron Ore, Raw Iron, Raw Gold, Raw Copper, Redstone Ore	0.7[note 3]
Clay, Potato, Raw Beef, Raw Chicken, Raw Cod, Raw Mutton, Raw Porkchop, Raw Rabbit, Raw Salmon	0.35[note 3]
Clay	0.3[note 3]
Lapis Lazuli Ore, Nether Quartz Ore, Cactus‌[BE only]	0.2[note 3]
Wet Sponge, Wood	0.15[note 3]
Chorus Fruit, Coal Ore, Cobblestone, Stone Dyed Terracotta, Netherrack, Sand, Stone Bricks, Basalt Iron or Golden Sword, Iron Tools, Golden Tools, Iron Armor, Golden Armor, Chain Armor Iron or Golden Horse Armor, Kelp, Sea Pickle	0.1[note 3]
Completing Challenges‌[Java Edition only]
Return to Sender, Great View From Up Here, Sniper Duel, Bullseye, A Complete Catalogue	50
Two Birds, One Arrow	65
Arbalistic	85
Subspace Bubble, Uneasy Alliance, Cover Me in Debris, A Furious Cocktail, Hero of the Village, Monsters Hunted, Two by Two, A Balanced Diet, Serious Dedication	100
Hot Tourist Destinations, Adventuring Time	500
How Did We Get Here?	1,000
Other
Bottle o' Enchanting	3–11
Trading with villagers	3–6 (8–11 if the villagers are willing to breed; not working since 1.14)
Breeding animals	1–7
Catching Fish	1–6

Leveling up[]

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): ${\displaystyle \sqrt{\mathsf{total}+9}-3}$

At levels 17–31 (totals 353 to 1507): ${\displaystyle \frac{81}{10} + \sqrt{\frac{2}{5} \left( \mathsf{total} - \frac{7839}{40} \right)}}$

At levels 32+ (totals 1508+): ${\displaystyle \frac{325}{18} + \sqrt{\frac{2}{9} \left( \mathsf{total} - \frac{54215}{72} \right) }}$

Useful numbers[]

• To get from level 0 to level 30 requires 1395 experience.
• To get 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 20.
• The maximum level required for enchanting 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.
• The maximum level of XP that players can get legitimately 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.^[5]

Score[]

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.

Sounds[]

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

Bedrock Edition:

Data values[]

ID[]

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

Entity data[]

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

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

Video[]

History[]

Java Edition Classic
0.24_SURVIVAL_TEST					A precursor to the experience system was the point system added in this version.
Java Edition Indev
February 17, 2010					XP levels are mentioned by Notch.
Java Edition Beta
June 11, 2011					In an image of the new lighting system, a small spherical shape can be seen on the left side of the screen. The orb was yellow due to a warm light from a torch.
June 12, 2011					Notch claimed the previous image had an error and posted a new one, this time, without a yellow sphere.
June 14, 2011					In a later tweet, Notch showed a picture of a Beta 1.7 change-list. Although it was completely blurred out and was, at first, thought of as a joke,[6] Notch later stated that one of the pictures with the new lighting system and the change list had a secret in them.
					One place that people discussed it was on the Minecraft Forums, where it was discovered that the tabs at the top of the change list that were partly covered, could be decoded based on the two-pixel tall pattern available in the image.[7]
					After a user named "tmcaffeine" successfully decoded it, the tabs read: ExperienceOrb.java, changelist.txt, Level.java, Tile.java, HugeMushroomTile.java, HugeMushroomFeature.java, and RandomLevelSource(cut).[8]
1.8		Pre-release			Experience was originally revealed by Jeb during an interview with Minecraft Forum.[9] Jeb released a picture of the 1.8 GUI list, which shows the experience bar, among other things.
					[verify] Added experience.
					There is currently no measurable benefit for gaining experience orbs and levels.
		Pre-release 2			Experience orbs no longer render as translucent.[10]
Java Edition
1.0.0		Beta 1.9 Prerelease			For this version only, as a test, experience is gained when the player is jumping. However, experience still does not do anything.
		Beta 1.9 Prerelease 2			Removed the ability of gaining experience when jumping.
					The amount of experience orbs dropped by a player on death is now limited.[is this the correct version?]
					The score the player gains now appears correctly on "Game over!" screen. Each experience orb is worth one Score Point.
		Beta 1.9 Prerelease 4			The ability to spend experience levels for enchanting items has been added.
					The experience level number is now shown, and each level is harder to get to than the previous one.
		Beta Sound Update			Experience orbs used to make a lower pitch of the collecting items sound, but now Experience orbs make a twinkling sound when collected.
1.2.1		12w04a			Added bottles o' enchanting, an item that the player can gain experience from.
		12w05a			The need for experience when enchanting in creative mode has been removed. Due to this, bottles o' enchanting are now only useful in adventure maps.
					Experience requirements have been changed, in this update.
1.3.1		12w22a			Players can now get experience from mining, breaking mob spawners and smelting in a furnace. A very large amount of experience can be collected while mining, sometimes into the hundreds of levels.
					Coal, lapis lazuli, redstone, diamond and emerald ore now give players experience points.
					Iron and gold ore now instead give experience when they are smelted.
					The cost to gain each level has been made constant, at 17 experience points per level.
					Only level 30 is required to get the maximum level of enchanting.
		12w23a			XP levels now cost 17 experience orbs each until level 16, after which the cost per level grows linearly, and the total XP grows quadratically (incorrectly stated "exponentially" by Mojang). However, it is easier to get to 30 levels than it was before 12w22a.
1.4.2		12w38a			Leveling up now makes a twinkly bell sound, similar to, but longer than the experience orb sound.
		12w39a			Experience levels can now be used in commands by typing, for example, @a[lm=4,l=7], choosing everyone between 4 and 7 levels inclusive. This is normally used in a command block.
		12w41a			Added anvils, which allows for the repairing and combining of items, at the cost of experience levels.
					The level-up sound from collecting experience now plays every 5 levels, and is shortened from to .
1.6.1		13w21a			Experience levels no longer appear in creative mode. Previously, experience would be hidden, but experience levels would show.
1.8		14w02a			The changes to the enchanting system mean that leveling up now requires more experience.
					The texture of experience orbs has been changed.
1.9		15w46a			Experience is now collected at the feet, meaning that if a large amount of experience is collected, it no longer blocks the player's view.[11]
1.11		16w32a			The entity ID of experience orbs has been changed from XPOrb to xp_orb
1.13		18w19a			Experience orbs now float up in water.
		pre5			The experience orb ID has been changed to experience_orb.
1.15		19w39a			Experience orbs now appear translucent again.
		19w41a			Experience orbs no longer appear translucent.
		19w46a			Experience orbs now appear immediately when a mob is killed (similar to loot), instead of when its corpse disappears.
					The rendering of experience orbs has been changed. They have become translucent again.
1.17		20w45a			Experience orbs now sometimes merge when in large quantities.
					Experience orbs no longer follow dead players.
Pocket Edition Alpha
v0.12.1		build 1			Added experience.
		build 8			Experience orbs now burn in fire or lava.
Pocket Edition
1.1.0		alpha 1.1.0.0			The entity ID of experience orbs has been changed from xporb to xp_orb.
Bedrock Edition
1.14.0		beta 1.14.0.1			The amount of experience dropped by animals now matches Java Edition.
1.16.100		beta 1.16.100.51			Experience orbs now float up in water.
Legacy Console Edition
TU7	CU1	1.0	Patch 1	1.0.1	Added experience.
					Experience is collectable from smelting and/or mining ores, breeding and killing mobs.
New Nintendo 3DS Edition
0.1.0					Added experience.
1.1.06					Experience is now collectable from smelting and/or mining ores, as well as trading.

• 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 Classic (including the Survival Test versions which 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.

Issues[]

Issues relating to "Experience" or "Orb" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Trivia[]

• 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 which is shown upon death.
• If the player gains too many experience points, such as 1 trillion, the experience bar and level counter completely disappear from the HUD. This appears to occur around level 32,767 or 2¹⁵−1, the largest value representable by a 16-bit signed integer.^[12]
• The maximum XP that can be gained from the /experience command is 2,147,483,647 levels or 2³¹−1, the largest value representable by a 32-bit signed integer and by Java's int type.
• The maximum level is 238,609,311 before the experience bar disappears altogether.
• A special XP sound plays each time the player reaches a level that is a multiple of 5.
• Despite being widely dropped by mobs and blocks and being obtainable from fishing, experience orbs cannot be configured using loot tables.
• The texture file for experience orbs contains an additional five orb sprites which are all identical to the size 3 sprite. Their purpose is unknown, it is likely that they are just placeholder sprites in the texture.

Gallery[]

• 

  -32768-2

• 

  3-6

• 

  7-16

• 

  17-36

• 

  37-72

• 

  73-148

• 

  149-306

• 

  307-616

• 

  617-1236

• 

  1237-2476

• 

  2477-32767

Screenshots[]

• 

  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".

• 

  Orb in the first picture, enlarged.

• 

  The Beta 1.7 "change-list" (the Adventure Update was supposed to be Beta 1.7).

• 

  The decoded "change-list".

• 

  Different sized experience orbs dropped by a skeleton upon death.

• 

  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.

• 

  Lots of experience orbs blocking the player's view.

References[]