Skills and experience

There is no single character level to grind. Every skill keeps its own experience total, and its level follows from that total.

The skills

Six are combat skills: Dexterity, Strength, Defense, Vitality, Ranged and Sorcery. The other ten are Occultism, Mining, Fishing, Woodcutting, Cooking, Forging, Arcana, Survival, Warden and Artisan.

Each skill page lists everything that trains it and everything it unlocks.

Levels

Levels run from 1 to 100. The table at the bottom gives the total experience you need to be each level, so the numbers only ever go up.

• Level 2 takes 100 experience. Below 100 you are always level 1.
• Level 100 takes 10,000,000. Experience stops there; anything past it is not kept.
• The curve is steep. Level 50 needs 95,818, which is only 0.96% of the way to level 100.

Where experience comes from

A few details worth knowing:

• Combat experience is rounded down per hit, so a hit for 1 damage gives 1 experience, and a bow hit for 1 damage gives none (1.8 split two ways is 0.9 each).
• Damage prevented covers everything that took a bite out of the hit: resistance, your Defense level, armor and blocking. Blocked damage counts only half when you block with a shield.
• Healing that tops you up past full counts only the part you actually needed.
• In a party every experience award is multiplied by 1.03, rounded down. See party play.
• A world can set its own experience rate. The numbers on this wiki are for the normal rate.

Boosts and effective level

Gear, potions and other effects can raise a skill above its real level, either by a flat amount or by a percentage. The boosted number is your effective level:

effective level = real level x (1 + percentage bonus), rounded up, plus the flat bonus, and never less than 1

Your effective level is what the game uses for damage, maximum health (Vitality), maximum stamina (Dexterity) and gathering speed.

Requirements are stricter for combat skills. When an item, recipe, gathering spot or quest asks for Dexterity, Strength, Defense, Vitality, Ranged or Sorcery, it checks your real level. For the other eleven skills it checks your effective level, so a boost can get you to a recipe or a node a few levels early.

Combat level

Your combat level is the average of your six combat skills, rounded down. Real levels only, boosts do not count. Someone with 10 in four combat skills and 1 in the other two is combat level 7 (42 divided by 6).

Creatures show a level too. Many have a fixed one; the rest use the same average of their own combat skills.

Level-up bonuses

Three skills give you something the moment they level:

• Vitality: 10 health for every level gained, up to your new maximum.
• Dexterity: 2 stamina for every level gained, and 1 more when you reach 50 and again at 100.
• Occultism: 15 occultic charge for every level gained, 40 more at level 50 and 75 more at level 100.

The experience table

Total experience needed to be each level, and how much more the next level takes.