Experience level

Your experience level in NetHack is a measure of the overall power of your hero and progress of your adventure. As you gain experience, you become better at both fighting and magic, but more difficult monsters are generated.

Experience points (XP) are the units that you accumulate to increase your level. Depending on the showexp option, you may see a display of your XP or only see your current experience level.

You start at level 1 and can reach a maximum level of 30. Monsters also have an experience level defined, but it can only be seen with a wand of probing, stethoscope, or Magicbane. These will also show your own level unless you are polymorphed. In that case, you could work backward from spell failure rates.

Effects

Gaining an experience level will have a number of effects on gameplay:

• Increases your maximum hit points
• Increases your maximum energy
• Increases your skill slots by one
• You may gain intrinsics, based on your role and experience level.
• Increases your chance of hitting in combat
• Increases your chance of successfully learning spells from spellbooks
• Decreases your spell failure rates
• Increases damage done by certain spells (e.g. magic missile)
• Increases difficulty of monsters generated
• Changes your rank, based on your role (and possibly gender)
• Increases your chance of converting an altar
• Increases your chance of successfully playing certain musical instruments
• Lawful characters at level 5 or higher can obtain Excalibur by dipping a long sword in a fountain.
• Characters at level 12 or higher can teleport at will if they have teleportitis.
• Characters at level 14 or higher can attempt the quest.

Your experience level has no direct effect on your attributes.

Gaining levels

There are several ways to gain an experience level, ranging from obvious to somewhat obscure:

• Experience points (mostly from killing monsters)
• Quaffing a blessed or uncursed potion of gain level
• Eating a wraith corpse
• Chance from incubus or succubus encounter
• Chance when polymorphing into your own race
• Chance of regaining a lost level when praying successfully at a coaligned altar
• Regaining a lost level when quaffing a potion of full healing. Up to half of your lost levels can be regained this way.
• Regaining a lost level when quaffing a potion of restore ability. All of your lost levels can be regained this way; all at once if the potion is blessed.

You may never gain more than one experience level at a time; killing a water demon at XP1:0 will only put you on 2:39, not 4:148 as might be expected. (You can, however, gain multiple experience levels in a single turn, as for example when a beginner character manages to destroy many creatures at once with an exploding gas spore.)

If you are already at level 30, experience points will not raise your level. Except for polymorph, effects which instantly increase your level can still increase maximum HP and energy at level 30.

Losing levels

The following effects can decrease your experience level:

• Level drain attacks
  • Monster attacks—vampire bite, wraith touch, or Demogorgon sting
  • Getting hit by the Staff of Aesculapius or Stormbringer
• Chance from foocubus encounter
• Chance when receiving a god's anger from incorrect prayer or sacrifice
• Chance when polymorphing into your own race

Drain resistance protects against all these except polymorph.

Having a level drained puts you a single experience point below the threshold of the level you just lost. If you gain any experience at all, you will regain a lost level, but only one level can be restored in this way. A noncursed potion of restore ability or blessed potion of full healing can be used to restore multiple levels. Full healing is inferior to restore ability, because it will only restore up to half of the levels that were lost. Regardless, care should be taken when fighting level drainers, particularly in graveyards where there are many around.

When losing a level, your HP and maximum HP are both decreased down to the level they were when you attained that earlier level, to a minimum of one. Energy and maximum energy work similarly, down to a minimum of zero. Being drained below experience level one is deadly, although an amulet of life saving can rescue you, leaving you at level one with no experience.

There are several uses for intentionally lowering your level; these are typically referred to as "drain for gain". Watch out for outdated strategy advice regarding this, though; several drain-for-gain exploits were removed in NetHack 3.6.

Experience points required per level

Several variants alter the experience requirements to reach each level; these are included in the tables below.

Total

Level	NetHack	SLASH'EM	dNetHack	FIQHack	SLEX
1	0	0	0	0	0
2	20	40	20	20	20
3	40	80	50	40	40
4	80	160	100	80	80
5	160	320	200	160	160
6	320	640	400	320	320
7	640	1,280	800	640	640
8	1,280	2,560	1,600	1,280	1,280
9	2,560	5,120	3,200	2,560	2,560
10	5,120	10,000	6,400	5,120	5,120
11	10,000	20,000	10,400	10,000	10,000
12	20,000	40,000	15,600	15,000	20,000
13	40,000	80,000	22,800	21,000	40,000
14	80,000	150,000	32,500	28,000	80,000
15	160,000	250,000	45,200	36,000	130,000
16	320,000	300,000	61,900	45,000	200,000
17	640,000	350,000	83,100	55,000	280,000
18	1,280,000	400,000	109,300	66,000	380,000
19	2,560,000	450,000	141,000	81,000	500,000
20	5,120,000	500,000	178,700	100,000	650,000
21	10,000,000	550,000	223,000	142,000	850,000
22	20,000,000	600,000	274,500	188,000	1,100,000
23	30,000,000	650,000	333,800	238,000	1,400,000
24	40,000,000	700,000	401,500	292,000	1,800,000
25	50,000,000	750,000	478,200	350,000	2,300,000
26	60,000,000	800,000	563,900	412,000	3,000,000
27	70,000,000	850,000	659,600	478,000	3,800,000
28	80,000,000	900,000	766,300	548,000	4,800,000
29	90,000,000	950,000	885,000	622,000	6,000,000
30	100,000,000	1,000,000	1,000,000	700,000	8,000,000

Per level

Level	NetHack	SLASH'EM	dNetHack	FIQHack	SLEX
1	0	0	0	0	0
2	20	40	20	20	20
3	20	40	30	20	20
4	40	80	50	40	40
5	80	160	100	80	80
6	160	320	200	160	160
7	320	640	400	320	320
8	640	1,280	800	640	640
9	1,280	2,560	1,600	1,280	1,280
10	2,560	4,880	3,200	2,560	2,560
11	4,880	10,000	3,600	4,880	4,880
12	10,000	20,000	4,000	5,000	10,000
13	20,000	40,000	5,000	6,000	20,000
14	40,000	70,000	6,000	7,000	40,000
15	80,000	100,000	7,000	8,000	50,000
16	160,000	50,000	9,000	9,000	70,000
17	320,000	50,000	11,000	10,000	80,000
18	640,000	50,000	13,000	11,000	100,000
19	1,280,000	50,000	15,000	15,000	120,000
20	2,560,000	50,000	17,000	19,000	150,000
21	4,880,000	50,000	20,000	42,000	200,000
22	10,000,000	50,000	23,000	46,000	250,000
23	10,000,000	50,000	26,000	50,000	300,000
24	10,000,000	50,000	29,000	54,000	400,000
25	10,000,000	50,000	32,000	58,000	500,000
26	10,000,000	50,000	36,000	62,000	700,000
27	10,000,000	50,000	40,000	66,000	800,000
28	10,000,000	50,000	44,000	70,000	1,000,000
29	10,000,000	50,000	48,000	74,000	1,200,000
30	10,000,000	50,000	55,000	78,000	2,000,000

The following graphs show the amount of XP required for each level in vanilla and SLASH'EM.

Messages

Welcome to experience level <x>.

You gained a level.

Aloha level <x>.

You lost a level as a Tourist.

Sayonara level <x>.

You lost a level as a Samurai.

Farvel level <x>.

You lost a level as a Valkyrie.

Fare thee well level <x>.

You lost a level as a Knight.

Goodbye level <x>.

You lost a level as any other role.

Monsters

{{main|Monster level]] Monsters also have experience levels, but they are largely a function of their maximum hit points. When a monster (usually a pet) kills another monster, it gains a few maximum hit points. Unlike the player, monsters do not gain current hit points when their max HP increases. Some monsters can grow up into more mature monsters by gaining experience levels.

Variants

SLASH'EM

Getting zapped with the drain life spell or a wand of draining drains an experience level. Using draw blood to make a potion of vampire blood also drains a level, but you are put at the minimum experience for the new level; killing a monster won't get the level back.

In SLASH'EM, a character usually gains enough experience to reach XL 30 naturally without farming. This advantage is slightly balanced by the higher experience requirement at low levels; most early characters will be about one level lower than their vanilla counterparts.

UnNetHack

In UnNetHack, Monks receive the message "Punardarsanaya level <x>" when losing a level.

External links

• HP and power starting values, level increases, and regeneration in NetHack 3.4.3

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