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The experience, E, required to achieve level n from level 0 is:

E = 3.5 * n * (n + 1)

That's the formulae I found on the wiki. So, If I replace N with 50 my answer for the amount of experience is 8925.

Well, every hostile mob in the game gives 5 experience upon death (also wiki sourced info). That being said, 8925 divided by 5 is 1785.

Something can't be right, I've reached level 50 many times thus far, and there is no way I've killed that many mobs per level 50 obtained...

What gives?

Edit: Ok, Now I'm 110% sure something is horribly wrong. When I checked at the time the comments were all made on this post my in game statistics recorded 2,160 Mob kills. I just checked again, out of curiosity and it now states I have 5,317 Mob Kills. Thats over 2,000 kills somehow gained pretty much overnight. Somethings seriously not right, is the statistics page bugged?

Second Edit: Ok apparently the statistics page will never be correct for me, partially because it changes if I play offline (which I do about 70% of the time) and mostly because it doesn't collect its data for each exclusive world individually. So short of manually counting each monster I kill I dont think this question will ever be answerable unless I completely delete all my statistics folders and create a single game for the sole purpose of figuring this out. If someone has any ideas other than that I'd love to hear them.

Third Edit: The bounty description is a lie, I am playing Vanilla SSP not SMP.

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Doing right, you mean? I recently died and lost about 25 levels of experience before I could spend them on enchanting, so this is relevant to my interests. –  andronikus Jan 20 '12 at 13:29
@andronikus: The phrase about 'doing wrong' was in reference to maybe I had mis-calculated the math somehow, but if your having trouble leveling up check out my answer to this question. gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/39458/… –  Ender Jan 20 '12 at 13:33
Yes, I found that a few minutes later. Excellent setup. –  andronikus Jan 20 '12 at 13:38
Could it be the first bug listed here? minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Experience –  bwarner Jan 20 '12 at 13:47
Im fairly sure thats a no, as I'm not ever gaining entire levels at once. It actually takes me at least 2 hours of contant grinding to make level 50, it just doesnt take me 1700+ kills, which, the more I think about it, doesnt make sense. Seriously, over 1700 kills? thats ridiculous. somethings wrong in the math somewhere. –  Ender Jan 20 '12 at 14:07

3 Answers 3

up vote 13 down vote accepted

Where did the equation E = 3.5 * n * (n + 1) come from? I see that you say it came from the wiki, but I am unable to find it on there. I do see:

For any given level, the experience, E, required to achieve the next level n+1 from the current level, n is: E = 7 + roundDown(n * 3.5)

Thus, if you were level 0 you would require 7 experience to achieve level 1, which is not the case with E = 3.5 * n * (n + 1). To advance to level 2, you would need 10 more experience, a total of 17, not 14 more experience, with a total of 21. I hope that equation is not correct (because I just spent an hour on what I think is the correct one), and that would explain why you don't have to kill 1785 hostile mobs before level 50.

I've come up with E = 7n + round(3.5(.5(n^2)-.5n)) - n/4)

  • E is the total experience needed to reach level n.

  • "7n" accounts for the constant 7 experience required to reach every next level. This is the only experience you must collect to reach level 1. E = 7 + roundDown(n * 3.5)

  • The ".5(n^2)-.5n" provides the number of 3.5 increments between level 0 and level n, but ignores the rounding down. Because the rounding down is not yet accounted for, I have "-n/4" (without this, the equation says you require one more experience than reality every 4 levels). E = 7 + roundDown(n * 3.5) Ex. Between levels 0 and 1 the number of required 3.5 experience increments is 0. Between 1 and 2 the number of 3.5 increments is 1. Between levels 2 and 3 the number of increments is 2. Between levels 0 and 3 the number of increments is 3. 0 + 1 + 2 = 3 3*3.5 is 10.5, and then 7*3 is 21. 10.5 + 21 is 31.5

  • The "round()" rounds up some E values ending in .75 that result from the "-n/4". 31.5 - 3/4 = 30.75 round(30.75)= 31 And so you need 31 experience to reach level 3 from level 0.

With this equation, you require 4625 experience to reach level 50, which /5 is 925.

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The formula you found is new. As a matter of fact the entire wiki page has drastically changed from what it used to display when this question was originally asked. It's quite possible the reason behind my confusion was I was basing all of my hypothesis on incorrect, un-updated data from an out-of-date wiki article. (-.-) –  Ender Feb 13 '12 at 9:26
I just checked the history of the wiki page, and that seems to be exactly what happened. It's very likely you will be receiving the accepted answer bounty for this question, but first we must wait and see what others post. I can't imagine anyone topping this answer though. Good Job! –  Ender Feb 13 '12 at 9:33
Thanks. So 925 mobs sounds right? The equation was entirely from me thinking through what is provided on the current wiki page, so I hope that was all correct. –  TitanicKlaxon Feb 13 '12 at 12:18
Yea that sounds about right. I dont count, but I have a general idea of what I accomplish in a cycle between level 0 and level 50, and that seems correct. I KNEW it wasnt some 1700 freakin mobs, thats just ridiculous. –  Ender Feb 13 '12 at 13:00
I did a whole bunch of tests independently, including some source code investigation, only to come back to find that someone else has beaten me to the chase! Either way, I can confirm that this data is correct. –  Alexis King Feb 14 '12 at 1:36

Are you killing slimes? Slimes drop far more XP than other monsters because they drop XP each time they split, with each smaller slime also dropping XP upon split/death.

Do you kill other players? They also drop more than 5 XP ;)

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that is an excellent point, and yes, I do kill slimes occasionally, but not nearly at the rate that would be neccessary to explain the situation. –  Ender Jan 20 '12 at 16:45
@Ender Do you pvp? –  Yamikuronue Jan 20 '12 at 16:47
Nope, this question pertains to a non-modded SSP game. –  Ender Jan 20 '12 at 16:57
@Ender Well, that about exhausts my non-bug ideas, unless you've gone the way of your namesake and rigged up a redstone mass extinction weapon of some kind. –  Yamikuronue Jan 20 '12 at 17:00
Shhhhhh! YOU SAID YOU WEREN'T GOING TO TELL ANYONE! D: –  Ender Jan 20 '12 at 18:38

You can receive experience from mining as well. Do you mine a lot?

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This question was from LONG before the update that inluded exp from mining, and it also has been long solved and answered, if you cared enough to read. –  Ender Jun 17 '13 at 18:58
@Ender while that may be true, for posterity, it doesn't hurt to leave it here. It might not specifically help you, but that's alright -- you can just choose not to accept it. –  Schism Jun 17 '13 at 19:10

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