Experience Points

Experience Points (EXP or XP) are small, glowing orbs that, when gathered, can total up to experience levels are requires to enchanting or for repairing items in an anvil. The player can obtain experience orbs by killing mobs and players, breeding, smelting, fishing, mining ores, using a grindstone, and using bottles o' enchanting.

The orb itself.

Large mobs that are difficult to kill, such as the Ender Dragon and the Wither, will drop a lot of experience points when killed. Experience points will gravitate towards a player, but they will move slowly if a player is farther away. They will move towards a player quickly if a player is closer. The experience bar can be found at the bottom of the screen, and it's above a player's Hotbar. The experience bar will gradually fill up with glowing green sections every time experience orbs are collected.

Experience

Experience Point Source Chart

Source	Experience
Animals
Chicken, Cow, Mushroom Cow, Ocelot (cat), Pig, Sheep, Squid, Wolf (dog),	1–3
Bats and All Baby Animals	0
Golems
Iron Golem, Snow Golem	0
Monsters
Cave Spider, Creeper, Enderman, Ghast, Silverfish, Skeleton, Spider Wither Skeleton, Zombie, Zombie Pigman	5
Slime (Large), Magma Cubes (Large)	4
Slime (Small), Magma Cubes (Small)	2
Slime (Tiny), Magma Cubes (Tiny)	1
Spider Jockey	5 for spider, 5 for Skeleton
Blaze	10
NPCs
Villagers	0
Witch	5
Bosses
Ender Dragon	First: 12,000 Subsequent: 500
Wither	50
Mining blocks
Coal Ore	0–2
Diamond Ore, Emerald Ore	3–7
Nether Quartz Ore, Lapis Lazuli Ore	2–5
Redstone Ore	1–5
Monster Spawner (With Monster)	15–43
Smelting/Cooking
Gold Ore, Emerald Ore, Diamond Ore	1.0
Iron Ore, Redstone Ore	0.7
Potato, Raw Beef, Raw Chicken, Raw Fish, Raw Porkchop	0.35
Clay	0.3
Cactus	0.2
Wood	0.15
Sand, Coal, Netherrack, Cobblestone	0.1
Other
Bottle 'O Enchanting	3–11
Breeding animals	1–7
Catching Raw Fish	1–3

History

Experience points were added to Minecraft during the first part of the Adventure Update. They were originally revealed by Jeb during an interview. Experience can be obtained by gathering experience orbs from defeated mobs and players, as well as from smelting, mining, and from breeding, bottles o' enchanting, and fishing.

Benefits

During Beta 1.8, there was no measurable benefit to gaining experience orbs and levels. They were probably just for display.

As of Beta 1.9 pre-release 3, experience levels are indicated by a number above the experience bar which will increase by one every time the bar is filled.

The ability to spend experience levels for the enchantment of items with an Enchantment Table was added in the Beta 1.9 pre-release 3, but it had no actual effect until Beta 1.9 pre-release 4.

Tips

• When using experience points to enchant tools and armor, a player is benefited from having lower experience levels as it is very hard to go up in experience levels when a player is at higher levels.

Sounds

• This sound is played for every five levels attained.
• This sound is played when an experience orb is collected.

Trivia

• In Beta 1.8 pre-release 1, when a player died, they dropped all of their experience orbs individually. This created a problem with the retrieval of drops if a player had accumulated a large sum of experience due to the extremely large amount of orb items created at a specific point. On SMP servers, this could be enough to crash a server.
• In Beta 1.9 pre-release, a player gained experience from jumping. This was part of the code left in by Jeb for the testing experience.
• When a player dies and they come back to their point of death, they will receive about 40-60% of their original XP, but the maximum they can have when they die is 100 experience points.
• Sometimes, in multiplayer, experience orbs will orbit a player.
• At their death, withers and the ender dragon will drop noticeably large orbs, along with dozens of regular ones as they are bosses. Withers will drop fewer experience points than the ender dragon does.
• Single-player maps brought into multiplayer will cause a bug where a player will have their experience reset.
• Experience points are abbreviated to XP.
• The maximum level of experience is 2,147,483,647 (2³¹-1).
• The colors of the experience orbs are either green or yellow.
• In Minecraft: Pocket Edition, the max level a player can reach is 24,791. However, achieving this level is impossible unless a player uses the /xp command.
• Unlike some other games in multiplayer mode, both players do not both benefit from the same XP orb.
• Experience orbs can activate wooden pressure plates, and because they will follow a nearby player even when there is a block between it and the player, it can be used to make Redstone contraptions.