# Levels and XP

Everything you do in the world feeds one number.

## Where XP comes from

- **Gathering.** Every pull pays, and the scarce stuff pays more: straw 4, scrap 5, sap 6, and hide, water and frozen sap 8, the best of the nodes.
- **Crafting.** The **first time** you ever make a recipe pays **50**. Every repeat after that pays **5**. Every recipe you have not built yet is a discovery bonus sitting there.
- **Quests.** [Farmer Hodge's chain](/gluebook/gluniverse-quests) is 3,500 XP across four jobs, and your three [dailies](/gluebook/gluniverse-quests) pay 150 to 700 each.
- **Kills.** Scaled by the fight, see below. A shark pays 55 base, a stag 30, a wolf 24, a boar 22, a badger 12.
- **The games.** A paid [race](/gluebook/gluniverse-races) pays the winner **50 XP** and every other finisher 15. [Hide and seek](/gluebook/gluniverse-hide-and-seek) pays survivors and the top catcher 50, everyone else 15. Practice lanes pay nothing.
- **The tree, the slots and the tables.** Feeding the [Magic Tree](/gluebook/gluniverse-magic-tree) pays **100 XP** on your first five deposits a day. Every [casino](/gluebook/gluniverse-casino) spin pays **15**, and a win adds more, up to 1,000 on the big one. Every [poker](/gluebook/gluniverse-poker) hand you are dealt into pays 15, on the first 200 hands a day.

Two things pay **nothing**: trading, and wagered arena duels. A duel pays its pot, not levels.

## Staying alive pays too

Every 5 minutes of unbroken life adds **2%** to every XP grant, up to **double XP** at the cap. Die and the bonus resets to nothing. A long careful session literally levels faster than a reckless one.

## Kills pay by the gap

A kill is worth the mob's base XP, raised by **25% for every level of depth** it carries, then tilted by how fair the fight was. Killing something at or above your level pays **+10% per level of gap**, up to one and a half times. Killing something below you pays **10% less per level**, down to a floor of **15%**. Farming badgers at level 20 is not a plan.

## Beating a player pays too

A **PvP kill in the open arena pays XP**, and it is priced by exactly the same rule as everything else: the player you beat is worth **what a creature of their level is worth**. There is no separate PvP currency and no new curve to learn.

That means the level gap does the same work it does against animals. At level 20, beating another level 20 pays **138**, a level 19 pays **119**, and a fresh level 1 pays **4**. Beating someone above you pays the same kill-up bonus a tough animal does.

**The same opponent is worth less each time, on the day.** Your first win against someone pays full, the second half, the third a quarter, and from the sixth on that pairing pays nothing more until the day turns at midnight UTC. All told, one opponent is worth about **two kills' worth of XP per day**, however many times you put them down.

Both halves exist for the same reason: the arena is free to walk into, so without them two accounts could stand in the pit trading knockouts forever. With them, the only way to earn real XP is a **stream of different opponents near your own level**, which is just playing. For scale, an hour of two accounts trading knockouts pays a couple of hundred XP; an hour of honest hunting pays thousands.

Wagered duels are separate and unchanged. They pay their pot, not this.

## What levels give you

Every level pays **3 stat points** ([what each one does](/gluebook/gluniverse-stats)), and **one more bag slot every fifth level**. The ladder opens the world as you climb. The cap is **level 35**, raised from 25 on 4 August 2026: anyone who had banked XP at the old cap was paid at most one instant level, and climbs the rest honestly.

| Level | What opens |
|---|---|
| 3 | the 6x6 plots, and the bandage recipe |
| 5 | the supply observatory, a live readout of how much of every material is left, and the **[tent](/gluebook/gluniverse-tent)** with its repair kit |
| 6 | the waystones, most of the workshop bench, fishbone refining, and the flashlight at the shop |
| 7 | the 8x8 plots, and the portrait studio's free camera |
| 8 | the economy dailies start appearing in your three, and the [trading licence](/gluebook/gluniverse-trading-licence) chain's second rung. It is also the bar the world counts: every third **new** soul who reaches it unlocks another plot in [the Field](/gluebook/gluniverse-new-land) |
| 10 | the chem lab, wearing a lance or a long sword, and the licence chain's third rung |
| 11 | posting ideas on the [community vote board](/gluebook/gluniverse-community-vote) |
| 12 | the 10x10 plots, the personal storage chest, and the last rungs of the trading licence |
| 16 | deep water, **[the Ocean](/gluebook/gluniverse-ocean)**, the **ground slam**, and bone armor |
| 18 | the 12x12 plots |
| 19 | the level 2 stable upgrade |
| 20 | the sticker pack at the photo store |
| 21 | the GPS tracker, for map wide fast travel |
| 25 | the boombox at the shop |
| 28 | wearing a [relic](/gluebook/gluniverse-relics) |
| 29 | a second storage chest door |
| 30 | the daily gather allowance tops out at 1,650 |
| 35 | the cap |

**Level 16 is the big one.** Three separate things unlock on it, and it is the gate on the deepest content in the world.

**Selling is not on this list any more.** It used to open flat at level 15; since 15 August 2026 it is the [trading licence](/gluebook/gluniverse-trading-licence) quest chain instead, whose own steps carry the level gates above.

## What a level costs

Each level costs `100 x level^1.5` XP, rounded down. It starts gentle and does not stay that way.

| To reach | Total XP from zero |
|---|---|
| Level 3 | 382 |
| Level 6 | 2,819 |
| Level 10 | 11,102 |
| Level 12 | 17,912 |
| Level 15 | 31,993 |
| **Level 16** | **37,802** |
| Level 20 | 67,128 |
| Level 25 | 118,800 |
| Level 28 | 158,586 |
| Level 30 | 189,018 |
| **Level 35** | **279,592** |

Hodge's chain alone carries you past level 6. Level 16 is about an eighth of the whole climb, and everything after 25 is the long half: the last ten levels cost more than the first twenty five did.