Experience



Experience can be obtained by gathering Experience Orbs from mining, defeated mobs and players, breeding, fishing, and using Furnaces. Experience is used for Enchanting.

Behavior
Gathering experience points increases the player's experience level by gradually filling a bar on the bottom of the screen until a new level is achieved when the bar is full. When the player dies, they drop 7 times their level as experience orbs, up to a maximum of 100 points (enough to reach level 6). All the other experience vanishes.

Experience Orbs will not drop from a mob unless the mob is killed by a player or damaged by the player and then killed by other means; therefore ordinary mob grinders cannot be used for farming experience (although grinders can be designed to funnel monsters to a holding location, and wear them down to one-hit kills). Experience orbs will "float" or glide toward the player if they are 2-3 blocks away.

Experience can come from mining coal, lapis lazuli, redstone, emeralds, diamonds, smelting smoothstone, glass, any ore (such as iron or gold), cooking food and fishing. The experience orbs will be picked up along with the coal, redstone, emeralds, and diamonds but the experience given from smelting ores will be granted when it is taken out of the furnace. The smelted ore must be removed from the furnace on the furnace management window. Simply breaking a furnace with smelted ore will not release XP orbs. In addition, killing the Ender Dragon will drop large orbs that can hold up to 1237 XP.

Mobs will drop a random number of orbs, and the orbs can have different values. However, the total value will always remain within these values, regardless of difficulty setting.

Exp sources


Leveling Up
Since Snapshot 12w23a, the way experience is gained has changed. The first 16 levels are linear (17 XP points per level), while level 17+ require more points per level compared to the prior level. In addition to this certain actions such as mining ores, smelting and destroying monster spawners will all give you experience. A calculator is available using the chart data below to detail for the user how much additional experience they need to obtain to reach a particular level. 

 XP required,XP diff 17,17 34,17 51,17 68,17 85,17 102,17 119,17 136,17 153,17 170,17 187,17 204,17 221,17 238,17 255,17 272,17 292,20 315,23 341,26 370,29 402,32 437,35 475,38 516,41 560,44 607,47 657,50 710,53 766,56 825,59 887,62 956,69 1032,76 1115,83 1205,90 1302,97 1406,104 1517,111 1635,118 1760,125  

Pre-Snapshot 12w23a
 XP required,XP diff 7,7 17,10 31,14 48,17 69,21 93,24 121,28 152,31 187,35 225,38 267,42 312,45 361,49 413,52 469,56 528,59 591,63 657,66 727,70 800,73 877,77 957,80 1041,84 1128,87 1219,91 1313,94 1411,98 1512,101 1617,105 1725,108 1837,112 1952,115 2071,119 2193,122 2319,126 2448,129 2581,133 2717,136 2857,140 3000,143 3147,147 3297,150 3451,154 3608,157 3769,161 3933,164 4101,168 4272,171 4447,175 4625,178  

A chart which details the experience per level and cumulative experience more accurately is available here: Detailed Enchanting Experience Chart (last updated 7/3/12)



Bugs

 * Experience is not always rewarded after killing an animal/mob/player, this may be due to effects such as "Fire Aspect" for swords which do additional damage and that damage may not be attributed to you. Animals/mobs should give experience 100% of the time if you use a standard sword and the killing blow is yours.
 * When bringing a single player map into a server, the experience for one's single player will be reset.

Upcoming features
Each level up will potentially reward the player with Skill Points, which Notch has said may be used for buying things such as increased jump height and increased maximum health.