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Someone told me that monsters don't give a static amount of experience; if that's true, what determines how much experience you get from a kill? What's the exact equation?

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I'm not sure what your question is. It seems to me that you're asking us to clarify a vague statement made by some other people that as far as I can tell, is just plain wrong. – bwarner May 25 '12 at 18:52
Based on the other question, if you started in Act IV as a group of (only) level 1 (+/-4)'s, you would earn experience faster "per kill". You'll have a hard time killing anything however. – Nick T May 25 '12 at 18:57
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I still don't get it; the only thing not answered in the other question is what the base experience of a mob is (e.g. what is "100%" in XP). In any event, the question there is asking the same thing about how experience works in disparate groups. If the answers aren't up to snuff that doesn't make this not a duplicate. – Nick T May 25 '12 at 19:07
@Nick: The question there is asking about how experience works in disparate groups; but the question here is not. Please see the title or question body. I'm sorry if the first paragraph confused that point, but it's been removed now. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft May 25 '12 at 19:24

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There are two factors that change how much experience per kill is given. These factors modify the base experience of the monster, each monster has a different base experience.

First is the monster level vs your level. This chart is from Malloy626 on Reddit (click for larger image) demonstrates the approximate experience gain from monsters in each act and difficulty relative to your level. Malloy626 summarizes that the optimal leveling path is the yellow zone in the chart.

chart

This is based on the following experience chart (monster level vs character level)

char level +10 or more of monster level = 0%
+9 = 1% (+exp effects nullified)
+8 = 5% (+exp effects nullified)
+7 = 15% (+exp effects nullified)
+6 = 30% (+exp effects nullified)
+5 = 45%
+4 = 60%
+3 = 70%
+2 = 80%
+1 = 90%
+0 = 100%
-1 = 115%
-2 = 120%
-3 or less = 125%

Second is gear with +experience (example) or +%experience (example) per kill. This simply multiplies the amount of experience you get after the level disparity modifier is applied.

Note that nothing else effects experience, including additional party members.

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On a side note, that's a great looking graph. – nageeb May 30 '12 at 16:33
This seems to contradict this answer. Where did "Malloy from reddit" get his/her information from? – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft May 31 '12 at 21:09
@BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft What part is contradicting? – Resorath May 31 '12 at 21:42
@Resorath: "When I left the game - my former party member got demonstrably more experience per kill, on the exact same monsters." – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft May 31 '12 at 22:04
The spreadsheet is based on the experience chart, which seems to agree with this. I have not seen any data regarding increased gains based on player numbers. I would like to see a source on that data instead (it is currently original research). – Resorath May 31 '12 at 22:10
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up vote 0 down vote

The amount of experience scales both based on the level difference between your character and the monsters, and also the levels of the other players in your party (if applicable). While I don't have a link to any specific figures on-hand, it sounds like the person you spoke to was referencing the fact that being power-leveled by higher-level friends by grinding on monsters will not give you large experience gains, due to the level difference involved.

There are alternative ways that people have used to level lower-level characters quickly, but I believe those all center more around quest completion XP than XP gained from killing monsters.

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