Leveling and progression

Levels come from one place: killing the Tower's monsters. Quests pay in gear, points and passage instead. This page is the curve itself, what level each floor expects, and the bonus points most players miss.

Where XP comes from

Killing custom monsters. That is the whole list. Quests reward items, points and access rather than experience, vanilla mobs give nothing, and mining and crafting give nothing by design. There is no experience penalty on death either, so dying costs you the walk back and nothing else.

What a kill is worth depends on what you killed. Taking a floor's ordinary monster as the unit: elites pay about two and a half times as much, minibosses about eight times, and a floor boss about twenty times. Fighting on a higher floor also pays more per kill, which is most of why grinding a floor you have outgrown feels slow.

The curve, measured in kills

The honest way to read the curve is not experience numbers but kills: how many of your current floor's ordinary monsters a level costs. Elites, minibosses and bosses shortcut it at the rates above.

Gentle at the start, steeper as it goes: the growth is deliberate, so early levels come from simply playing the floor and later ones ask you to actually hunt. The curve is written out to level 15, and past that every level costs the same experience as level 15 did.

What level to be on each floor

The gaps in that table are intentional. You leave the Mines at 3 and the Savanna's monsters start at 4; the first stretch of a new floor is where you close the difference, and it will feel like it. A floor boss on its own is not a full level, so if you sprint the quest line and skip the fights along the way, you arrive at every boss underleveled and undergeared at once.

Skill and attribute points

Every level pays one skill point and one attribute point, up to the cap of 100. You start with a single skill point, and a gem you socket gives you its skill at level 1 for free, so points go on raising skills past that. Six attributes shape how you fight and survive: Strength gives armor, Dexterity evasion, Vitality health, Intelligence mana, Agility move speed and Wisdom cheaper, faster skills. How to spend them well is its own page, and /refund hands your points back if you want to try a different spread.

Quests pay points on top of leveling, which makes them worth doing even when their item reward is not. These are the clearest ones, and there are more along the way:

Money in the early game

Floor 1 has no shop, so there is nothing to buy and no reason to hoard. Commerce starts on Floor 2, where Rowan sells skill gems, sealed gem and passive boxes, Identify Tomes and bread, and each floor after adds the gems the floor below introduced. The income that funds it is selling the drops you do not keep to a merchant. Merchants price gear from its rolled stats, and a sealed drop has none yet, so identify before you sell.

The route

The main quest line is the spine, and each floor's exit is behind it:

• The tutorial, then the Hermit's quests on Floor 1 through The Forest's Master.
• Down into the Mines, through The Thing Below and Rocky.
• The Savanna's water line: A Way In, then The Source and the Necromancer dungeon, then The Water Returns.
• Hearth Ranch: work for Corbin, free the caged ranch hand in Kin in the Cage, which Corbin wants done before he will open the way up, and take the waypoint when his debt is paid.

Fight as you travel rather than sprinting marker to marker, and the level targets above take care of themselves. What to do inside your first hour, including the five mistakes nearly everyone makes, is on the getting started page.