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.
On this page
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.
| Level | Kills to reach it |
|---|---|
| 2 | 25 |
| 3 | 29 |
| 4 | 35 |
| 5 | 41 |
| 6 | 48 |
| 7 | 56 |
| 8 | 65 |
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.
What level to be on each floor
| Floor | Arrive at | Leave at | Monster levels |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1: The Forest | 1 | 2 | 1–2 |
| 2: The Mines | 2 | 3 | 2–4 |
| 3: The Corrupted Savanna | 4 | 5 | 4–5 |
| 4: Hearth Ranch | 6 | 7 | 6–7 |
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 for your first gem. How to spend attribute points well is its own page; the short version is that Power beats Base for damage and most new players buy the wrong one.
A handful of quests pay points on top of leveling, which makes them worth doing even when their item reward is not:
| Quest | Floor | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| More Food | 1 | +1 attribute point |
| The Curious Crystal | 1, side quest | +1 attribute point |
| The Forest's Master | 1 | +1 skill point |
| Kin in the Cage | 4, side quest | +1 skill point |
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, and from there money has three real jobs: refining, fortifying and extracting. The income that funds them is selling the drops you do not keep, and the one rule is to identify before you sell. Sell prices are calculated from an item's rolled stats, and an unidentified item sells as if those stats were nothing.
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, do Kin in the Cage when it appears, and finish The Way Up.
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.