Experience

Experience, often shortened to XP or exp, is the progression resource that gives heroes levels and unlocks or improves abilities as a match continues.

What is Experience in Dota 2?

Heroes gain experience from eligible events such as nearby enemy units dying and hero kills. As the hero accumulates enough experience, the hero gains levels, which provide skill points or other progression benefits defined by the current game system. Experience therefore determines how quickly a hero reaches important ability levels and talent timings.

Experience is separate from gold. A hero can gain experience without receiving the last-hit gold from a creep, and several nearby allied heroes may share experience from the same event. The exact range, bounty and distribution rules can change between patches, which makes positioning around waves and fights an important part of experience management.

How Experience is used in a match

During the laning stage, players try to remain close enough to important creep deaths to receive experience while still staying safe. Supports may temporarily leave a lane so a core gains a level faster, or they may stay nearby because sharing the lane is safer than giving the opponent a free kill.

Later, teams consider experience when assigning waves and areas of the map. A hero near a key level may receive a safe lane while another teammate moves elsewhere. Losing several creep waves after a death or failed rotation can be costly even if the player's gold loss looks small.

Do not confuse Experience with...

Experience raises hero levels; gold buys items. XPM measures the rate at which experience is gained over time, while Creep Score records last hits and denies rather than the total experience earned.