Experience

Experience is a measure of how well-seasoned your characters have become. You gain Experience as you complete many different types of tasks, goals, and accomplishments. Experience is gained as you learn, try, fail or succeed. Therefore, you will gain experience both in moments of victory and in moments of defeat.

As you increase in experience, you will gain character levels, which in turn make you better at your jobs and able to gain more talents. Overall, a veteran character with more experience is more valuable than a green recruit.

Gaining Experience

Experience can be gained for almost any accomplishment or failure. Almost all experience awards are distributed among the crew in a communal fashion. If an exploration mission goes successfully, it is because the crew worked together as a team to pull off the risky expedition. The only cases in which experience awards are given to specific individuals is in victorious crew combats, and successful flight plans flown by the pilots of small craft. In both cases those survivors who risked their lives directly reap the entire gain. (For crew combat, the faster they finish the combat, the more experience they gain!) Certain traits can increase or decrease an individual's rate of experience gain.

Mission Completion

Upon completing a step in a mission requirng a skill roll (or possibly an influence roll), experience is granted upon success. If you succeeded only because you used a skill save talent, you will be awared 3-6 XP a total of 5 times. If you succeed naturally, you will be awared 3-6 XP a total of 10 times.

Talents and Experience

Using talents, such as those that discover Contacts, increase profits from trading, or prevent failures in skill saves do not directly generate experience. Your crew may gain experience for the accomplishment that the talent was involved in (making a very profitable trade on an Exchange) but the experience is not caused by the Talent, nor does the owner of the talent gain any special experience award.

In the case of talents that prevent a skill saves failure, experience is not awarded. In most cases, if the skill save had been passed normally, experience would be awarded. Therefore, relying too much on Talents that prevent skill save failures, instead of raising your skills such that you pass them normally, will not lead to the most optimal gain of experience awards for your crew.

A few crew level ups do not result in either job levels nor talent points. These levelups will not change the character in the usual ways (other than by increasing wages) but certain traits will still trigger on levelup, such as the traits that have a 20% chance of increasing a skill on levelup. However, most levels increase at least a job point if not a talent.

Leveling Up

Once enough experience has been earned, characters can then be levelled up. Characters only level up when they are paid at the Spice Hall. Even if a character has more experience than required to advance to the next character level, they will not do so until paid. The current maximum character level within the game is 45, regardless of a characters role on the ship.

Equipment Points

Captains also earn Equipment Points at particular levels which allow for non-officer crew to use special gear.

Captain Level Progress

LEVEL	XP REQ	JOB RANKS	TALENTS
1	0 XP	1	1
2	50 XP	2	1
3	150 XP	3	2
4	275 XP	4	2
5	400 XP	5	2
6	600 XP	6	3
7	800 XP	7	3
8	1000 XP	8	4
9	1200 XP	9	4
10	1500 XP	10	4
11	1900 XP	11	4
12	2350 XP	12	5
13	2800 XP	14	5
14	3300 XP	15	6
15	3800 XP	17	6
16	4400 XP	18	6
17	5000 XP	19	7
18	5700 XP	20	7
19	6400 XP	22	7
20	7200 XP	24	7
21	8000 XP	25	8
22	9000 XP	26	8
23	10000 XP	27	8
24	12000 XP	28	8
25	13000 XP	29	9
26	14000 XP	30	9
27	15000 XP	31	9
28	16000 XP	32	10
29	18000 XP	33	10
30	20000 XP	34	11
31	22000 XP	35	12
32	25000 XP	36	13
33	28000 XP	37	13
34	31000 XP	38	13
35	34000 XP	39	14
36	38000 XP	40	14
37	42000 XP	41	15
38	47000 XP	42	15
39	52000 XP	43	15
40	60000 XP	44	16
41	70000 XP	45	16
42	80000 XP	46	17
43	90000 XP	47	17
44	100000 XP	48	17
45	110000 XP	48	18

Officer Level Progress

LEVEL	XP REQ	JOB RANKS	TALENTS
1	0 XP	1	1
2	50 XP	2	1
3	150 XP	3	2
4	275 XP	4	2
5	400 XP	5	2
6	600 XP	6	3
7	800 XP	7	3
8	1000 XP	8	4
9	1200 XP	9	4
10	1500 XP	10	4
11	1900 XP	11	4
12	2350 XP	12	5
13	2800 XP	13	5
14	3300 XP	14	6
15	3800 XP	15	6
16	4400 XP	16	6
17	5000 XP	17	7
18	5700 XP	18	7
19	6400 XP	19	7
20	7200 XP	20	7
21	8000 XP	21	8
22	9000 XP	22	8
23	10000 XP	23	8
24	12000 XP	24	8
25	13000 XP	25	9
26	14000 XP	26	9
27	15000 XP	27	9
28	16000 XP	28	10
29	18000 XP	29	10
30	20000 XP	30	11
31	22000 XP	31	11
32	25000 XP	32	12
33	28000 XP	33	12
34	31000 XP	33	13
35	34000 XP	34	13
36	38000 XP	35	13
37	42000 XP	36	14
38	47000 XP	37	14
39	52000 XP	38	14
40	60000 XP	39	15
41	70000 XP	40	15
42	80000 XP	41	16
43	90000 XP	42	16
44	100000 XP	43	16
45	110000 XP	44	17

Crew Level Progress

LEVEL	XP REQ	JOB RANKS	TALENTS
1	0 XP	1	1
2	50 XP	1	1
3	150 XP	2	1
4	275 XP	3	1
5	400 XP	4	1
6	600 XP	5	2
7	800 XP	5	2
8	1000 XP	6	2
9	1200 XP	7	2
10	1500 XP	8	2
11	1900 XP	8	3
12	2350 XP	9	3
13	2800 XP	10	3
14	3300 XP	11	3
15	3800 XP	11	4
16	4400 XP	12	4
17	5000 XP	12	5
18	5700 XP	13	5
19	6400 XP	14	5
20	7200 XP	15	5
21	8000 XP	15	6
22	9000 XP	16	6
23	10000 XP	17	6
24	12000 XP	18	6
25	13000 XP	18	7
26	14000 XP	19	7
27	15000 XP	20	7
28	16000 XP	21	7
29	18000 XP	22	7
30	20000 XP	23	7
31	22000 XP	24	7
32	25000 XP	24	8
33	28000 XP	25	8
34	31000 XP	26	8
35	34000 XP	27	8
36	38000 XP	28	8
37	42000 XP	29	8
38	47000 XP	30	8
39	52000 XP	31	8
40	60000 XP	32	8
41	70000 XP	33	8
42	80000 XP	34	8
43	90000 XP	35	8
44	100000 XP	36	8
45	110000 XP	36	9