Potion of experience

Version 0.16: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Type	Potion
Name	Potion of Experience
Icon

A truly wonderful and very rare drink.

Quaffing a potion of experience grants the player a substantial experience boost, benefiting both his experience level progress and his skills progress.

First off, you immediately gain one experience level while maintaining your progress toward the next level. This means that if you were level 20 and 80% of the way toward level 21, you will now be level 21 and 80% of the way toward level 22. At level 27, this effect is skipped. You also gain 750 experience per experience level (counting fractions) toward your skills. In the previous example, you would gain 750 × 21.8 (16,350) XP.

This skill experience can be divided among any of your currently trainable skills. The game brings up a modified version of the skill training screen, and you are asked to determine how to distribute your XP. The XP must be divided evenly among all selected skills, but you can focus any number of selected skills to make them receive a double portion. See the example image below to get an idea of what the screen looks like.

Below level 27: You feel more experienced!
At level 27: A flood of memories washes over you.

Strategy

While extremely rare in the Dungeon proper, potions of experience are not uncommon in Ziggurats and may rarely appear as loot at the end of some vaults and timed portals. If you do come across one in the early game, it is common practice to drink it immediately; you'll have an absurd power boost, which will improve your survival greatly. Low-level characters can quickly gain multiple skill levels instantly, while high-level characters will see almost negligible returns.

If you have any aptitude-enhancing manuals for a skill you are planning on training, make sure to start studying them before you quaff the potion; once you quaff, it's too late to open the manual.