Experience Points

Experience points are a measurement for how your character is progressing. The player character can earn experience points for killing creatures and solving quests. They are used to determine when a character should gain a new level. Different amounts of experience points are awarded for killing more dangerous creatures. For example, on Fallout 3, killing a deathclaw will get you 50 experience points whilst killing a radroach will give you 1 experience point. Experience points can also be gained for disarming mines and traps, picking locks, hacking computers, passing speech challenges and occasionally doing sections of a quest.

NOTE: Setting the difficulty to Very Hard will increase your experience gain from killing enemies by 50%, and Very Easy will decrease your experience gain by 50%. A deathclaw killed on Very Easy will yield 25 experience points, while one killed on Very Hard will yield 75 experience points, making the Very Hard difficulty increase your experience gain from Very Easy by three times. This margin can greatly effect the time it takes you to level up, and combined with the Swift Learner perk and being well rested, you can level up in no time at all.