Debt

When you are defeated, you accrue experience debt, which slows down a hero's ability to reach the next level.

Working off Debt

When you have experience debt, half of your experience earned is used to pay off the debt. Experience debt does not accrue until level ten (increased from level five in Issue 5), and increases as a hero increases in level.

To work off debt more quickly, a hero may serve as an exemplar. While this arrangement exists, all experience a hero accrues is applied to debt. If a hero has no debt to work off, experience is converted into influence.

There is an upper limit to the amount of debt that can accrue.

Debt accrued during an indoor mission is halved.

Strategic Use of Debt

On certain occasions, a hero may not want to level up. For example, the player may wish to unlock a task force which would not be available if they leveled up. Examples of such would be the Cavern of Transcendence Trial, The MegaMech Cometh, and the Katie Hannon Task Force. In such a case, a hero may deliberately accrue debt to slow down their progression.

Also, there are times when a player may not want to outlevel their contacts for one of a number of reasons. They may be trying to get a specific badge mission or story arc out of a contact. Or they may be worried about outleveling a unlockable contact in CoV before they can complete the requirements needed to unlock that contact.

Since debt also counts toward the debt badges, hardcore bage collection players may want to generate debt specifically to work on earning the debt badges.

Additionally, it can be used to increase the amount of influence/infamy that a character gains, since they spend a longer time to level up.

It should be noted that several of these goals may be accomplished by being an exemplar or malefactor to a lower-level player as well, which will cause a character to not earn any experience at all. Debt merely slows experience progression, not stops it.

Debt Table

Level	Debt	Debt Cap	Level	Debt	Debt Cap
1	0	0	26	5,500	27,500
2	0	0	27	6,750	33,750
3	0	0	28	8,000	40,000
4	0	0	29	9,000	45,000
5	0	0	30	10,000	50,000
6	0	0	31	11,500	57,500
7	0	0	32	13,000	65,000
8	0	0	33	14,500	72,500
9	0	0	34	16,000	80,000
10	200	1,000	35	18,500	92,500
11	275	1,375	36	21,000	105,000
12	350	1,750	37	23,000	115,000
13	400	2,000	38	26,000	130,000
14	475	2,375	39	30,000	150,000
15	550	2,750	40	33,500	167,500
16	650	3,250	41	37,500	187,500
17	800	4,000	42	42,500	212,500
18	950	4,750	43	48,000	240,000
19	1,100	5,500	44	54,000	270,000
20	1,250	6,250	45	61,000	305,000
21	1,750	8,750	46	69,000	345,000
22	2,250	11,250	47	77,000	385,000
23	2,750	13,750	48	87,000	435,000
24	3,500	17,500	49	99,000	495,000
25	4,250	21,250	50	110,000	550,000