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	???	???
3	0	0	28	???	???
4	0	0	29	???	???
5	0	0	30	???	???
6	0	0	31	???	???
7	0	0	32	???	???
8	0	0	33	???	???
9	0	0	34	???	???
10	200	1,000	35	???	???
11	???	???	36	???	???
12	280	1,750	37	???	???
13	400	2,000	38	???	???
14	???	???	39	???	???
15	550	???	40	???	???
16	650	3,250	41	37,500	???
17	800	4,000	42	???	???
18	???	???	43	???	???
19	1,100	5,500	44	???	???
20	1,250	6,250	45	???	???
21	???	???	46	???	???
22	2,250	11,250	47	???	???
23	???	???	48	87,000	435,000
24	???	???	49	99,000	495,000
25	???	???	50	110,000	550,000