Experience

Experience is a commonplace gameplay device sported in Role-playing video games that is based on gradually improving the playable characters' stats (health, power, resistance, etc.). In the case of The Legend of Zelda series, only has made use of this mechanic so far.

Experience Points
In The Adventure of Link, when Link defeats an enemy in particular, he gains a certain amount of experience points. The more enemies he defeats, and the stronger said enemies are, more points will be stored. When a certain amount is reached, Link can upgrade by one level one of his quest stats. These are:


 * Life: Link will become more resistant to enemy attacks by taking less damage.
 * Magic: Spells will require less magic to be cast.
 * Attack: Link's sword attacks will inflict more damage to enemies.

Link starts the game with his stats at level 1, and both his Life and Magic meters have 64 points each (provided by four default Containers). Over the course of the game, the stats can be upgraded to up to level 8, in which Attacks deal maximum damage and the loss of both Life and Magic is minimal. Also, extra Heart and Magic Containers can be found on different parts of the overworld, increasing more directly the number of points Link has in his meters. With a total of eight Containers of a type, there is a total of 128 points.

In several parts of the game, there are bags that store experience points. The value of these bags depends on the size, ranging from 50 to 500 points. Also, when Link loses his lives during a playthrough session, or the player saves and quits playing, the current amount of unused points resets back to zero.

There are some enemies, such as Moas, Wosu, Maus and Ras, that are capable of substracting part of the current amount of unused points Link has each time they hurt him. Because of this, they must be avoided whenever possible unless Link is skilled enough to face them.

Level Up List
After all stats are terminally leveled up, Link gets an extra life every time he collects 9000 experience points.

Trivia

 * When Link places one of the crystals to the lectern of a palace (after defeating the local boss), his experience points automatically rise in number up to the current cap, allowing the young hero to increase the level of a stat instantly.
 * In the Japanese version, the experience system works differently. The required experience needed for a Level Up rises with the Level Ups already spent and not with the current Level of the individual element. It is perfectly possible for Link to have one element maxed out at Level 8 after finishing Parapa Palace. However, raising the other elements from Level 1 will take a little bit longer since Link has already spent 8 Levels and the experience needed for the next one exponentially rises. Furthermore, if Link loses all of his Lives and sees the Game Over screen, then all three elements will be reset to the Level of the weakest element. For example, if Link dies with the stats 1-3-8, then he will have to start again with all stats at Level 1.