I just died due to lag. I was at level 47, and lag "pushed" me off a block. When I went down to get my inventory and experience back, I only gained enough experience to get me to level 6. Is this a glitch? Or is this part of the game? I have had this same thing happen to me dozens of times, where I would die at a high level due to lag, and then only get enough experience to get to level 6.

Normally, you'd get 1/2 or 1/3 your experience points. Due to lag, not all of your items and experience points will drop and be reclaimable when you die. Sorry, this happens to me a lot too, but its not being refunded.

I remember it was max drop of 14?

Not sure

Nope- Ive gotten 27 levels back on a low-lag day.

Happened to me countless of times. Which reminds me i need to go back to the nether and farm more glowstones because the last two times I dropped off a ledge due to lag and lost it all.

The Minecraft wiki states that:

-you drop all of your experience when you die.

But where does the experience go?:

-half of this disappears, impossible to re-obtain.

-the other half remains as an item where you died, ready to be picked up.

(keep in mind, normally if you die before collecting your items and experience, or five real-time minutes have elapsed since you died, the items and experience you dropped will disappear.)

Don't get confused about "levels", I mean EXPERIENCE POINTS. I don't mean that you lose half of your levels, because you need more experience points to advance through the higher levels, you actually lose half your experience points (let's say you died at LEVEL 10. We'll just say 100 points gave level 10, while 50 gave level 7 and 25 gave level 5. You wouldn't go from level 10 to level 5. You'd go back to level 7, meaning you need to earn 50 more experience points to get back the 3 levels you lost).

I can't say this applies for issues concerning lag.

But was Minetown intentionally programmed so that you dont get even half the experience you dropped?

I originally thought this glitch was due to lag. Now that I have died dozens of times, missing out on the opportunity to enchant my items, I feel as though this is an obvious and reoccurring glitch, rather than an instance of lag.

The amount of experience returned is non-standard. I can't remember exactly what the settings are, but I think it has a cap. Don't quote me on this, though. I'll try and ask sayomie what the exact configuration is.

dunno what the exact formula is, but you have never been able to obtain it all...if i remember correctly, you can pick up the amount of EXP Points required to get to your current level at death from the previous one....so...if you diesd at say lvl 10, you would get the xp difference from lvl 9 to lvl 10...which would put you around lvl 3 or so...whereas if you die at lvl 100, you would get about 20 levels or so

At level 100, I received only 27 levels (which I've heard from others is what they got back), so I believe that to be a possible cap? I noticed I only received 20-30% of the experience I had (fluctuates between that range). This was done (I remember reading this) to reduce lag in the game. It's not a server thing, but something Notch did (use to be tons of experience orbs everywhere when you died, which crashed a lot of client based games, but not web based).

Source: I die about 5 times in an hour... creepers are sneaky, and when you do notice/hear them, it's already too late.