What am I doing wrong, 4-16 exp per kill??

I'm currently a level 10 Monk/Ranger and I've managed to reach out as far as Piken Square, Frontier and Fort Ranik. The next mission in line kills me every time (I use henchmen up to this point) but my real question is how do you gain experience anymore?? I go out in a group and we do the quests from those various locations and I'm pulling in 4-16 experience per kill, if that. Often you get goose eggs. I tried to go out solo thinking I wouldn't split the experience with the group and lasted about 25 paces

What is the strategy once you hit the level 10 range because I seem to have hit a wall and frankly it's getting pretty frustrating/boring.

Also, my pet hit level 10 last night as well. Am I missing something or do I have to train my pet at all? I haven't done anything except raise Beastmastery to 3 so far. Can't seem to find any info on this.

Any help greatly appreciated.

well...through out the whole game you wont be getting much exp from just single kills, so its alot better to do quests and missions to gain exp.
and concerning ur diein, u should try to find other player to play with, their much better better than hench most of the time, mostly because they have really bad AI.
your pet levls up once in a while regerdless of ur beast mastery

The trick is to solo as much as you can with no henchmen on pre-searing. You will get decent experience from monsters at the beginning of the game. Do all missions and go to post-searing at level 10 (or hihger). Than... You will need a party so experience from killing monsters is shared. Most experience in future will come from quests and missions.

Being a monk it's gonna be harder to solo through the Breech. It is possible (more so with a pet) but pretty hard to do.
What you'll probobly want to do through the Breech and the Diessa Lowlands is Just find a good small group (3 lvl 10's can easily beat most mobs in that area.) and focus on the missions/quests. The quests there can give out a lot of Exp and are a lot easier to do in a group. (Althea's ashes and the Dukes Daughter both 2000xp). Once you get into the Shiverpeak mountains you'll start getting some good Exp from killing things (even in a group). So for now I'd suggest focusing on missions/quests.
If you need any help through the breech Whisper me, in game name is "Reiz Falcon"

Better to be in the shiverpeaks at level 10 or 11. Skip large exp quests because the exp is more valuable at a higher level. Just proceed with the storyline, you'll get to level 20 no matter what.

No matter how slice it, you will never get as much xp with single kills even soloing without having to do loads of them. At the point that you are at in the game, most quests with net 500 with a couple (Althea's Ghost and Ashes) getting 2000. Then missions and bonus will get 2000 xp as well. If you wish to get further and raise level faster, need to start doing the missions and the quests.

You get boosted to level 20 after ascension, no matter what level you previously are. You can easily become level 15 by doing a bare minimum of quests and missions.

i think that automatic level 20 was changed for 50k exp

Your level is higher than all of your enemies, thus the lack of XP gained. Most charr you fight in that area are only level 6-8.

Just off the top of my head, if you are 6 or more levels higher than your kill, you get 0XP, 5 higher 4XP, 4 higher 8XP, etc.

Quests & missions are where to get more XP. Unless you're in an area where the monsters are close to your level. Dragon's Gullet, for example, has L10 Hydrae, L11 Abominations.

Yep you definitely need to move on with the storyline. Go to the mission (ruins of surmia I think from what you say) get a group and move on - You will soon start raking in the xp again when you get to some higher level areas.

I read on the site here once that there is a 5 level gap difference, meaning that if you are 5 levels higher than the creature you're fighting, there will be no experience gained, yet if the creature is 5 levels higher than you than full experience is gained. It's kinda easy to test this and see it in action.

Since my main character is lvl 18, very few creatures give exp anymore, especially when I go back to do bonuses or help friends do earlier missions. In the end, the most experience is gained through mission and quest completion.

After learning of this, when I made my next character I decided in Pre-Searing to save all quest rewards until after level 5. So for the first 5 levels I got exp from taking out creatures, and farmed some crafting materials along the way. Then once I hit level 5, I went back and turned in all my stored up quest rewards and jumped to about mid-lvl 7 very quickly. Then I went and finished up the remaining quests that didn't show up until the rewards were turned in and got to level 8 before heading to post-searing - however, hardly any creatures gave exp points while doing those quests.

But don't worry... lvl 20 is as high as we can get, and there are lOts of lvl 24 to 26 baddies and bosses after that. What's the point then? Well every 250 exp gives us 1 Attibute Refund Point, which allows us to move our Attribs around a lot. I find that helpful, especially in the later stages of the game.

I though the higher the level your character is, the lower the exp gain you will get for each monsters that you killed. For me, level 13 W/E, i get 4 or 8 exp for killing monsters at level of 8 or 10. If i kill anythings with low level, i get zero exp.

Exp works like this:

I'll use a Level 10 Character for Example.

Fight a Same level monster you get 100Exp (so a Level 10 monster would give 100)
Fight a level 9 Monster you'll get 80Exp
And then every level below that you get 16 less per level so.

Lvl Exp
+4 = 168
+3 = 152
+2 = 136
+1 = 120
0 = 100
-1 = 80
-2 = 64
-3 = 48
-4 = 32
-5 = 16
-6 = 0

It goes Up as high as you want in increments of 16 per level.
Also the Exp is divided by how many you have in your party so if you are level 10 with 3 people fighting a level 11 Monster you'll only get 40 Exp (I also thing that bosses give you a little bonus too).
And When you get to Kryta there are some easy soloing area's with some level 14-16 guys that can give you a LOT of Exp in a short time. I leveled up twice fighting Mergoyles in just 30 minutes . Hope this helps.

For me, the key to the game is the missions and skill granting quests. You didn't say which mission your struggling with but from you post it seems to be ruins of sumatria which can be problematic. I had a M/R for a while and I managed it on the third atempt with the 30AL armour and took the following henchmen: Healer, Fighter, Elementalist. The healer was to allow me to take some smiting skills, in particular bane signet which really help you keep up decent damage and maintain your energy at this stage of the game.

Without knowing more about the bit that you're struggling on I can't really add anything. However, there is plenty of quest advice on the missions in one of the other sections on the site, and if you post which bit your getting stuck at, I can help a bit more.

when you travel in a party the exp and gold is divided by how many people there are in ur group, u should try 2 explore on your own, that way u get more xp and gold