Valorant: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide

Here is a complete guide to Riot’s Valorant, so far a true contender in the FPS Genre.

By
Bharat Kotwani
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Set in the near future, Valorant is a 5v5 First person and tactical shooter title developed by Riot games. Since its launch, Valorant has been adjudged as a fusion of Valve’s Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Blizzard’s Overwatch where emerging victorious by the only means of gunning won’t do any good as you would be poised to use your abilities in a bid to gain the upper hand on your opposition. A part of the community post its release in Closed Beta has claimed it to be CS:GO but with abilities where one can trick his/her enemies by using the latter.

Game Modes

As of now, Valorant provides four types of game modes.

  • Unrated
  • Competitive
  • Custom Match (Scrims, Map Layouts)
  • Practice Arena

At the launch, Unrated was the lone game mode where players could compete in a 5v5 environment with the Competitive mode being inculcated later in the 0.49 patch. These all four game modes have been made available under the “Play” option. After the latter patch was inculcated in the game, it was made necessary to play 20 unrated games before the game would allow you to start your journey in the competitive pool.

Characters

The characters in this title go by the term “Agents” and at the start of every match, players get a choice to select them. Upon selecting an Agent, you are deployed with 4 abilities out of them one would be your signature ability which would reset every 35 seconds along with the last one being your ultimate which can be either recharged by either getting kills, planting/defusing the spike or by collecting Orbs across the Map. Once you have chosen a Character, you won’t be getting a chance to swap it for another for the rest of the match. As of now, Valorant fields 10 Agents.

In the ongoing closed beta, the game does provide with five unlocked Agents, for everyone who starts the game. These free Agents are Phoenix, Sage, Sova, Brimstone, and Jett. The rest five Agents are locked and can be unlocked upon progression. Once in the closed beta, you do stand a chance to unlock more two agents by playing a couple of unrated games.

You can track your advancement via the “Latest Tab” which would be showcased on the home screen where you would be able to unlock two agents each at Level 5 and Level 10. The rest three agents can be unlocked by either starting their respective contracts or can be acquired by purchasing them from the in-game store. You can find the contracts for the Agents under the collection menu.

Here are the 10 agents available in the closed beta.

Jett

Sova

Sage

Omen

Phoenix

Brimstone

Raze

Breach

Viper

Cypher

Gameplay

Once you have been found a match for the Unrated/Competitive mode, after selecting your desired agent, your team will start either on the defensive side or the attack side. Just like CS:GO, your mission will be to plant the Spike when on the offensive side and defuse the same on your defense. Both of these game modes will feature a “fastest to 13” objective for picking up the map victory where the two sides would go all in to secure the 13th round as earlier as possible.

But before charging up on the Unrated and Competitive modes, you might want to visit the shooting range in order to get yourself a hang of the weapons and their recoil patterns where you can too tweak your aim sensitivity settings. The practice arena does help you to enter an aiming session for refining your reflexes and as mentioned above, the recoil patterns of the weapons available in the store. At some moments in the game, it gets vital to keep your aim somewhere around the head because of the maps and their layouts.

Abilities

Abilities do play a pivotal role here in Valorant as gunning down enemies won’t help you and your team to get in the driver’s seat for the entire match. By using your set of abilities, you can either catch an enemy off guard by revealing their location or by blocking their vision in a bid to buy some more time post plant or slowing down the offensive wave while playing on the defensive side.

Buy Menu

Trust me, the buy menu is pretty much interesting here in Valorant with a plethora of commands been made available in a bid to acquire weapons. Running low on economy with others flowing in cash? You’re just one step away from requesting a weapon by left clicking on it’s icon as it would ping your team about your request.

Your teammates could buy you weapons except your abilities and the armor. Yes, we haven’t discussed about the types of Armor. Valorant does provide you with two types of Armor packs.

Light Shields

  • Cost: 400 credits.
  • Damage Reduction: 66%
  • Health: Breaks after absorbing 25 damage.

Heavy Shields

  • Cost: 1,000
  • Damage Reduction: 66%
  • Health: Breaks after 50 damage

The buy menu also gives you a chance to re-sell your weapon which you might have bought mistakenly at a 100% refund value. At the start of every match, players are given 800 credits where they can either to upgrade themselves to a light shield armor along with an upgraded pistol.

Communication

This might be the most important factor in every FPS as your teammate’s life would totally depend on your actions. Once you call out about watching their backs might make them concentrate on their duels and ability usages. Just like while using the latter, you may want to make them know about your actions as they can equally prove fatal to your team just like for your opposition.

Ranked Mode

Players would get their ranked mode unlocked after playing 20 unrated matches in a bid to gain experience. They might not start it right after the 20 matches threshold but it’s recommended to get well versed with all the map layouts and with agents as well.

With this collective data, you can easily bank on the same if you’re new to this game and looking to get started. We will be updating our Valorant Blog with more content for beginners and professionals as well which you guys won’t hesitate to miss for sure. Do stay tuned!

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