Beginner's Guide to Valorant - Valorant Guide - IGN (2024)

Whether it’s your first time playing a first-person shooter or you’re well acquainted with the genre, this Valorant Beginner's Guide will give you a rundown of all the basics you need to know to try Riot Games’ Hero FPS. From explaining the rules of Valorant to explanations of every facet of the game, this guide will help you hit the ground running.

If you are looking for more advanced guides, we suggest you check out our Valorant: How to Improve page, our How to Improve Valorant Aim page, and our Best Valorant Crosshair Guide. If you play CSGO and want to try out Valorant, check out our CSGO to Valorant Guide.

How Valorant Works

Valorant is a 5v5 competitive FPS where you play as one Agent in a team of Agents — selectable characters that have their own unique set of abilities that you can use to help you win a match. You cannot have multiple people playing the same Agent in your team.

Valorant’s main game mode is played in rounds of Attackers vs Defenders, and your team is randomly given a side prior to the match starting. 12 rounds in, the teams swap sides and the first team to win 13 rounds wins the match.

In any given round, your goal as an Attacker is to help plant a bomb-like device called the Spike on one of the several bomb sites throughout the map. If you and your team successfully defend the planted Spike for 45 seconds, it detonates and you win that round. Your job as a Defender is to either defuse the planted Spike before it explodes or prevent it from being planted before the round time limit of 100 seconds ends. Alternatively, given that you have one life per round, you can simply kill the entire other team to win that round.

Preceding each round is a brief Buy Phase where you use your money (called Creds) to purchase things to help you beat your opponent. You can buy a multitude of items, like armor to give you extra health, weapons that are more effective, or abilities that are unique to your Agent. Your unused abilities carry over to the next round, and if you survive your guns and remaining armor also gets carried over.

All of Valorant’s Game Modes

Valorant has four permanent PvP game modes (Unrated, Competitive, Spike Rush, and Deathmatch) and a slot for a rotating PvP game mode (One of Escalation, Replication, and Snowball Fight) at any given time.

Alternatively, you can practice by yourself in the Range — a practice map that provides unlimited ammo, abilities, and unlocked Agents to hone your skills against bots. See the full breakdown of Valorant’s game modes.

Agents and their Categories

There are currently 19 Agents in Valorant, each with their own set of unique abilities. All of them are categorized into 4 distinct roles: Controller, Duelist, Initiator, and Sentinel. Jett, Phoenix, Brimstone, Sage, and Sova are available to play for new players — 2 more can be acquired easily through the Play To Unlock Free Agents contract, while the rest must be unlocked by progressing through their agent contracts. Read more about Agents here.

Weapons Galore

Weapons are separated into two categories: Sidearms and Primary weapons. You can carry one of each, provided that you can afford a Primary. The category of Sidearms contains pistols, while Primaries consists of SMGs, Shotguns, Rifles, Sniper Rifles, and Machine Guns. For a breakdown of weapon damages and more information, check out our weapon guide.

Maps - Valorant’s Battlegrounds

There are 7 Maps that are in the rotation in Unrated and Competitive. The active maps in order of release are Bind, Haven, Ascent, Icebox, Breeze, Fracture, and Pearl. Split, one of the original Beta maps, was removed from the queue to make way for the new map, Pearl in Episode 5, Act 1. Any new or refurbished maps will enter the map pool while one of the current 7 will be taken out of rotation. See callouts for all of the Maps here.

If you want to know more tips and tricks as a new player, check out our Valorant Tips and Tricks for New Players here.

Battle Pass

The Battle Pass is an affordable way to recieve Valorant cosmetics through gameplay alone. Valorant is split into 2-month long periods of time called Acts. In every Act, a new Battle Pass is available to progress with XP.

You can attain XP through completing matches or doing daily and weekly missions. Here is the breakdown of how much XP each game mode awards:

• Unrated, Competitive, and Replication awards 100 XP per round played, 200 XP per round won.
• Spike Rush awards 1,000 XP
• Deathmatch awards 900 XP
• Escalation awards 800 XP for completion and an additional 200 XP if you win.
• Snowball Fight awards 750 XP for completion and an additional 150 XP if you win.

The Battle Pass is divided into 50 tiers, where you require 980,000 XP total to reach the end. There are 5 epilogue tiers that require 36,500 XP each that contain minor bonus cosmetics.

The Pass includes an assortment of cosmetics — skins, sprays, player titles, player cards, gunbuddies, and Radianite. At tier 50 there is always a knife skin. Most of the content is locked until you purchase the Pass for 1,000 Valorant Points (VP). There is no form of XP bonus for owning the Battle Pass, so you can wait until near the end of the Act to see your progress and determine whether you want to buy the Pass or not.