How to Unlock Valorant Agents Quickly
7 minutes
Last Updated: April 24, 2023
Valorant is a tactical hero shooter developed by Riot Games. This FPS is played by more than 20 million people and is quickly becoming one of the most successful esports in the world.
For its genre, it is very well made and borrows elements from other famous competitive games, such as CS:GO and Overwatch.
Because it was created by Riot Games, Valorant also borrows elements from the MOBA genre, which includes games like League of Legends.
The characters that you can play are called Agents and not all of them are available from the start. Valorant Agents need to be unlocked and, in this guide, you will learn how to do that.
The Available Valorant Agents
At the moment, the are around 20 Valorant Agents that you can play. Each Agent is unique, in the sense that it has its own abilities and a specific role it excels at. Some Agents are excellent initiators, others are good sentinels, and so on.
Here’s a complete list of all Valorant Agents:
- Brimstone
- Phoenix
- Sage
- Sova
- Viper
- Cypher
- Reyna
- Killjoy
- Breach
- Omen
- Jett
- Raze
- Skye
- Yoru
- Astra
- Kay/O
- Chamber
- Neon
- Fade
- Harbor
Depending on how you like to play the game, some of these characters will be more fun to play than others. But eventually, to be a complete player, you’ll need to unlock all of them.
Establishing Priorities
Given that Valorant characters cost either time or money to unlock, if you’re low on both of them you should set some priorities.
The easiest way to do it is to figure out what role you want to play on your team. Based on that, the first Agents that you’ll need to unlock are those who constitute a great fit for that role.
If you want to play multiple roles, then you should split your resources and unlock a few Agents that are well suited for each of the roles you’re interested in playing.
Another way in which you could establish your priorities would be to watch gameplay footage of all the available Agents and then read about their abilities on the official Valorant website. Pick those Agents that fascinate you the most.
How to Unlock Agents in Valorant
If you want to learn how to get Agents in Valorant, the answer is simple: play the game or purchase them upfront.
The fastest way to unlock Agents in Valorant is to purchase them for a total of around $200.
The alternative is to spend around 30 hours per month playing the game. That will give you the points required to unlock one Agent. If you play for a few years, you will eventually unlock all the Agents.
Assuming that you don’t want to pay a few hundred dollars to unlock all the Agents at once, what you’ll need to do is this.
Play the Agents that you’re interested in and complete daily challenges. You will need hundreds of thousands of points of experience to unlock an Agent, so be prepared for a lot of grinding.
In theory, it sounds a bit too much. But the reality of any esport game is this: unless you’re willing to play it long term and invest thousands of hours, don’t even bother starting.
These games are very competitive and you will not enjoy them unless you’re willing to upgrade your skills.
There are certain games that you play for fun. And there are other games that you play because you love challenges. Valorant falls in the latter category and will demand great sacrifices from you, even if you play it casually.
You’ll need to spend around 600 – 800 hours to unlock all the Agents in Valorant for free. For dedicated players, that’s less than a year. But you don’t really need that many options when you first start playing the game.
How to Master Valorant
Valorant, like other complex games, requires you to specialize as soon as you can. You cannot possibly master the entire game unless you’re willing to dedicate thousands of hours, like the top players have.
But you can master a role and a handful of Agents.
So your goal should be to find a role that you enjoy and then play 3-5 Agents repeatedly until you know everything about them.
Study their abilities, experiment as much as you can, and figure out a way of playing the game that allows you to have a good win rate.
If you develop an effective playstyle for yourself, you will climb the Valorant ranks quickly.
How to Unlock Valorant Agents Cheaper
If you’re willing to spend some money but also have a lot of time available, you should consider using this strategy: level up your Agents until they get to level 3, and then purchase the 4th and 5th levels.
Reaching level 5 will get you the Agent. The first several levels are easier to climb than the 4th, 5th, and so on.
Therefore, by using a combination of methods, you can unlock Valorant Agents relatively quickly and relatively cheaply. You’ll probably end up spending around $4-5 per Agent and 10-15 hours of your time.
To be fair, you would have spent that time anyway, just because you need to practice an Agent to reach a high level of competence.
In fact, you’ll need to spend a lot more than 10-15 hours to become a master of any Agent, even the most basic ones.
Valorant Agent Roles
Now that you know how to unlock characters in Valorant, you need to understand what roles those characters can play. And there are 4 major roles in total.
Duelists
Duelists are the equivalent of position 1 characters from MOBA games. These Agents carry their team by dealing a lot of damage to the enemy side.
They are expected to be excellent at killing opponents and have a playstyle that results in big advantages for their side.
A Duelist, as the name suggests, is good at winning duels. This means that their natural abilities will allow them to kill targets with ease.
Initiators
Valorant Agents who play as Initiators are expected to be on the front lines, initiating fights, supporting Duelists, and gathering information about the enemy team.
They’re also quite good at disrupting enemy combos and movements around the map.
Initiators have natural abilities that give them an edge when it comes to figuring out where the enemy is and what it wants to do next.
They can force opponents out of their hiding spots and obstruct their ability to see what’s going on around them. Meanwhile, your teammates can kill them more easily.
Sentinels
Sentinels are used for defensive purposes and are really good at defending key positions.
Once you’ve conquered a position, such as a bomb site, your Sentinels will play a key part in holding that area and preventing the enemy from recapturing it.
Sentinels tend to be good at slowing down enemy Agents. Valorant is a game in which time is extremely valuable.
Teams have very little time available each round, which means that an Agent who can stall the enemy even for 10 seconds is extremely useful to his team.
Controllers
Controllers excel at winning the vision game. They use smoke grenades and various vision-blocking abilities to offer their team an advantage and obstruct their opponents’ ability to understand what’s going on.
Whenever you need to move safely through an unsecured territory, Controllers play an essential role.
Controllers rarely get a lot of kills for their team. They’re almost exclusively a support unit that will win you the game in subtle ways.
Using the Store in Valorant
When you play Valorant and want to purchase something, such as an Agent, you need to go to the Store. In it, you can purchase Valorant Points using money.
In turn, these points will allow you to purchase skins, Agents, and much more.
You will find the Store in the game’s main menu. Just search for the Store tab and click on it. Once you’re there, it’s not that complicated to find your way around.
Select what you wish to buy and click Purchase. That will pop-up a confirmation window and you’ll be able to complete your purchase within seconds.
One thing to note about the Valorant Points is that Riot Games likes to incentivize players to buy bigger bundles.
Because of this, they give a small bonus for each bundle. The bonuses increase as the bundle gets bigger.
For the most basic bundle, which costs $4.99, you get no bonus. For the second bundle, which costs $9.99, you get a bonus of 50 Valorant Points, which is almost 10% of the first bundle (525 points).
The biggest bonus can be obtained for the $99.99 bundle, which will give you 10,500 Valorant Points and a bonus of another 1,500 Valorant Points.
