How to Unlock Agents in Valorant

Valorant is the new First-Person Shooter entry of the League of Legends company — Riot Games. This 5v5 tactical shooter game took the world by storm and is now one of the top competitive FPS games out there. Here, players can play casually, competitively, and even create custom games where you can tweak settings and enable cheats; surely, there’s a treat for everyone! But to enjoy Valorant to the fullest, you need to know how to use all of the Agents available in the game. Easy enough, but unlocking them is another story.

Having the right Agent that fits your playstyle is key to victory in Valorant. This is just as important as understanding the mechanics and concept of the game. If you are just starting in Valorant and aren’t content with agents available on the getgo, then keep reading. We’ll tell you how to get the free ones, how to grind for the others, and complete them all.

There are a total of 16 agents in Valorant as of now with Kay/O being the latest addition; riot promises to add more to them as the game updates in the future. When you finish downloading the game, you will be able to use five free agents. These are Brimstone, Sova, Phoenix, Sage, and Jett. The rest of the agents can be unlocked by hard work and investing more time in the game.

As you continue to play and progress, you will be leveling up your account. When your player level reaches level 5, you will be given a free unlock of an agent. You will be notified of this immediately, but you can put off unlocking any agents if you want to spend more time figuring out the game. You will also receive the same notification when your player level reaches Level 10. We recommend going to The Range to practice the different Agents of the game. Here you can use all the Agents available and all their skills. Additionally, you can use all the weapons available in the arsenal so you can practice to your heart’s content.

When you have decided on your two free agents, it’s time to unlock the remaining ones. We told you to grind for them, but there’s actually another way to unlock them. It will require a lot more than just your time, though.

Unlocking Agents With Cold, Hard Cash

Not everyone is a fan of the pay-to-win concept in games. In Valorant, however, you are just paying to unlock the Agents faster than you would be grinding them. If you have money saved up and want to unlock these agents fast, then buck up because the total of these microtransactions is hefty.

The currency of the game is called Valorant Points or VP. 200 Valorant Points is equivalent to $2. To unlock an Agent, you need to reach their contract Tier 5. Reaching the contract level to unlock them will be a total of $10.

If you want to unlock all the agents by purchasing them, you will need to spend a total of $110. Not really cheap, but if you’ve got the buck for it then go ahead and unlock the agents on day one. The contract tiers 6 through 10 can’t be purchased, however.

Simply go to the top button Agents, then select the agent you want to unlock. From here, you can see two buttons: Activate Contract and View Contract. Select the tier you want (Tier 5 unlocks the agent) then press the unlock button for 1000 Valorant Points.

Unlocking Agents by Grinding

If you’re one of the people who disagree with the pay-to-win mechanic — or you’re just a little tight on cash — you can still unlock all the other agents for free by grinding! And when we say grinding, we mean playing A LOT. This method requires you to play and play and play. Tier 1 of any agent starts at 25,000 XP. Succeeding tiers cost 25,000 XP more per level. So the breakdown and total XP required can be calculated.

• Tier 1 — 25,000 XP
• Tier 2 — 50,000 XP
• Tier 3 — 75,000 XP
• Tier 4 — 100,000 XP
• Tier 5 — 125,000 XP

Unlocking an agent will cost you a total amount of 375,000 XP. This all doesn’t make sense if you don’t know how much XP each playthrough rewards you. Playing Spike Rush rewards you with 1,000 XP whether you win or lose. Deathmatch rewards you with 900 XP regardless of your place at the end of the game. We recommend playing these two games because they normally just take around four to five minutes to play.

Playing Unrated and Competitive rewards you with 100 XP per round and 200 XP per round if you win. That means, winning with a perfect 13-0 score can give you a total of 2,600 XP. These matches usually take anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour depending on the resilience of each team in the game.

On top of the XP from matches, you also have the Daily and Weekly Missions. There are a total of two Daily Missions every day which rewards you with 2,000 XP each. The three Weekly Missions reward you with 14,400 XP each for a total of 43,200 XP. We recommend playing Unrated and Competitive matches since you can unlock the Daily and Weekly Missions here. Spike Rush can help progress the Missions depending on the required tasks. Deathmatches cannot progress the Missions, so we recommend avoid playing these if your goal is to accomplish the Daily and Weekly Missions as fast as you can.

Unlocking agents this way takes a lot of time, but you can think of it as training yourself in the game with the Agents as a reward for your hard work. Get your game face on and start playing until the wee hours of the morning. This is going to be a long grind to completion.