772059 people are playing Valorant at the moment I’m typing out this article. That’s a crazy number right? In reality this number is on the lowside compared to when the game first came out! A big portion of those players are new and you might be too, keep on reading for some quick tips and tricks in Valorant.

What is valorant ?
Valorant is a tactical shooter, first to 13 round wins with an Attacking side and Defending side. On the attacking side your goal is to plant the spike which is basically a bomb and let it explode on site, On the defending side your goal is to stop the attackers from planting on site, if they do plant the new goal is to stop it from exploding, you do this by diffusing it. 1 life per round and a different set of agents playing on each team every game you play.

How many maps are there?
There are 6 playable maps at the moment, Icebox, Breeze, Haven, Ascent, Bind, and Split. Every map has 2 sites where the spike is supposed to be planted by the attackers except for Haven which has 3. The attackers are supposed to attack said sites and defenders are supposed to defend said sites.

How many characters are there?
There are 16 agents, and 4 different classes of agents. The 4 classes consist of 5 Duelists, 4 Initiators, 4 Controllers, and 3 sentinels. All of these different agents have different abilities but each agent in the same class has the same goal. Duelists entry frag and create space on the site for teammates to plant spike. Initiators challenge angles by setting up their team to enter contested ground and push defenders or attackers away. Controllers are the agents who control the visibility on the site. Sentinels are supposed to lock down site preventing any enemies from entering.

What games are similar?
Valorant seems to take a lot of inspiration from CS:GO and Overwatch. There are a list of things that are similar on Valorant that are featured on CS:GO and Overwatch, so if you’ve played CS:GO or Overwatch you’ll only need to adapt to the new playstyle as the general idea of the game is the same. For example, Valorant is a 5v5 game which is the same as CS:GO, Valorant has a credit system that is used to purchase guns every round which is the same as CS:GO, Valorant has unique abilities for every agent in the game which is similar to Overwatch.

What type of game modes are available on Valorant?
There are 5 main game modes, Unrated, Competitive, Deathmatch, Spike Rush, and Customs. Unrated is the regular mode everyone plays when they start playing Valorant, Unrated is the standard first to 13 wins gamemode. Competitive runs the same as Unrated except that it is skill based matchmaking. Competitive is built by the ranking system, there are 8 ranks and the higher rank you are the higher the skill pool is when you queue in. Deathmatch is a free for all where 16 players duke it out to first to 40 eliminations. Spike rush is a shorter version of Unrated, there are only 8 rounds max but it is a first to 4 round wins. Spike rush has nice fun ability orbs that anyone can pick up for a competitive edge, but spike rush is usually played for fun. Customs, aka custom games, are games that are setup by the players themselves. In customs you can choose to play any gamemode that you want, even the unplayable ones.