An engaging shooter from Riot Games, Valorant is an excellent team-based multiplayer for anyone looking for an exciting, tactical twist. As with many team shooters, Valorant doesn’t have a lot of traditional cheat codes to input — but there are still plenty of tricks to give you an edge. Let’s go over everything you need to know, including a few things even experienced players haven’t learned yet.
Valorant Summary
Valorant is a team-based hero shooter where players take control of a specific Agent and enter an arena to battle it out with the imposing team. It bears several similarities to Counter-Strike when it comes to certain gameplay features. The game, which came out in 2020, is entirely free to play and is now available on multiple platforms. A year after its release, the game was seeing around 14 million active monthly players.
If you have experience with other hero team shooters like Overwatch, then you probably know what to expect with Valorant. That said, the game requires more tactics than alternative titles, with less focus on abilities and more on positioning and mastering specific kinds of firearms. That makes it a popular choice for players who are looking for a new multiplayer shooter (and one they don’t have to pay for). Let’s take a closer look at the mechanics and story, then jump into your cheat code options.
Valorant Premise
The Valorant story takes place on an earth very much like ours. You won’t find any talking gorillas here, but something big did happen called First Light. This event did weird things with “radiant” energy, altering how life works and essentially changing geopolitics forever. Oh yeah — and it started giving people superpowers.
The name Valorant comes from the Valorant Protocol, an organization designed to gather “hypernatural” people from the world and train them to be “Agents.” Valorant tasks Agents to carry out missions and generally keep the peace. They do a pretty good job, but there are some problems. That includes global black markets and interdimensional threats unveiled by radiant energy. Specifically, there’s a mirror earth out there with its own Valorant organization. The mirror or Omega earth is facing extinction, and its Agents are working on ways to invade the original or Alpha earth. Chaos frequently ensues.
Enough about the story, let’s talk about the shooting! Each team has five players, who choose an agent from several different classes. Including Controllers, Duelists, Sentinels, and Initiators. Teams generally either attack or defend on a map. Everyone starts with a basic pistol, a couple of signature abilities (sometimes more, sometimes less) with a certain number of charges for use, and an ultimate ability they charge through gameplay.
As a round progresses, players gain experience through a variety of actions, including objectives, assists, kills, etc. This allows the player to earn currency, which they can spend in specific buy phases that occur as rounds continue. Buy phases notably allow players to buy upgraded guns, shields, and more charges for their abilities. Guns include sidearms, rifles, shotguns, SMGs, sniper rifles, and melee weapons. Once an agent chooses a gun and brings it out on the map, others can loot it from their body after defeating them. Game modes for Valorant include:
- Unrated: This is the casual play option, which is unranked and includes a set of 25 matches. The first team to win 13 wins the games. Attackers must carry a Spike to a specific site on the map, while defenders try to stop them for a certain amount of time or deactivate the Spike. Points are awarded for successfully attacking or defending. Points are also assigned for team wipes. Teams also have the option to vote to “Surrender” if it looks like a game is unbalanced after the first several rounds.
- Spike Rush: A shorter mode made of 7 rounds. Abilities are hypercharged in this mode, allowing for more frequent activation. Also, guns are randomized, so players can’t count on getting their specialty. Here, every player has a Spike, so it’s a mad dash to see who can activate theirs first.
- Swiftplay: Swiftplayer is an unranked mode that cuts down the rounds from 25 to 9, but is otherwise the same. It’s great for a shorter session.
- Competitive: The big ranked mode, Competitive admits players level 20 and up to play. It adds features like players voting on a draw. And, of course, players can win ranks from Iron to Radiant in their region.
- Deathmatch: This free-for-all mode pits 14 players against each other for nine minutes. If a player manages to stack up 40 kills within this time frame. Otherwise, whoever has the most kills wins. This mode is all about shooting skills: Abilities are disabled, and health packs include ammo as well.
- Team Deathmatch: This mode is similar to unrated, but winning depends on the number of kills. Plays can use agent abilities in this mode, and the team that reaches 100 kills first wins. It also gets unique maps.
- Escalation: Counter-Strike players may recognize this mode. Teams start with a random set of 12 weapons. Each time they cross a kill threshold, a team is moved to a different weapon. However, weapons get steadily worse as they go on, so player skill becomes more and more important. Abilities are disabled, but some abilities are added to the weapon pool to make things interesting. Players are also spawned at random locations.
- Replication: Here, teams vote on what Agent they want to be. Then everyone on that team plays as that agent for the round until a team reaches 9 rounds won. Players can play as Agents they haven’t unlocked yet.
- Premier: This mode is still in testing, but it’s an elite option for the most talented players to prove themselves. It’s designed to help find players good enough to join pro teams.
Valorant Main Characters
Valorant has a lot of Agents to pick from, currently 22 in total with more added regularly. Listing them all would take a lot of unnecessary time, but we’ll quickly go over the starting five Agents and how they play into the overall story. Players must unlock other agents by choosing their contract and earning experience by winning games. No agents are locked behind a paywall.
Brimstone: Brimstone is a Controller, an Agent who specializes in crowd control and setting teams up for pushing ahead. Their kits typically include smoke bombs, stubs, and other abilities. Brimstone’s experience as a firefighter and in the U.S. special forces makes him an ideal Controller. He was one of the first Agents, and now takes a commanding role in the Valorant Organization. That earns him a certain amount of respect, and he in turn looks at the Agents as an assortment of kids that need protecting. His abilities include a helpful stim beacon, sky smoke for blocking views, and an incendiary grenade. He can also call in an orbital strike.
Jett: Jett is a Duelist from South Korea, specializing in swift attacks and first strikes to soften up enemy defenses. She started work as a chef, but First Light eventually gave her wind-like powers. Valorant found her and trained her to use her powers, and Jett soon became a talented Agent. She was also one of the very first to encounter her mirror-self from a dying earth, a Jett that destroyed a large portion of the city. Now earth believes that Jett is a dangerous, unstable Agent, and only a few know the truth. Jett’s abilities include Drifting after a jump, a cloud to obscure site, a thrust ability, and her ultimate, which allows her to throw knives.
Phoenix: Another Duelist, Phoenix is a more recent recruit who was suspended from a London Performing Arts school around the time he developed fire-based radiant powers. Valorant tried its best to train him, but Phoenix remained brash and impulsive. He was only brought into the fold when he encountered his mirror self trying to place a bomb in Rabat. With no more secrets, he’s more willing to be part of the team. His abilities include creating fire walls and shooting flame orbs, as well as a self-revive.
Sage: Sage’s old life as a monk changed thanks to radiant energy. Now she’s a Sentinel, an Agent specializing in defense and the ability to create obstacles. She entered Valorant with relatively few complications, and command sees her as a natural leader. Her abilities include the option to create barrier walls and shoot orbs that can slow or heal. Her ultimate allows her to resurrect one downed player.
Sova: Sova plays as an Initiator, Agents specializing in offense, both dealing damage and helping the team track enemies. While Sova doesn’t have innate powers, he is a master archer who can equip a variety of technology to help out his team. His good nature helped keep the early recruits a cohesive team, and the growing team great respects him. His abilities include shooting bolts that can shock or reveal enemy players, as well as commanding a drone.
Valorant Cheats and Codes
As a hero team shooter, Valorant depends greatly on group play and online battles. You might think that makes it difficult to use any direct cheat codes. That’s true, but there are still a few tricks you can use…without getting banned. Let’s go over some of your best options.
Create a Custom Game
There is actually a cheats section in Valorant, and you can find it under the Custom Game mode. This mode allows you to adjust the rules of a game to have fun with friends. Once you choose the basics for a custom game, you can enter the menu settings and select a Cheats tab to enable a wide variety of console command-like cheat modes. You can activate these cheats at any time during gameplay. Those include:
- Ghost Mode: Get the ability to phase through all walls and objects in the map.
- Pause Match Timer: Freeze the match timer to a specific time to help remove countdowns and other issues.
- End Game Phase: Push the game ahead into the next phase.
- Restart Game: Restart the custom game completely.
- Infinite Abilities: Gives your Agent unlimited charges for their abilities.
- Infinite Ammo: The ammo for the gun your Agent is currently using will never run out.
- Infinite Magazines: You never have to reload weapons that have reload requirements.
- Infinite Creds: During buy phases or stops at a shop, you can buy whatever you want.
- Ignore Shopping Restrictions: You can open up the weapon shop at any time, anywhere you are.
- Invulnerability: Your current Agent can’t die.
- Auto-Respawn: Your Agent will respawn exactly where they died.
- Agent for Next Round: You can pick a new Agent to automatically switch to on the next round of play.
That’s a pretty great list from a cheat perspective. But there’s one big price you have to pay in return. Custom games do not give players any experience. They’re a great way to practice Agents and have fun, but to progress you’ll have to play in other modes as well. Let’s look at some other options.
Replication Mode
Replication mode isn’t exactly a cheat, but it has a huge cheat-ish advantage: You can play as characters you haven’t unlocked yet. This is a great way to familiarize yourself with all kinds of popular Agents without having to grind for them. New players can quickly test out skills and see which Agent they feel comfortable with. Then you can target your top picks for quick unlocking before anyone else. It’s a huge timesaver during the early stages of the game when you’re working on leveling up.
Basic Gameplay Tricks Players Don’t Know
There are a few tricks in Valorant that are hard for new players to learn unless someone teaches them. That’s especially true if this is your first team shooter. If you want to do a lot better, very quickly, keep these important tips in mind.
- Walk to hide your presence: Running creates noise which experienced players are always listening for. It will give away your presence behind walls, in smoke, or otherwise cloaked. Walk more whenever you are close to enemies.
- Strafing doesn’t work: It may feel like second nature, but strafing lowers your accuracy so much it’s not worth it. Stop and line up a shot.
- Experiment with guns at the shooting range. The practice shooting range is great for finding a favorite weapon and practicing with it. You can quickly get a feel for what you like best and practice improving your accuracy. Every gun type has its own recoil and other specific features.
- You can shoot through some walls: Walls that show bullet holes allow you to shoot through them. If there’s an enemy on the other side, they’ll take a fraction of the damage, but it scares them and helps cut down their health.
- Take your knife out to sprint: If you need to get to the other side of the map in a hurry, take out your knife. You’ll run faster with it than with a firearm.
Use Valorant Tracker
Valorant Tracker is an app that can track your game in real-time. You can use it to view your specific game stats, the rankings of all your opponents, and how everyone’s playing in general. You use it to get an early eye on the enemy team, get automated suggestions about which Agent to play, and see how you’re improving.
The great thing about Valorant Tracker is that it really only supplies you with information. It doesn’t affect actual gameplay at all. That means it doesn’t lead to bans or accusations of cheating, so it’s largely harmless to use.
Valorant Cheats FAQ
Below, we’ll go over some of the most important questions people have about using Valorant cheats and what to expect from the game.
What About Cheats Like Aimbots and Wall Hacks? Do These Work in Valorant?
You can find versions of this software that work in Valorant, yes. But these all fall under hostile gameplay which Riot explicityly bans to help players have a good time. That’s why we’re not recommending or linking to any of these tools. If you try using them, there’s a good chance your Riot will ban your account soon afterward. Also, it pisses everyone off.
Remember, Riot Games uses scanning software that will scan your PC to detect the presence of cheating software. Their approach makes it very difficult to hide the fact you are using cheats, even if they aren’t currently enabled.
Will Valorant Cheats Work on Any Platform?
The ones we have listed will, because custom game options are available on all platforms. So are basic tricks during gameplay that can give you an edge. The Valorant Tracker is easiest to use on PC and may be challenging to use on other platforms, even if you have a second screen nearby.
The image featured at the top of this post is ©Epic Games.