So just a little background for you guys. I'm a 3rd year Cyber Security Engineer major who sucks at writing papers. In my Technical Writing english class, we were assigned to write a Technical Description on a topic of our choice. I chose Valorant. That's pretty much it, I just wanted to post it for you guys to read or give feedback :)

Oh and there are images in the original document but i don't really feel like trying to transfer them over here.

Valorant Economy

Valorant is a character-based tactical shooter where every little detail matters. One big component of Valorant is its unique economy. In Valorant, your economy refers to the amount of credits that you have, your team has, and your enemy has. Paying close attention to how many credits are circulating in the game can and will give you an advantage to winning each round. This technical description will cover everything you need to know about Valorant’s economy and will be catered to beginner to intermediate players. 📷

Starting with how Valorant economy works, Aim Lab on youtube provides this image on the right. Every round you gain a certain amount of credits dependent on what happened in the previous round. The minimum credits you get in the next round, seen in the top left of the image, depends on the amount of rounds you have loss in a row added to a default amount of credits. This is important to pay attention to because you want to buy utility around what your team can do the following round. Winning a round will give you 3,000 credits whereas losing a round will give you 1,900 credits. Losing two rounds in a row gives you a 500 credit bonus and losing three rounds in a row will give you a 1,000 credit bonus. It is important to note that if, as an attacker, you lose the round and survive without planting the bomb, you receive 1,000 less credits and do not gain a loss streak bonus. As a defender, if you lose the round and survive after the bomb as detonated, you also lose 1,000 less credits and do not gain a loss streak bonus. This system ensures that you still have the possibility to come back if you and your team are losing multiple rounds in a row. Each kill gives you 200 credits and planting the spike will give you 300 credits. Therefore, each round, you have the possibility to gain a maximum of 4,300 credits and a minimum of 900 credits.

Each item has a set price that can be purchased with credits. Knowing these prices will let you spend your credits efficiently. 📷

You can see the price of everything right below the item. The prices of weapons and shields are consistent across every character in Valorant. The prices of abilities, however, depend on the character that you’re playing. The character being played in the image above is Omen but his abilities are differently priced than other characters. For example, 📷 this is Chamber’s abilities.

Each round you will have a different amount of credits starting with 800 credits on the first round. Since in the first round, everyone starts with the same amount of credits, it is referred to as the pistol round, where everyone buys only utility and pistols. Duckeeh from Youtube states that, depending on your character, you have a wide variety of choices to make in the first round. This is almost completely up to you in deciding what to buy. For example, as Omen you would buy a blind (Paranoia) and light shield first round which totals up to 700 credits, leaving an extra 100 credits to either buy a Shrouded Step or save it for the next round. Other characters might buy a Sheriff, a Ghost and abilities, a Frenzy and abilities, or something completely different.

The second round starts to get more complicated. Depending on if you won or lost the first round, you will have either more credits or less credits than the enemy team. Starting with if you win the first round, you now have enough credits to buy more than the enemy, giving your team the advantage. Coach Mills states that following a win in the first round, you should full buy in the second round and keep your guns or save your credits in the third round. However if you lose the first round, your team will be put in a disadvantage since you will not have enough credits to buy in the third round if you buy in the second round and lose. After 12 rounds is half time where credits do not carry through meaning everyone gets set back to 800 credits on round 13. A general rule of thumb to keep a similar amount of credits to your team.

After the first three rounds, regardless of how healthy your economy is, there are a lot of different ways to spend your credits for the rest of the game. It’s very important to keep in mind that throughout the game, you should be buying with your team. MrLowlander has a video where he says that each round there are 3 different types of buys (to be put simply), a full buy, an eco round (light buy), or a force round. A full buy would mean that your team has enough credits to buy a rifle, armor, and abilities. Some rounds you will not be able to buy everything but you can buy most things which would still be considered a full buy. An eco round is a round where you buy as much as you can such that you still have enough credits to full buy the next round. You normally won’t have enough to buy rifles and shields in these rounds but you can buy pistols, shields, and abilities. A force round is when your team doesn’t have enough credits to full buy but you still buy everything that you can regardless of your minimum credits the next round. Force rounds tend to be a bit risky because if you lose this round, you’re forced into an eco round the next round and it hurts your team's economy quite a bit. However, Valorant Ascended gives a good example of a force round where he reviews a game from RISE vs V1 where V1 had a force round and still won the round.

After reading this document, you should now know how the Valorant economy works from how many credits you get each round to what types of buys your team can do each round. I want to emphasize that Valorant’s economy system is very flexible and a lot of different things can happen in each round that makes it confusing but buying around what your team is buying will ensure that you win more rounds.

Work Cited:

Aim Lab. (2021, August 16). The VALORANT Economy Guide for New Players [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67rK1w9u8Go&t=148s&ab_channel=AimLab

GameLeap Valorant Pro Guides [Coach Mills]. (2021, November 22). NEW 3.10 UPDATED ECONOMY GUIDE - STOP Buying These Weapons - Valorant Meta Guide [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf9R_4DnXSQ&ab_channel=GameLeapValorantProGuides

MrLowlander. (2021, June 7). Valorant Economy Guide For Beginners | Tips and Tricks About The Economy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vgrfp660Nw&ab_channel=MrLowlander

Duckeeh. (2022, February 11). BEST Valorant Economy Guide to HARD CARRY Games [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZ8agS6K6U&ab_channel=Duckeeh

Valorant Ascended. (2022, March 10). How to DESTROY the Valorant Economy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nfEUWopMC8&ab_channel=ValorantAscended