Valorant — Your First Two Weeks
The economy, the spike timings that decide every retake, and why every agent has the same health bar.
Everyone has the same health
Every agent has 100 base health, raised by up to 50 with shields. There are no tanky agents and no fragile ones.
Internalise that early, because it means agent choice never wins you a duel. Every agent also has four abilities, including a Signature and an Ultimate. The difference between agents lives entirely in what those abilities do — the gunfight itself is identical for all of them.
Agents fall into four roles: Controller, Duelist, Initiator and Sentinel. Pick one and learn it properly. Flexing across all four early means knowing no map well enough to use its angles.
The economy is a team resource
Credits cap at 9,000. Everyone starts a half with 800 — enough for a pistol and light shields, not for both a rifle and armour.
In Endgame (Unrated) and Overtime (Competitive), everyone's credits reset to 5,000, so those are full-buy rounds for both sides regardless of what came before. Do not save in overtime.
The classic beginner mistake is the half-buy: 2,000 credits on a Ghost and light shields in a round the team needed to save. Either save properly — pistol only, keep the credits — or full buy alongside your team. A half-bought team loses the round and then the next one too.
The spike timings decide retakes
These three numbers matter more than any aim tip:
- Planting takes 4 seconds
- Defusing takes 7 seconds
- Defuse progress is saved at the halfway point, 3.5 seconds
That last one is a mechanic many new players do not know exists. If you start a defuse and get shot off it, the outer casing drops halfway, the audio cue rises in pitch, and your next attempt begins from 3.5 seconds rather than zero.
So the "half defuse" is a real tactic. Get 3.5 seconds in, retreat, and a teammate finishes in 3.5 instead of 7. Both planting and defusing produce an audio cue audible to everyone in range, so neither is ever a surprise if you are listening.
The first fortnight
- Pick one role and two maps. Depth beats breadth for the first hundred games.
- Buy with the team — full buy or full save, never in between.
- Learn the 4 / 7 / 3.5 second timings. They decide whether a retake is possible at all.
- Walk into sites. Footsteps carry, and running gives away your position for nothing.
- Use your abilities before you die. An unspent ultimate is a wasted round.
Where this comes from
The numbers here were read from these pages on September 5, 2026. Games patch, and a guide is only as current as the last time somebody checked it — so if something below disagrees with what you see in game, the game is right.