How to level guns quickly in Valorant

Riot Games

Cosmetics in Valorant are abundant and they only get better the more Radianite Points (RP) you put into them. Leveling up guns can be a grind, but there’s some ways to expedite the process to start adding flair to your arsenal.

Riot is constantly adding diverse and unexpected skin collections to Valorant. As premium as they are, a pocket full of RP can actually take your weapon skins to another level of polish.

Unfortunately, there’s only a few ways of getting RP in Valorant. As such the quest for the coveted currency boils down to outright purchasing Valorant Points (VP) or grinding through the Battle Pass in every Act to maximize your earnings.

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To really get the math straightened out about how much RP you’ll need to quickly level up a gun, you need to know just how much it’ll take to completely finish one weapon. That’s where we come in!

vandal valorantRiot Games
Some weapon skins in Valorant can get upgraded to make them look completely different.

Why do I want to level my guns?

As you pump RP into a single gun, you’re going to start to unlock exotic effects for the skins that you’ve already purchased, effectively giving your weapons even more flair.

Finishers, variants, and even special animations are available for some gun collections in Valorant that blow the default style out of the water.

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They’re an awesome way to flex on your enemies, as well as show just how dedicated you are to living the Valorant lifestyle.

How do I level my guns?

To start the leveling process, navigate to the top of Valorant’s main menu to the ‘Collection’ tab. You’ll see all of your weapons laid out.

Unfortunately not all guns can level up, but you can easily check which ones do by cycling through the cosmetics and seeing which have a panel to cash in RP for upgrades.

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Level 1 is the base skin, and from there you’ll have the option of spending 10 RP to go to the VFX at level 2, an Animation at level 3 and finally the Finisher at level 4, before unlocking the color variants.

valorant guardian skins upgradeRiot Games
You can spend RP on some Valorant collections to give them more flair.

How much RP is needed to upgrade Valorant guns?

Every level for a gun costs an even 10 RP. The base level will give you a simple VFX upgrade that will spruce up your weapon’s skin and will unlock the next tier above it.

The second and third level gives you animations and a finisher, bringing the total cost of leveling up the gun to 30 RP. But once you reach this stage, if the skin in question has color variants then you’ll get a chance to buy one of them for 15 RP a piece.

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If we put it all together, every weapon in Valorant takes 30 RP to completely level up, but 75 RP in total if we want to also include the three different variants.

How to increase your RP: Buying VP

Let’s get the ugly truth out of the way: if you want to upgrade your guns quickly you need to spend some cash on Valorant. The conversion distribution for VP into RP is:

  • 1600VP for 20 RP
  • 2800 VP for 40 RP
  • 4800 VP for 80 RP

At the moment, it takes about $20 USD to get 2050 VP, giving you barely enough to convert that into 20 RP, aka two gun levels or one color variant.

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If we keep going up the ladder, this means you’ll need to purchase a $20 and $10 USD pack of VP to barely get 40 RP, leaving you with about 35 RP missing before completing a single gun.

valorant radianite points Riot Games
You can convert VP into RP that can be used to quickly upgrade Valorant weapon skins.

How to increase your RP: Battlepass

Buying your RP isn’t a fun option, so a ‘cheaper’ avenue would be to grind through the Battle Pass which costs 1000 VP, or $10 USD. Then the long grind begins to actually complete your progression through the season.

Once you wrap up the Battle Pass, you should have 150 RP to play with. If we go back to our previous calculations, that means you can quickly level up two different weapons all the way through.

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Since Riot has only introduced premium cosmetics to weapons and not Agents or other accessories, all your efforts can go into leveling up your weapon collection.

While there’s a lot of space for improvements in the system to award more RP in Valorant overall, grinding out the Battle Pass and making the most of your currencies will help along the way to leveling up your arsenal.


So that’s the two main ways to quickly level up your guns. While the first may only be an option for the big spenders, the second is a really easy way to get yourself some awesome new cosmetics. Not only that, it means you get to play more Valorant, and what could possibly be bad about that?

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