Valorant has a lot of good skins for every weapon on Valorant. Most of these premium skins on the store come with the ability to be upgraded in multiple levels. These upgrades can give you micro-transition upgrades to the weapon such as additional animations and sounds.
With that said, let’s find out how you can upgrade the weapons, how many levels are available, what each level will give you, the cost per upgrade, and variation upgrades available for Valorant skins.
Valorant Skin Upgrade Cost
Radianite Points are used to upgrade weapon skin levels, for each level, it would cost you 15 Radianite Points. Meaning for a skin it would require 60 Radianite Points to be fully upgraded.
Valorant Skin Upgrade Levels
Depending on the Class of the Skin the upgradable level can vary. Some premium skins have only 2-level upgrades such as the Doodle Buds collection, and some skin collections have 5 levels of upgrades such as the Protocol 781-A collection. Let’s find out what kind of upgrades each level will give your Valorant skins.
Level 1 – Base Level
This is the base level, you don’t have to pay anything to activate this since it has already been activated. From here on out you will need 15 radianite points to upgrade to each level. Melee also has this option activated.
Level 2 – VFX & SFX
Level 2 upgrade holds the VFX, the visual effects of the weapons, and the sound effects. Almost every premium Valorant skin has this level and it costs 15 Radianite points to activate it. Also, the melee weapons inside the skin bundles also have the VFX and sound effects in Level 2 and there are no more upgrades for melee except in the Protocol 781-A bundle.
Level 3 – Animation
Animation for each weapon skin for the reload, inspect animation and gunfire animation is activated at the level 3 upgrade, this is not available in some bundles such as Doodle Buds. One melee skin has level 3, in Protocol 781-A melee, the voice-over is activated after upgrading the level 3 using 15 Radianite points.
Level 4 – Finisher & Kill Banner
After activating level four the maximum level for almost every skin using 15 Radianite points the skin will get the kill banner and the sound effects associated with it, and the final kill finisher animation will also be activated.
Level 5 – Voice Lines
Level 5 upgrade for 15 Radianite points is only included with some of the Deluxe tier weapon skins on Valorant, especially with the Elderflame operator and the Protocol 781-A bundle. For the Protocol 781-A bundle level 5 will give the voice lines for different actions.
How To Upgrade
To upgrade weapon skins you can head over to the collection, select the weapon skin you want to upgrade, click on the levels from the bottom up, and upgrade using 15 Radianite points for each level.
How To Degrade/Downgrade Valorant Skins
You can downgrade the weapons you have upgraded by selecting a lower level and equipping it after selecting the skin. This is suitable if the skin animations are distracting you from grinding in the competitive.
Skin Color Variations
Apart from the upgrades, Valorant skins comes with a few skin color variations as well. A weapon skin usually comes with four skin variations but some bundles can only have two or three variations. Limited edition Valorant skins like VCT bundle or the Arcane bundle only have one color variations.
The Conclusion
Valorant weapon skins have multiple upgrade levels each giving you different additions to weapons such as visual effects, sound effects, finishers, kill bannes and even new voice lines tied up with skins. Depending on the skin bundle the levels can vary and for a full upgrade it would cost from 40-60 Radianite Points.
You can downgrade the weapon skin levels once upgraded if you find the effect added are distracting you from grinding. Apart from the upgrade levels there are Valorant skin variations meaning you get different colors for the same skin using Radianite Points.
Andrew "SuZki" Scola is a dedicated Valorant player who has been in the game since the Valorant beta release. He has a peak rank of Immortal 3 and is also a semi-pro esports player. He's also been associated with a few gaming clans and communities, including Highlander Gaming and SoCal Valorant Community. In his free time, he creates content for the Valorant community and writes guides about Valorant based on his experience.
