4 AM — After several hours of telling yourself “I’m going to play just one more match so I can end with a victory” you find yourself surfing through your skin collection page, finally finding the motive of so many whiffs: the skin just wasn’t hitting. So you change your Vandal to that Dot.Exe, since you can’t lose focus with all the animations of your cherished Elderflame, and flip pages to the gun buddy selection screen. But something is off, why are there so many options? Since when were all of these were part of the game? Scanning the screen, you find the motive for such a change: for the first time the show-disabled checkmark was selected. Amazed by such a sight, you show your greed for these gun buddies, but… how can you get them?

Throughout my entire journey as a gamer, I have always been a collector. I remember collecting cheap swords, trinkets, pets, rare patterns… It was always something that brought me joy while playing. In hindsight, it was no surprise that I started collecting gun buddies when I started playing Valorant. Watching their numbers rise since the game was in beta it was easy for me to learn where I needed to go and how I could acquire them, however, now that we have a myriad of them, these paths can prove to be a little thorny for someone that just found their way into Valorant. There are lots of ways to get new buddies, from gifts rewarding hard work to simply buying them from bundles; but fear not, because in this article you’ll find each and every way available for you to earn a new gun buddy. So, without further ado, here are all the different ways that you can acquire gun buddies in Valorant.

First Lane: Contracts

We start our list with the easiest no money related way to acquire a gun buddy: via contract. But, what is a contract? Mainly used when unlocking agents, contracts are a mechanism implemented in Valorant that allows you to free new content in the game - each agent can be unlocked after achieving the fifth level in a said agent’s respective contract, for example. In a new account, the first contract you’ll complete is the Welcome Contract, which awards you with, among other things, one coin buddy and two free agents; after completing it you are free to choose a new one.

Now, why did I say that this form is the easiest non-monetary way of acquiring new buddies? Simply put, as long as you are playing the game, one day they’ll be yours. Living up to its classification, the only thing you have to do is achieve the sixth tier of any contract to unlock them. Always filling the sixth position, these buddies are closely related to their agent’s theme or persona, the best example being Cypher and Skye’s buddies - His hat and her hawk respectively.

Second Lane: Via Battle Pass

With each battle pass corresponding to a specific act of a Valorant chapter -- for those who don’t know, a chapter is how Riot decided to label their season; one chapter is formed by three different acts, giving us a total of three battle passes per year -- Here is where we can find the majority of the unlockable gun buddies. While working similar to contracts, here you'll have one buddy after every couple of tiers, instead of only one, and with no necessary thematic connection between them.

The battle passes are also a place where the Devs can find greater creative freedom in comparison with the contracts, so be ready to see some meme-inspired buddies and easter eggs. Up to this date, you can buy a battle pass with 1000 valorant points - or VP for convenience - by going in the folder with the same name, right next to the home folder, while in the Valorant client to have access to all buddies; however, you can still unlock three buddies per battle pass for free on the free track.

Third Lane: Bundle Exclusive Buddies

The third way to acquire new gun buddies doesn’t hold any real secret, you just need to open your wallet, acquire some VPs and buy them from the in-game store. Buddies in this category normally appear as a complement of some higher tier bundles together with the player cards and titles - all of them are included in the freebies gifted when the bundles are bought as a whole.

Fourth Lane: Prime Gaming Drops

Our next way to acquire buddies is a little more tricky than the others. Similar to how we could get closed beta keys by watching streams in the early days of Valorant, after linking your Riot account with an Amazon account that has a Prime subscription - you can find the link to the Valorant loot page here. You’ll be able to claim different types of cosmetics every month; among them, some gun buddies.

Just remember to pass by every month so you can get your rewards since it normally has a specific period for claiming attached to it.

Here you can see some of the already given Prime buddies:

Fifth Lane: Riot Gifts

The last way to acquire buddies is the broadest of all types, even with few members in the category. While the gun buddies classified here aren’t necessarily obtained in the same way, all of them share one thing in common: they’re all given by Riot in one way or another.

Thinking, however, in a more specific categorization, we can further label then in three subcategories:

• Special Event gifts
• Competitive - or Act rank related
• Participation prize

When thinking in the first subcategory, buddies like de Dallah buddy - which celebrates the opening of the Middle Eastern region - and the Year One buddy - given in celebration of the first anniversary of Valorant - should pop in your mind. With a self-explanatory name, they’ll be, normally, gifted to accounts when special Valorant related events happen. The next one embraces the competitive-related buddies, awarded based on your highest rank in each chapter. The last subcategory works with buddies awarded when you participated in some kind of event either by watching it or playing. Up to this moment, we have the High Top Heat - awarded by watching the 2021 Spike Nations tournament -, Snow Bro - given to players that played the Snowball Fight mode available in patch 1.14 -, and VCT Masters Winner. The last buddy that needs to be highlighted in this subcategory is the Fist Bump buddy; a little different from the others, this almost legendary buddy is given as a gift directly by Riot employees to a few lucky souls.

For those who don’t recognize it, here is the one and only Fist Bump buddy:

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the majority of the older gun buddies can’t be acquired anymore, since battle passes can’t be replayed and bundle-related ones can’t be bought anymore - for now at least. However, after reading this guide, I’m certain that you’ll not miss any new chances of acquiring buddies.