Splatoon 3: How to Get Sheldon Licenses

The wacky, inventive weapons of Splatoon, many of which take clever inspiration from household items, have always defined the series. Splatoon 3 has more weapons than ever and introduces new tool categories to splat your opponents with. To get more of them, you’ll need certain tickets called Sheldon Licenses.

This Splatoon 3 guide will tell you everything you need to know about getting your hands on more Sheldon Licenses than you’ll know what to do with. 

Sheldon Licenses Explained

Sheldon Licenses are a currency/type of ticket earned by:

• Playing multiplayer and leveling up your character.
• Increasing a weapon’s Freshness level. 
• Transferring your data for Golden Tickets.

Leveling Up Your Character

Every level you earn in Splatoon 3’s Turf War competitive multiplayer mode will reward you with 1 Sheldon License. You can then go to Sheldon’s shop at Ammo Knights to redeem them under “Weapons” in the menu. 

Increasing Weapon Freshness

You earn or lose weapon Freshness depending on your in-game performance, but when you hit a new rating, you can no longer dip below that. Similar to how ratings work in Salmon Run. Every time you hit a new Freshness rank for a weapon, you will earn a Sheldon License.

Every time you level up, Sheldon will unlock more new weapons — three per level to start. This means there will always be more options than you have Sheldon Licenses for. Not until you’ve spent dozens of hours playing will you have every variant of every weapon type and the tickets necessary to purchase them.

But Splatoon 3 lets you try weapons before you buy them, ensuring you aren’t going to waste a Sheldon License on something you hate. 

How to Try and Test New Weapons

While you must use Sheldon Licenses to purchase new weapons for use in matches, there is a way to try out weapons you haven’t yet paid tickets for.

Once you have reached a new level and unlocked a new weapon (and buttoned through Sheldon’s spiel), that weapon will become available in Sheldon’s testing arena. When you are in the shop, simply press Y, and you’ll be transported to an arena with dummies, where you can try out new weapons and their corresponding loadouts. 

From this arena, you can press + to change your gear. This will open up a menu of all the weapons available for purchase in the shop with Sheldon Licenses. You can equip any of them here (primary or special) to test them out.

That’s everything you need to know about Sheldon Licenses in Splatoon 3. We’ve got plenty more on the latest game in the popular franchise, including a list of every hairstyle available for Inklings and Octolings, every way to play multiplayer matches, and the skinny on Hero Gear. For even more tips on the game, visit our guides hub and get a few legs up on all the other Inklings out there.