Controls

The basics

You can move around with the WASD keys. If you press e (right hand) or q (left hand), you'll interact with whatever's in front of you, or if you press r (right hand), you'll interact with what you're standing on. You can use the arrow keys to change the direction you're facing. The number keys will select an item in your hotbar, or you can click on an item in your hotbar to select it. If you hold shift while moving, you'll interact with every tile you walk across. This is useful for picking up lots of items. You can toggle the omnidialog (which contains the inventory tab, crafting tab and settings tab) by pressing esc.

Tools

Some tools (such as hammers and fluid guns) are used by having them selected in your hotbar and then clicking on the world, while others (such as pickaxes and shovels) need to be equipped and then used with an interaction key (e, q or r as described above). To equip an item, you can drag it to the L or R slot to the right of the hotbar, or you can press { with it active in the hotbar to equip it in your left hand or } to equip it in your right hand. You can unequip an item by trying to equip it again with a keyboard shortcut or by clicking it in the hotbar's L or R slot.

More hotkeys

Pressing shift+f will toggle autofocus, i.e. whether the camera will follow the player's movements. Pressing f by itself will reset the camera to the default zoom level and (if autofocus is off) center on the player. Pressing ctrl+p will open the Play Locally dialog, which you may find more convenient than clicking the button on the title screen. It's also a quick way to reconnect if you're already in the game. This is sometimes useful if any data is stale due to a bug.

Entity interactions

Interacting with animals and ships will cause you to ride them, unless you have a weapon equipped, in which case interacting with an animal will attack it. To dismount an animal or ship, press r. To enter a ship's realm, interact with the ship while holding ctrl. To destroy a ship and its realm (this is dangerous and cannot be undone!), hold ctrl+alt and interact with the ship.

Tile entity interactions

To interact with a tile entity, such as a building or machine, press e in front of it. The effects this will have vary depending on the type of the tile entity. For buildings, this will teleport you into the building. For machines, this will typically open their GUIs. Some tile entities, such as the autofarmer and pump, will be rotated if you interact with them while holding ctrl.

Chat dialog

To toggle the chat dialog, press / while it's not focused (which is most of the time). You can focus the chat dialog by clicking on it. Pressing \ will both open and focus the chat dialog. Pressing | will open and focus the chat dialog and also set its contents to / for easy command input.