Originally posted by Nefrarya:

With controller, you'll be a lot slower in combat than your k+m companions (switching weapons, taking potions etc). Works for me, since I hang back a lot and kite, but it's something to keep in mind.

I an unequivocally say that that's not at all true for everyone, just FYI. Depends on how good/confident you are with a controller. As Zeppion has snarkily pointed out, if you're used to playing PVP then you will do well with a controller. I play with another friend and he is amazing. Didn't even know he was playing with one until he told me that's how he gets his rows so dang neat when planting stuff. LOL

I personally prefer to play with K+M because I just don't have the dexterity to use a controller. :)

No I meant for dropping stuff from inventory and placing in chests. I find it faster to use mouse. I'm weird like that.

I agree, always play with controller and the support has only improved and there's even a visual overlay of the controls. The game migrating to Xbox shows that with the simple mechanics and current animations work fine for console/controller setups. I especially like the LT, which 'snaps' the avatar forward in the 'ready' pose...I use it for moving in the L/R vector and if some rummy comes at me, I snap back forward.

I'm also a 'hybrid' player, using a PC w/controller and love my Hotkeys on the keyboard to swap weapons/drink/eat....and I can input text in the signs/map.

I was considering it but I can already imagine the time losses that would pile up for me over the course of a long building project. Their will come times where you need to get that pixel-perfect free-aim placements and trying to find the perfect spot to stop flicking your sticks will be much more tedious than it needs to be. In these situations a lot of people like to adjust their position with their left stick to correct the thing they are trying to do with their right stick and if you're in a high up place you might just invite a very avoidable accident or two.

Similar time problems can arise with bow usage. Sometimes a split second late can be the difference between killing a bird for its feathers, or having to find a different bird. But that's one of the less critical cases. With no rapid-fire weaponry combined together with the minimal selection of enemies that come with a long time-to-kill, sustained tracking with the help of aim-assist wouldn't be as impactful or beneficial here. Even the enemies that do have large HP pools are pretty slow and thicc anyway. It's those small and fast enemies in the later biomes that stand the most chance of messing you up if they happen to see you before you see them.

For stuff like foraging, mining, melee combat and basic navigation I'm sure each input is about equally on par. As others have said, their is no reason why you must commit to one. You should just as easily be able to pick whichever device feels right for that particular time.

tl;dr Easy game either way. But if you have transferrable skills with both inputs, m+kb will be faster and quite possibly the more relaxing choice for that reason alone.

Yep, just learned it supports controllers and so put in 5ish hours atop my previous 3, getting it pretty well now. As mentioned there are a lot of combos to press; swapping from hammer menu to club/shield as you're being hit from behind, reequipping shield every time after using bow, etc.

But I've not encountered any of the issues with aiming I hear about, I tend to aim far better with a controller (decades of controller FPS play long after abandoning ms/kb FPS play), nor in the building aspect. My XBox One controller is kept new and protected, thus the sticks are tight and responsive so getting that pixel perfect placement isn't an issue.

Plus no, carpal tunnel, obv.

I have used a PS4 controller since the beginning and love it. Yes there are times when I still need the mouse and keyboard ( like dropping stuff, writing on signs etc) but overall it works great. I am not sure what Magnificent Moose means by the ranged combat being hard as I don't share his/hers problem. I drop the drakes with ease. BTW I hate the Drake.

Originally posted by Kalysm:

I have used a PS4 controller since the beginning and love it. Yes there are times when I still need the mouse and keyboard ( like dropping stuff, writing on signs etc) but overall it works great. I am not sure what Magnificent Moose means by the ranged combat being hard as I don't share his/hers problem. I drop the drakes with ease. BTW I hate the Drake.

Is there not a shortcut to drop? Mine is RT + A, perhaps you mean like dropping weapons when not in inventory? Oh prolly for taming animals...

The game plays perfectly fine on a controller, except for aiming ranged weapons. Unfortunately this makes the mountain biome unnecessarily harsh because you absolutely need ranged combat to deal with the drakes (=a design flaw in the game as far as I'm concerned). Other than that the experience is rather pleasant.

With controller, you'll be a lot slower in combat than your k+m companions (switching weapons, taking potions etc). Works for me, since I hang back a lot and kite, but it's something to keep in mind.

Overall controls for gamepad work great for me. If you start the game from Steam Big Picture mode, you can even enter text for map markers / signs / ... . But personally, I usually prefer to do that via keyboard.

There's a bug that might not have been fixed yet where the game switches the trigger buttons. For me it helps to connect the controller AFTER starting the game.

It's doable. A mate of mine loves playing with a controller. It's doable but there's a learning curve.

I play primarily with controller, but I wouldn't recommend using controller alone - it's a bit cumbersome and not really any good for precision actions. For this reason, I supplement with keyboard/mouse.