Interactions
Standard Interactions
Left clicking is the most general way of interacting with objects. The specific interaction will depend on the currently held item, and the current combat-stance. Some interactions require empty hands, some require a specific item.
Examples include:
- Clicking an item with an empty hand will pick it up
- Clicking a chem-dispenser with a beaker will insert the beaker
- Clicking a vending machine with a wrench will un-anchor or re-anchor it
- Clicking on yourself while holding food will make you eat some. Clicking other people will try to force them to eat it.
- Clicking something with combat mode on will attempt to attack the entity
If no other interaction takes place, left clicking will also attempt to "activate" an entity.
Template:Key press Will toggle crawling, which is similar to being downed. Downed entities must be directly aimed at to be shot (cursor on or very close to the sprite). Crawling speed is directly tied to the amount of available hands, the less hands you have available, the slower you crawl. (More than 2 hands does not increase crawl speed). Crawling still has a walk and run mode, although you cannot slip regardless of if your 'running' or not while crawling.
Activation interactions (Template:Key press)
This is a group of interactions that are independent of the currently held item, and generally don't require the item to be in your hands to work.
Examples include:
- Opening and closing things (doors, lockers, crates, etc)
- Toggling user interfaces (backpacks, computers, etc)
- Turning entities on or off (mag-boots, welders, t-ray scanners, etc)
As mentioned before, If no other interaction takes place when left-clicking an entity, these activation interactions may occur instead. So if you left-click a door with an empty hand, it will open it. But if you are holding a lit-welder it will attempt to weld it shut instead. You can still open the door without swapping hands by using Template:Key press instead of left-clicking.
Alt-click interactions (Template:Key press+
)
Template:Key press+
ing an item is used for alternative-interactions.
Common examples include:
- Ejecting an item (ID-card from a PDA, magazine from a gun, etc)
- Halving a stack
- Locking a locker or secure crate
- Climbing onto a table
Use-in-hand (Template:Key press)
Some interactions require you to interact with the currently held item. This can be done by ing on the item in the hands GUI, or by just using the Template:Key press key.
Examples include:
- Opening a soft-drink can
- Eating food
- Gripping a fire-axe with both hands
- Opening & closing the bolt of a gun.
If you use Template:Key press, it will behave as if you had Template:Key press+ the item in your hands.
Physics Dragging
Template:Key press+ an entity to start dragging it.
Template:Key press+
empty space while dragging something to move it to the clicked location.
you can stop dragging by:
- Template:Key press+
ing it again - clicking the dragging alert on the right of your screen
- pressing Template:Key press
Drag-And-Drop
Some interactions require you to click and drag entities. These are generally interactions that involve "using" players, which obviously don't fit into your hands. Examples include:
- Dragging yourself onto a table will have you climb it
- Dragging another player onto yourself will allow you to take items and clothing from their inventory.
- Dragging a mob onto a chair will buckle them onto it
- Dragging a mob into the medical scanner will place them inside of it.
- Dragging a dead body into a trash chute and flushing it will get rid of the body.
Entity Menu (
)
Right-clicking in the world will open the entity-menu. This menu makes it easy to interact with a specific item when it is difficult to get to (e.g., a cluttered table).
If you right click an entry in the entity-menu (or just any entity in your inventory), this will bring up the verb menu. This verb menu has every possible interaction with the entity, including the various keybindings, such as Template:Key press or Template:Key press+.
Verb Menu ()
This menu brings up a list of various actions you can perform on an item. The available verbs generally depend on the targeted entity, the currently held item, and the users distance to the item.
Many of the interactions listed there can be executed via some other key bindings, but some are exclusive to the verb-menu. The menu is useful when you are unsure about what interactions an entity has. If you are not sure about how to do something, its worth checking the verb-menu.
Tips
The verbs in the menu are sorted into 4 groups:
- Interaction verbs appear with bold + italic text. They generally correspond to interactions that can be triggered by left-clicking
- Activation verbs appear with bold-text. They generally correspond to interactions that can be triggered using (Template:Key press)
- Alternative-interaction verbs appear with italic-text. These ALWAYS correspond to Template:Key press+ interactions.
- And finally, there are generic verbs that have regular text.
Within these groups, each verb is sorted by priority. In general, if there is more than one verb associated with an interaction then the verb that appears first in this list should be executed first. For example, in the below image there are two alt-click verbs. alt-clicking the PDA would eject the ID card first, and then the pen. if you want to eject the pen without ejecting the ID card, you have to use the verb menu or the PDA UI. Cartridges such as MedTek, Wanted List, DoorLog, or News are the lowest priority to be ejected.
Caveats
Sadly, not all interactions have corresponding verbs in the menu. For example, looking at the PDA-example image might lead you to believe that pressing Template:Key press will toggle the PDA's flash-light. While true for flash-lights in general, for the PDA it will instead open the UI. The open-UI verb is simply missing, and should appear in the menu above the flashlight verb.
The one exception to this is Template:Key press+ verbs. All Template:Key press+ interactions appear in the verb menu, and the first one in the menu is always going to be the one that is executed by Template:Key press+ an entity.
Alerts
Alerts are the informative icons that appear on the right-hand side of the screen. Hovering over these can (sometimes) provide useful information. Some of these icons will also trigger interactions if you click on them:
- Clicking the hand-cuffs icon will attempt to break out of them.
- Clicking the on-fire alert will stop, drop, and roll
- Clicking the buckled-alert will unbuckle yourself from a chair
- Clicking the pulling alert will stop pulling
- Clicking on the pulled alert will resist pull (Cannot resist if cuffed)
Actions
Can be bound to numbers (Template:Key press-Template:Key press, then Template:Key press-Template:Key press)
This is different than the num-pad numbers! (unless you have numlock on)
Some actions are innate, while others require specific items to be equipped. Example actions include:
- Toggle combat mode (see Combat mode for more details)
- Scream
- toggle gas tank internals
- toggle Flashlight
- Sleep and Wake (Sleeping requires being buckled to a bed, wake requires being asleep)
Windows
There are various buttons that can be used to toggle various UI elements. These all can also be toggled by pressing buttons that appear on the upper left of the screen. These include:
- Template:Key press will open the escape-menu
- Template:Key press opens the character menu. If you are a antagonist, this has information about your objectives.
- Template:Key press will toggle the inventory for equipping clothing.
- Template:Key press opens the Construction menu for crafting items and building structures
- Template:Key press opens the actions-browser, which can be used to customize the actions toolbar
- Template:Key press opens admin tools (only available for admins).
- Template:Key press Opens the sandbox-menu (only available in sandbox mode).
Miscellaneous Controls
- Template:Key press swaps the currently active hand
- Template:Key press+ will examine an entity. Click on the buttons in the bottom right to further examine that particular thing. (Lighning bolt is damage, magnifying glass is detailed description, dot with magnifying glass is armor values and slowdown, silhouette of a head is ID, heartrate monitor symbol is health. Some items may have a seperate slowdown and armour values examination.
- Template:Key press will point at an entity
- Template:Key press will drop the currently held item
- Template:Key press will throw the currently held item, breaking fragile items. If velocity is high enough and the item has a thrown damage stat, the item will damage what it hits and embed.
- Holding when holding some items will bulk left click the item. (e.g. garbage bags and plant bags) will gather surrounding items into them. You can also click on ground to achieve the same effect
- on a table whilst holding certain containers (e.g. Plant bags) will empty the container's contents onto the table, which is much easier than climbing on the table and using context menu to dump contents. (This also works on biomass fabricators and disposal bins)
- Template:Key press Will attempt to put the item you're holding into your bag, or remove the last item placed in your bag if selected hand is empty
- Template:Key press Will attempt to put the item you're holding into your belt or belt slot, or remove the last item placed in your belt or belt slot if selected hand is empty
- Template:Key press Will attempt to put the held item into your suit storage slot, or remove the item currently in your suit storage slot if selected hand is empty
- Template:Key press Will open your bag. (It might be your belt, i forgor, will probably correct by 9/13/26 US Time)
Known Issues
Duplicate Interactions
Some interactions can be achieved in more than one way. For example you can eat food by either using it in your hands (Template:Key press) or by clicking on yourself while holding it. Similarly, you can climb a table by either dragging yourself onto the table or Template:Key press-clicking the table.
This is generally done either for key-binding convenience or to make some interactions more intuitive, but may also confuse some players.
Inconsistency
Some interactions are inconsistent. For example, switches can currently not be toggled using "E", and instead require you to interact with them using an empty hand, when they should really function like doors. and other toggle-able entities.
Prioritization
In some instances interactions have bad prioritization which can prevent some interactions from happening. For example, attempting to use a wrench to un-anchor a disposal unit will instead just put the wrench into the disposal unit.
This can often be circumvented using the verb menu, though sadly in this case those interactions are also missing their corresponding verbs.
(Note, this is outdated, but it is still a good example of improper prioritization. Now you have to use the verb menu to insert tools usable on disposal bins such as crowbars and wrenches, as the prioritization has been fixed.)