WARDOGS keybinds: every default PC control

Moving and shooting

The infantry defaults. Two need a word: Left Shift does double duty as sprint and as hold-breath while aiming, and Reload is R in every player report found — Shacknews’ table prints Right Click for it, which looks like an error in that table.

The adaptive crosshair: turning it off, and its known bugs →

Items, slots and attachments

Number keys select quick slots 1 to 0; 4 also opens the equipment wheel. Which item sits on which slot is shown on the Tab inventory screen.

Voice, chat and pings

Squad and proximity voice have separate push-to-talk keys. Text chat opens with Enter; with it open, Tab cycles the ALL, TEAM, SQUAD and LOCAL channels instead of opening the inventory.

Squads, voice chat and playing with friends →

Driving

Ground vehicles drive on WASD with Space as the handbrake. B opens the vehicle’s Buy Ammo / Supplies screen — where crates, supplies and music tapes are bought — and G drops a supply crate from the driver’s seat.

Buying and dropping supplies from a vehicle →

Flying a helicopter

The default flight keys. Most pilots rebind or move to a stick; the helicopter page covers mouse axes, flight assistance and landing.

Helicopter controls, axes and landing →

Vehicle weapons and cameras

As a gunner, Left Click fires, Z cycles weapons and B the fire mode; W, S, A and D aim. C ejects the camera from a guided projectile. Alt toggles free look in any seat.

Building

With a hammer out: Right Click rotates the piece, B toggles snapping and V dismantles.

Placing and supplying a FOB →

Menus, map and the Vault

Tab opens the inventory, M the tactical map and Esc the pause menu. At a vendor, V switches the list to items stored in your Vault. The active-reload prompts take the arrow keys or WASD.

How the Vault works →

Keys that do several jobs

WARDOGS reuses keys by context, which is why one rebind can surprise you somewhere else:

• V — melee bash on foot, Vault toggle at a vendor, countermeasures in a vehicle, dismantle with a build tool.
• B — fire mode on a weapon, the supplies screen in a vehicle, snapping with a build tool.
• F — interact, and give up when you are down.
• G — mount or fold a bipod on foot, drop a supply crate from a vehicle.
• Space — jump, deploy a parachute, handbrake.
• C — crouch, cut a parachute, change the vehicle camera, eject from a guided projectile.

When rebinding breaks another key

Players report that changing one binding can silently blank another: rebind the mouse wheel and scope zoom stops working; move proximity voice and the reverse gear loses its key; change Reload and emplacements such as the mortar and AA stop reloading. Two Steam guides trace it to empty entries the game writes into its settings file, which the in-game Reset Keybinds does not clear. Their fix, with the game fully closed:

The Steam guide with the full walkthrough →

• Open %LOCALAPPDATA%\Wardogs\Saved\Config\WindowsClient\GameUserSettings.ini in a text editor.
• Find the CustomKeybindings= line under [/script/bhenhancedinput.bhenhancedinputplayerbinds] — it is one long line.
• Look for entries that read PrimaryKey=(bIsCustom=True) with no Key= value, such as ScopeZoom.Increase or Vehicle.GearshiftR. Each is a blank binding overriding the default.
• Either delete that entry (and its trailing comma) so the default returns, or add a key, e.g. PrimaryKey=(Key=MouseScrollUp,bIsCustom=True).
• Save and start the game. Back the file up first; deleting the whole file also works but loses every setting.

Controllers

Shacknews’ table also prints Xbox and PlayStation buttons — RT and LT to fire and aim, A to jump, B for crouch-prone, X to reload and interact, LB and RB to lean. Treat them with care: WARDOGS is PC-only for now, and its Steam listing declares no controller support at all.

What controller support WARDOGS actually declares →

Where these keys come from

BULKHEAD has not published a keybinding list. The defaults above are Shacknews’ table of 10 September 2026, launch day, regrouped here by task; where players report a key, it matches — Give Up on F, the Vault on V at a vendor, B for vehicle supplies, G for crates, Enter and Tab for chat — with one exception, Reload, printed as R. Defaults can change in any patch, and your own Controls › Keybindings menu is the final word.

Shacknews’ full keybinding table →

Esc does nothing after Season 02

Two players report that after the Season 02 patch on 15 October, Esc no longer opened the pause menu — not in the tutorial, not in a match — and would not bind back to it in Controls. That matters more than it sounds: Esc is the only way out of the tutorial, which Season 02 is putting returning players through again. Team17’s support account gave the general fix for a key that will not bind in September: close the game and edit the key config in the WindowsClient folder.

Leaving the Season 02 tutorial once the menu opens →

1. 01

   Get out of the game

   If the menu will not open, Alt+F4 closes WARDOGS. One player did this from inside the tutorial.

2. 02

   Bind the pause menu to another key

   In Controls, give Pause Menu a key that still responds. The player who reported it used the tilde key (~).

3. 03

   Or repair the entry

   Close the game and open GameUserSettings.ini in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Wardogs\Saved\Config\WindowsClient, then remove or fill the blank entry as in “When rebinding breaks another key” above.

WASD stops working mid-match

Players describe the same thing since launch week: in the middle of a match WASD goes dead while everything else still answers — you can look, jump, lean, brake and get out of a vehicle, but not move. Most reports tie it to opening text chat with Enter; one came after checking the map in a helicopter. It is not the keyboard: the same players found movement fine in the Firing Range. Team17’s support account forwarded the reports of chat disabling movement to the developers on 15 and 19 September, and no patch note on record lists a fix; players were still reporting it in October.

The Steam report thread, with Team17’s replies →

1. 01

   Leave and come back

   Every original report cleared on leaving the server — into the Firing Range or practice — and rejoining. It costs the kit you carried in, which is what players complain about most.

2. 02

   Swap teams

   One player reports that switching team got movement back without leaving the server (15 September).

3. 03

   Turn the chat box off

   Two players stopped it by turning the Chatbox off in Options › Interface (15 September). One found the chat box did not come back after switching it on again, so expect to lose text chat.

4. 04

   If it is a delay, not a stop

   A 1–2 second lag on WASD that sometimes drops out is a different report, from the August playtest: two players fixed it by moving keyboard and mouse to a USB 3.0 port, and Team17’s support passed that on.

Common questions