On desktop, click into the game to lock the pointer. Move with W A S D, look with the mouse, jump or swim up with Space, sneak or swim down with Shift, and sprint with E when movement focus is active.
Left mouse mines blocks or picks up targeted item drops. Right mouse places the selected block, uses held items, opens doors, chests, guild chests, furnaces, machines, traders, auctioneers, questmasters, mounts, and other nearby entities.
Press F to attack the targeted entity. Ctrl+Enter also attacks, which is useful when mouse focus is awkward. Q drops the selected stack, while Shift+Q drops one item from the stack.
Use 1-9 to select hotbar slots. Escape opens the pause menu, I opens inventory and crafting, R opens the recipe book, H opens the guide, C opens character and quests, and G opens guild tools.
Inventory menus use click-to-pick-up, click-to-place, right-click-to-place-one, and shift-click quick moves. Armor can be dragged or shift-clicked between inventory and the armor tab. Tools show durability instead of stack count.
T opens chat while you are in-world. Slash opens command chat with a leading slash, which is useful for commands such as /help, /who, /biome, /sethome, /home, /homes, /duel, /accept, /decline, /say, /global, and /whisper.
On touch devices, the left side of the play area drives movement and the right side controls looking and mining. A quick right-side tap attacks, and a second touch while looking places or uses the selected item.