Getting started in Besiege

Welcome to this guide for the basics of Besiege. I'll be going over all the tools you will use the most, and in what way you will use them. After reading this guide I hope you can start your crusade of destruction with a bit more knowledge.

Have you build an epic catapult? A tank made out of wood and steel? A machine filled with so many cannons it'd make Blackbeard envious? Do not worry, you can save your build and load it later. You can even share the savefile with friends and/or the community for them to use.

The save button is clearly recognizable as a good old floppy disk in the left top corner. Click it to open the savemenu.

Give your build a name so you can find it back later. Press the savebutton next to the textbox to save your build.

Loading is just as easy. Press the load button right of the save button.

Doubleclick the file you'd like to open and it'll appear on your map.

Moving your construction around can be very tedious, if not impossible when done by hand. Luckily there are a few buttons to make your life easier.

Don't worry, your builds won't be in a foreign language. Click the translate button once to make three arrows appear on your build.

The small blue/grey block that appears every time you want to build something is used as the center for moving around your build. Click and drag the green arrow to move your build up and down, the red arrow to move left and right and the blue arrow to move forwards and backwards.

Is your catapult or cannon not aimed in the right direction? Maybe you just want to turn your build around for another reason. The rotate button enables you to do this.

The rotate button is located next to the translate button. Click and drag it to rotate your build horizontally. Click the small button marked with the blue arrow to reset your build to the default angle.

Being grounded is a good thing in Besiege. You wouldn't want your build to smash into the ground when you start a level.

Click the set machine on ground button to set your build on the ground. I recommend doing this when you have placed your wheels/created the base on your build.

Nothing is perfect. If you are unpleased with a part on your build or even with the whole build entirely, use the following two buttons. The erase button is located next to the set on ground button. It's icon is the eraser. Click it once to toggle erase mode. Click whatever you'd like to erase to make it dissappear. When you are done, make sure to click the erase button again to toggle erase mode off.

Using the X key is much easier in my opinion. Hover over a part and press the X key to delete the part. This can be done in the middle of building and is much easier and quicker.

For fresh starts you can use the destroy button.

The destroy button is the most right button in the toolbox. Click it once to trigger confirmation message. Confirm to delete your build and start over.

The final button is the keybinding and parameter tuning button. A mouthful. I'll refer to it as the wrench tool from here on out. The wrench tool is used to change keybinds on wheels, cannons, flamethrower, etc.

Click the wrench located in the toolbar to start the finetuning mode.

After you have clicked the wrench you can click whatever item you'd like. In this example I used the wheels on my build. In this example I'll also give a handy tip to make driving your build much easier.

After clicking on the wheel the following window opens. As you can see I can also change to speed of the wheels. The default keys are arrow key up to move forward and arrow key down to move backwards. To make steering my builds easier I change the forward button on the right set of wheels to 7 and the backwards button to 1. These numbers are the ones on the numpad. Do this to all the wheels located right of the middle.

I change the keys on the left set of wheels to 8 to move forward and 2 to move backwards.

You will probably have to drive around a little bit to get the hang of it, but the steering will be much easier now.

Use the undo key to remove your last action. Use the redo key to do the opposite. Two very basic but handy tools. To start and end your level you use the button located in the most top left corner. Before starting it'll be a play button, after starting it'll be a stop button. Spacebar is used to toggle this button.
While placing an item like a wing or a cannon, use R to rotate the item to your liking. When you've placed an item like a wheel or a steering block (something that turns in a direction) mouseover the item and press F to change the direction the item turns.

I always like feedback, both positive and negative. If you have tips for me to make this a better guide please leave a comment. Comments are always appreciated.

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Thanks for reading and have fun building!