How to use a gaming controller to play Plunderstorm

Plunderstorm‘s Battle Royale action and streamlined UI is a great opportunity to try out World of Warcraft with controller support if you’re up to the experiment. While it may take a little bit of setting up initially — which can be tough in this fast-paced environment — you can find yourself looting pirates in Arathi on a gamepad.

We have more Plunderstorm guides to help you reach all of your piratical goals! Here’s everything you need to know about Plunderstorm.

Press Y to Plunder

It does take a little bit to set up controller usage as it is not natively set for keybindings and you can only alter them in the game. With how quickly you’ll find yourself joining a match, it may take a run or two before you find your controlled fully mapped and ready to go. Your first step is to enter the following command in your chat bar:

/Console GamePadEnable 1

Doing this will allow you to use your thumbstick right away for looking and moving around. However, merely looking around and moving will only keep your character upright above ground for so long. To really embark on your life of piracy, you’ll need to bring up the Key Bindings tab under Options. If you are like me, by now you will have died and needed to requeue. Your main keys are available at the top of the page and you can set them in any manner you wish. Some people may find it better to move health to X or attack to one of the triggers — you can customize it to your playstyle.

One key bind to be on the look out for is Interact With Target under the Targeting heading. While you pick up plunder by running over it, objects — including chests — need to be interacted with to loot. After a little trial and error, the Interact With Target key allowed me to pick up my sweet loot.

Now You’re Plunderstorming with Power?

In addition to adding a fun twist, controller gameplay can be beneficial for those with accessibility needs, and it’s good to see more options being added to the game. However, the setup just wasn’t, in my opinion, very intuitive. With the new game mode’s incredibly fast pace, it was actually quite difficult to set up within the 50 seconds the game gives you before a match begins. While all the primary commands were at the top of the keybinds list, having to search out the loot button that was buried further down was frustrating, especially since I needed to figure out mid-match which was the correct option and make sure it was set up correctly with Plunder-hungry players nipping at my heels. If Plunderstorm allowed you a little more time to set up before dropping you off in Arathi Highlands — or even a waiting room-style lobby you can queue from — it could iron out a few of these issues.

Hopefully this guide can help you get set up quick so that you can take down fellow pirates with your X-Box Elite gamepad. For now, go in with the mindset that you’ll take the L for a couple of rounds while you get your controller set up, and then you’ll by ready to take Plunderstorm by, well, storm.