Harvest Moon: Echoes of Teradea controls are controller-first: it is Steam Deck Verified, the on-screen glyphs match the Deck, and the PC build is designed around a gamepad rather than a keyboard and mouse. There is no tool belt and no free tool switching — one press does the right thing for the ground you are standing on, whether that is tilling, casting or watering.
Harvest Moon: Echoes of Teradea controls on PC and Steam Deck
The published controller walkthrough uses the Nintendo Switch labels, so the table below uses those. On Steam Deck and PC the same functions sit on the equivalent shoulder and face buttons.
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Left analog stick | Move your character |
| Right analog stick | Move the camera (it can rotate fully indoors) |
| Hold ZR while moving | Dash — consumes stamina |
| Hold R | Sneak |
| Hold ZL | Strafe; near a field it turns you to face that field |
| A | Perform the highlighted action, including reeling in a fish on the bite |
| + | Open the DocPad |
| Y | Map search |
One setting to change immediately: raise both the Vertical Rotation Speed and the Horizontal Rotation Speed. The default mid-level setting is far too slow for a world this tall, and raising it is the first thing experienced players do. The same options screen carries a long list of notifications you can toggle individually.
Movement, camera and the two speeds to change
The camera rotates fully, so you can look at the inside of a building from any angle rather than being locked to a north-south view. Dash is the other movement tool: hold it and you cover ground fast, but it burns stamina, and stamina is what gets you through the desert, the icefield and the caves.
Because the map is a tall north-to-south layout, the single best answer to long walks is a mount. Whistle and your horse appears next to you wherever you are, and later you can swap in a jumping horse, a camel or a reindeer. The mounts and animal skills page lists which one opens which region.
Action buttons and automatic tools
Press A and the game does the right thing for the situation: harvest a ripe crop, till untilled soil, plant a seed, water a dry plot, examine an object, talk to someone, or reel in a fish at the moment it bites.
There is no way to switch tools freely, which sounds restrictive until you realise it means you never drop the wrong tool on a full inventory. The one consequence to remember is that you cannot choose to skip an action — if a field needs tilling, A tills it, and you get nothing else out of that press.
Sneaking, jumping and jump-off points
Sneaking is not cosmetic. It is how you creep up on a wild animal without scaring it off, and it is how you solve the 25 Sneaking-type Power Statues — those scatter if you approach too fast, so come back the next day and walk up slowly instead of running at them.
Jump-Off Points are marked with a red flag and a button prompt. A large drop down a cliff only works at one of those points and only in one direction, down. Vines and ladders work both ways, which is why they are how you come back up. The map records 160 vines, 36 ladders and 279 one-way Jump-Off Points, and 96 further spots that need a mount with a jump ability — see the dungeons and hidden caves page for how to read the terrain that hides them.
The DocPad, the map search and settings
Press + to open the DocPad. It holds the world map, your requests, character notes, the encyclopedia, tips you have received, the settings and the save and load functions, and you can open it while camping.
The world map inside it can track seed wisps, wild animals, fish locations and minable ores, filter out marker types you do not want, and hold up to 6 custom markers. Press Y for map search: type what you are looking for and it pins the places, though only for things you have already seen. Once Doc Jr. finishes his upgrade the device gains a dowsing function that finds hidden ore and points toward Power Wisp Statues — which is where the treasure dig spots are, covered on the treasure chests page.
Settings are reached from the gear icon in the upper-right corner during character creation, or through Options in the DocPad afterwards.
The fishing minigame inputs
This is the one place the controls really matter:
- Press A the moment the fish bites.
- Do not mash A while the fish struggles. Point the left analog stick opposite the direction it is pulling.
- Press A again only once it stops struggling.
- If it tries to break away, release A and rotate the stick against its escape direction.
Bait makes fish bite faster and fight less hard, so a good bait is the difference between a quick catch and a two-minute struggle. More detail is on the fishing page.