Shroud is one of the most well-known professional first-person shooter players in the world. He made a name for himself as a competitive CS:GO player, but after retiring to tend to his personal stream full-time, he’s shown that his skills translate across nearly all shooting games.
From PUBG and Call of Duty to Rainbow Six Siege and Apex Legends, shroud has given his followers proof of his excellence time and time again. So it’s no surprise that with Escape from Tarkov turning up as the flavor of the month, he’s rolling heads in that game as well.
Naturally, as shroud began to dive into the nuances of the game, he found the need to tweak some of the game’s keybinds so that he could maximize his ability to perform at the high level his fans have all come to expect.
While many of Tarkov’s keybind settings are intuitive, there are a few specific elements that shroud tweaked. Just like any other player might, shroud uses W, A, S, and D to move around. He uses his right and left mouse buttons to aim and shoot, respectively.
But from there, there are a few changes that give shroud’s keybinds a special flavor and smoothness that help him improve his quality of life in-game.
First and foremost, you’ll notice that shroud uses special mouse buttons outside of those on a traditional mouse. Using a Logitech G Pro, the former CS:GO pro has used the extra buttons on the sides of his mouse to make doing a few tasks a little bit easier.
Instead of needing to use the left ALT button to perform some tasks that would be preset in the game by default, shroud uses his mouse’s added buttons as well as the ability to set keybinds to different press types, like double-clicking, to mitigate the movement required by his fingers on the keyboard, freeing him to move around while still doing certain actions.
Scopes: Shroud uses Mouse 4 to make all adjustments to his scopes. Hitting the button a single time is how shroud switches scopes. He changes his scope magnification by double-clicking the button.
Tactical: Shroud uses Mouse 3 to make adjustments to tacticals, like flashlights, the same way that he uses Mouse 4 for scopes. By pressing the button once, he toggles through his devices. Double-clicking the button is how he switches his tactical device’s mode.
Ammo Check: Shroud uses a combination of clicking and double-clicking T to check his ammo and chamber. To check his chamber, he presses T once. He double clicks the button to check his ammo.
Blindfire: Shroud uses X to perform an overhead blindfire and C to do a right-side blindfire. In a stream where he showed his settings, the streamer said that he changed these two settings specifically because of the mobility that he’d lose from using default settings. As shroud explained, using keybinds like Alt+W to do an overhead blindfire would prevent him from being able to move around. Using X instead means he can change his character’s position while still holding the gun above his head.
The rest of shroud’s keybinds are primarily default. The only changes he made to the way he plays is to bind a few things to his mouse, giving his left hand less to do, and tactfully applying “double-click” binds to give him fewer buttons to reach for.
Overall, shroud’s impressive skills aren’t heavily reliant on using particularly fancy keybinds. The goal of his settings are to simplify the game, allowing him to focus more on his surroundings and aiming for those headshots that he has a knack for connecting on.
