Controls & Techniques

Why this page exists

Raiders teaches you to shoot and to swim, and then stops. Everything past that, the roll that gives you armour, the wall launch and the step that moves you across bare ground faster than walking, the game leaves for you to find. Most of it is documented only in Japanese, and the English control table published by the largest guide site has the X button wrong. So we read all four tables, cross-checked them against the dedicated pages behind them, and show our working on the one row that was wrong.

The full control map

Verified against four independent tables: Game8 Japan, Game8 English, Gamepedia Japan and GameWith. Everything below is agreed by at least three of them. The X row is the one two of them got wrong; the section under the tables shows the working.

On foot

In squid form

The X button: resolved (corrected 2026-08-05)

We first published this row as an open conflict between four control tables. It is not open any more, and the correction belongs on the page rather than in a changelog: two dedicated Exploration Bot pages, Game8 Japan and GameWith, describe the X press in mechanical detail, which settles it. X calls your Exploration Bot. Press it and "カモン！" appears over your head; the bot lands with ink and damage around the impact point; stand near a crystal deposit and X sets it mining instead. In multiplayer only the host can call it, which is why the Japanese control table lists Super Jump on X for guests. Here is what each source said, kept so you can see how the error propagated:

• Game8 Japan: Solo or host: calls the Exploration Bot. As a multiplayer guest: Super Jump. The pause menu is on +.
• Nintendo Life: X summons your Exploration Bot for quick repositioning, but the same guide routes you to the difficulty setting with "X, then R twice, then Options".
• Game8 English: X opens the menu.
• Gamepedia Japan: X opens the menu; + pauses.

The techniques the game never teaches you

Three of these are built into Raiders. Two are inherited from Splatoon 2 and 3; if you have series muscle memory, it transfers unchanged, and if you do not, the Raijin Step alone will change how the bare-ground sections feel.

Your weapon class has its own button

Every class does something ZR alone will not do. Switching class without learning its action is most of why a weapon can feel worse than the one it replaced.

Settings worth changing before your next raid

Two of these are one-time fixes that stop costing you runs the moment you set them.

• Motion aiming is on by default and starts at a sensitivity of -1. If you played Splatoon 3, your hands already know this, so leave it on.
• You cannot remap buttons in the game. If you want a different layout, it has to be done in the Nintendo Switch 2 system settings, and it applies to the whole system.
• Difficulty does not change your loot. Every source agrees: lowering it lowers enemy level and nothing else. There is no reward penalty for dropping to Tourist to clear a wall, and no reward bonus for suffering on Survivor.
• Y resets the camera behind you. It is the cheapest habit on this page: every time you lose your bearings after a roll, tap it instead of fighting the right stick.

Motion sensitivity by weapon reach

Game8 English's recommendation, which is the only published guidance we found on this. The logic is sound and matches how the series has always played: the further your weapon reaches, the more time you want to spend on each aim, so the lower you want the sensitivity.

Treat these as starting points, not a meta. Sensitivity is the one setting where the correct value is genuinely personal: set it once, then leave it alone long enough to adapt before you judge it.

Loadout presets (My Set)

You can save loadouts and switch between them instead of rebuilding a kit every time you change dungeon type. Worth doing the moment you own two real builds, since a freeze setup and a farming setup want completely different gadgets. Note the sources disagree on the button: Nintendo Life says − in the Gear menu, GameWith says X inside the menu. The feature is real; you may have to look in both places.

Ink is your health bar

The single most common thing separating a player who clears Awlmun Den from one who keeps failing it is not aim. It is treating ink as ammunition instead of as terrain.

• Submerging in your own ink refills health and ink at the same time. Not a slow trickle: this is the fastest heal in the game and it costs nothing. When you are low, the answer is almost always "get into your own ink", not "keep shooting".
• Enemy ink slows you and drains you. Paint over it before you cross it. The two seconds you spend painting are cheaper than the health you lose wading.
• Do not hold ZR until you are dry. An empty tank in a crowd is a death sentence, because the escape (swimming) is the same resource as the attack. Pulse your fire and stay above roughly a third.
• Paint your escape route before you need it. A route you painted on the way in is a route you can swim out through at full speed.

Let the Salmonids kill each other

Several large Salmonids do more damage to their own side than you do. Positioning them is a real technique and it is worth more than raw DPS in a packed room.

• Steelhead (バクダン): Its death is an explosion that heavily damages nearby Salmonids. Never kill one in the open; walk it into the crowd first, then pop it.
• Big Shot (テッキュウ): Same principle: the blast when it dies catches everything around it. Its wind-up before each slam is also your safest attack window.
• Slammin' Lid (ナベブタ): Dodge the slam and it crushes whatever was underneath, including its own summons. Then climb on top of the craft.
• Maws (モグラ): The red bobber tells you where it breaches, and which way it faces tells you where its back will be. The belly is armoured; the back is not. Read the bobber, stand behind the line.
• Udejiman (ウデジマン): The body is armoured and eats your damage; the four fins are not. Each holds a different weapon: Hyper Pressure, Spinner, Tongs, Splash Bomb, and a destroyed fin shrinks and never comes back, taking that attack with it. Order matters: Game8 Japan says take the bottom-left fin (the Tongs) first, not because it hits hardest but because the sweep flings you far enough to drop you off the edge of the arena, then the top-right Spinner for its sustained damage.

Full attack patterns and counters for all 29 large Salmonids: Bosses

How we verified this

Related guides

• Stop Getting Surrounded: 7 Positioning Tips
• Splatoon Raiders Beginner Guide
• All 120 Weapons in Splatoon Raiders
• Splatoon Raiders Early Game Build Guide
• All Bosses & Salmonids in Splatoon Raiders

Sources

• 操作方法とテクニックがいる操作, Game8 (Japan)
• ウデジマンの倒し方と出現場所, Game8 (Japan)
• 調査メカの使い方とできること, Game8 (Japan)
• 調査メカの使い方とできること, GameWith
• List of Controls and How to Change Mapping, Game8 (English)
• 基本操作・特殊アクションまとめ, 攻略大百科 (Gamepedia Japan)
• テクニック一覧とやり方, GameWith
• 戦闘のコツと勝てない時の対処法, GameWith
• 便利なテクニックまとめ, AppMedia
• Best Settings and Recommended Sensitivity (Gyro), Game8 (English)
• Splatoon Raiders guide, tips and tricks, Nintendo Life