Steam Deck beginner's guide

Installing basic apps

Enter desktop mode and install the following, using the Discover store (except EmuDeck):

1. ProtonUp-QT, use it to get ProtonGE
2. Heroic Games Launcher or Lutris for Epic/GOG games
3. Q4Wine or Lutris if you want to use Wine. Very useful for running RPGmaker games that require RTP
4. Warpinator or SyncThing for file transfer between your desktop and Deck
5. EmuDeck if you want emulation

Use https://www.protondb.com/ to check for games compatibility (steam's "verified" shit is not always true, usually have to use ProtonGE which is obtained from the ProtonUp-QT from above as a compatibility layer since valve can't officially distribute codecs for some games).

Optionally install Decky for homebrew apps that you can use in game mode. Most notable is PowerTools, which you can use, among other things, to limit the available CPU cores. This can boost single core performance, which can be important for Gamecube and Switch emulation.
Another useful homebrew app is ProtonDB Badges, which allows you to automatically check ProtonDB when you choose a game from your library. Click it to go directly to ProtonDB and browse user comments, which sometimes include fixes that you can use to get the game running properly.
You may also want to consider using VibrantDeck, which allows you to adjust vibrancy settings, which sometimes makes the games look better.

Miscellaneous tips and battery life

• Hold the Steam button to show shortcuts you can use to access your keyboard, take screenshots, and more
• If you want to see the FPS counter, click the ... button, choose the battery sign and change the performance overlay level
• You can change the refresh rate in the same menu. 40 fps feels way better than 30, and has improved battery life over 60
• If you want maximum battery life, and your game doesn't need high FPS (visual novel, strategy game) you can reduce FPS to 10-20 range
• If you check the Thermal Power (TDP) Limit, you'll be able to adjust the power draw, and thus the battery life too, manually. A little tip: if you keep decreasing the limit until it starts to affect your framerate, and then set it just above this threshold, you'll gain a little more battery life than if you were to just let it draw power freely
• You can keep all of those options tied to a specific game by choosing "Use per-game profile" - your changes will not affect other games or Steam itself

Piracy and running non-steam games

Regular .exe files

There are several ways of getting pirated games to work. The absolute easiest way is to just add the file as a non-steam game. Just right click on the .exe and choose Add to Steam. Next, you'll want to go into game properties, tick the Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool box, and choose the latest version of ProtonGE from the list. The game should now work, just launch it. You can try to do it in desktop mode first, to detect any error messages.

Other launchers

If you want an easy way to run games from other launchers, you can install Lutris or Heroic Games Launcher. Both will allow you to log in to your GOG account and Epic account, and download the games directly from it. After that, you should be able to add a shortcut to the new non-steam game directly from Lutris/Heroic, allowing you to launch it from game mode. Lutris additionally supports Origin and Ubisoft Connect, not sure about Heroic Games Launcher - I don't use it.

Additionally, you can use BoilR to quickly add Lutris and Heroic Games Launcher as non-steam games and automatically download artwork for them. This works much like SteamRomManager (which is installed alongside EmuDeck), but for specifically for third-party launchers. Details in this video.

Installers

You can try to run the installers like any other .exes, but sometimes you'll run into some issues. I'm pretty sure fitgirl repacks are borked, for instance. In those cases, the best workaround is to first install/extract the game files on your desktop, and copy the game files over to your Deck afterwards.

Emulation

Check out this EmuDeck guide. EmuDeck is a script, which will automatically install almost all available emulators for you. If you want to squeeze in some extra performance, you'll want to set up the following manually:

1. yuzu early access, get the auto-updating AppImage
2. Ryujinx for games that need OpenGL instead of Vulkan
3. RPCS3 AppImage is more up-to-date than the flatpak version

File transferring

There are several ways to transfer files between your desktop and Steam Deck. Those are:

1. Syncthing, check out the video guide here,
2. Warpinator and its Windows equivalent Winpinator
3. Transferring files using ssh. I'm a lazy fuck and will go into detail at a later date
4. Using USB cables. Pretty sure this one can only be done with a help of a dock

If you want 100% uptime on your Syncthing - meaning, it'll sync even while using game mode, without having to enter desktop mode - check this link. TODO: I'll update this section at a later date, so that I don't have to link to r*ddit.

Desktop utilities

Install:
1 ksnip for screencaptures in desktop mode
2 Obsidian for note taking
3 flatseal for flatpak permission management,
4 Libre Office for basic office suite

Vidya

This section will be updated with some of the more frequently asked vidya questions. Maybe. If I feel like it

FPS games and gyro

Before you ask - yes, gyro is an absolutely viable way of aiming in FPS games. It'll require some practice, and you might never reach the same level of accuracy as mouse & keyboard, but it's absolutely viable for single-player games. At the very least, it's miles ahead of aiming on a regular controller

Check out this in-depth configuration guide if you want to see someone go into detail, I'll just summarise the main points

Camera movement

First of all, you'll want to split your camera movements into 2 parts - general camera movement and fine aiming. Fine aiming, achieved in approximately 90° cone from the base view, should be done using gyro. Any more than that, and you'll run into problems.
If you want to turn around, or make other large moves, you don't want to use gyro - you'll want to use one of the following for general camera movement:

1. Your trackpads
2. Flick stick. The guide in the video is outdated, you can more easily add flick stick by using Steam Input, more on that in in-depth configuration guide

Choose whichever input method you prefer. Often enough, you'll find one of those input methods in the community settings. Also make sure you adjust the gyro sensitivity to your liking.

Stopping gyro movement when not aiming

You may not necessarily want gyro aiming to be active at all times. Sometimes, it's better when gyro is only on when you scope in using L2/LT/right mouse button. To activate that, see this part of the video

Gyro in emulators

You can also enable gyro aiming in emulators, details here

Troubleshooting

Sometimes, gyro aiming just won't work correctly, because the game reads the gyro output as mouse movement. This causes problems when some games don't allow you to mix-and-match controller and MKB input. Or maybe they do, but using MKB input will cause all the icons to change to unreadable keyboard prompts. In those cases, either abandon all hopes, or use the tips and tricks in the in-depth configuration guide

Using Wine

Whenever you add a new game to Lutris, you'll get an option to choose its runner. This allows you to choose which program you'll use to execute the program (it's one of the ways to use Proton without Steam btw). You'll want to choose Wine and move on to Game options, where you'll get to choose:

• Arguments - here, you can set Japanese locale
• Wine prefix - if you want to reuse your previous Wine install. This saves on storage space and lets you reuse previous versions of Wine
• Prefix architecture - here you can choose 32 and 64 bit. You'll likely want the 32 bit one, as there's less hassle with configuring its libraries

Once you configure wine, you can also choose to add manual overrides by tapping the Wine symbol next to the Play button

Visual novels

Generally, all of the previous points apply - you can just run it as a regular game by adding it as a non-steam game and using proton, but if you want further details then watch this video,
You might or might not need Japanese locale, details in the section below.
If you want to install an adult patch, you usually have to add adult.xp3 to the game files - to the same folder as the .exe. You do the same thing on Windows, feel free to try it there first.

Playing games with Japanese locale

In order to add Japanese locale to a specific game, you'll need to do the following:

1. Add the game's .exe file as a non-steam game
2. Modify the launch options to have LANG=jp_JA.UTF8 %command%
3. Toggle on the most recent version of the proton compatibility layer

And unfortunately on top of that, due to how SteamOS updates work, you will want to run the this script every time an update happens. To run it, download (or save the text) in a .sh file, and mark it as executable in properties (right-click), the just double click. The full script is as follows:

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#!/bin/bash

# This script is enabling (uncommenting) the Japanese locale and regenerates them

sudo steamos-readonly disable
sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux
sudo pacman -S glibc
sudo sed -i "s%#ja_JP.UTF-8 UTF-8%ja_JP.UTF-8 UTF-8%" /etc/locale.gen
sudo locale-gen
sudo steamos-readonly enable
echo "Done! Be sure to put `LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8 %command%` in the game's startup options on Steam to enable the locale."

RPGMaker games

Some RPGMaker games will require you to install a resource pack, called RTP, separately from the main game. The purpose is to keep the game file size low, since RPGMaker games tend to have shared assets, stored in RTPs. You can download those here

It's best to use Wine instead of Proton for RPGMaker. The details of how to set up Wine runners is available in the section above. This section will detail how to install RTP to an already-existing runner.
TODO

Downloading more RAM

If you run out of RAM, your Deck will start using the Swap file on your SSD instead for memory. If you run out of swap file memory too, you will experience performance issues.
In a similar fashion, you can reduce the RAM reserved for regular memory and use it as VRAM instead. It'll improve performance in GPU-heavy games, and reduce performance in CPU-heavy games. This problem can be partially solved by setting a larger Swap file size
Further details are here

Hardware

SSD

If you want to know how to easily perform the SSD upgrade, check out this video guide

SD cards

Due to how large modern vidya are, you'll preferably want a large SD card, especially if you're only using the 256GB SSD. Go for either the 512GB or 1TB SD cards.
As for brands, here's the comparison between different SD cards.
If you want a TL;DW and just want a recommendation for a specific brand, get Samsung EVO Select. I'm using it myself and it just werks.
Once you get one, you'll want to format the SD card

Accessories

Keyboard:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088ZWT5N1
the 7inch one will fit inside the steamdeck case (underneath the deck), bluetooth

Mouse:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HMLRY35/
bluetooth mouse that will fit inside the snackpocket

If you have $100+ to blow, battery pack set-up:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1209916250/steamclip-for-baseus-20k-65w-steamdeck
(+include steamclip v2 on check out so you can attach it)

• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08THCNNCS
• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SN9DJ5G

Dock

Just get the official one https://www.steamdeck.com/dock