Any tips, settings, recommendations, or little known things you can say to help out someone just starting Quaver, and rhythm games of this style for the first time?
I’d suggest not playing Quaver. The community there is pretty toxic and their approval process for charts means only a handful of people get to dictate what is/isn’t ranked. They all seem to like the keyboard spam rather than charts that actually make sense.
If you’re interested in 7 or 8-key rhythm games, I’d suggest looking into Beatoraja instead. It is part of the BMS community which is an offshoot of IIDX/Beatmania. Learn to play that one well and you can approach pretty much anything else and do well.
As for tips, start slow and don’t get too frustrated. There is definitely going to be a learning curve. Also, do not switch your keys to a linear layout, leave them staggered. You’d be shooting yourself in the foot muscle memory-wise.
Main thing to do is learn how to read groups of notes rather than the individual notes themselves.
I know this is a scrub-city question, but the people I'm beginning to play with all use only 4 key. Are there any recommendations for that? I personally wouldn't mind learning it, but it's very important to me that I can play with those people.
Quick question from another rhythm game casual here. What do you mean by linear vs. staggered layout? I’m just starting out with some 4k games and so far have been using df/jk for my main keys. Do you recommend something else, and why?
It mainly comes into play on 7/8k games and is regarding muscle memory.
I grew up playing a 7k flash game which had its default controls as SDF SPACE JKL. Everyone told me to switch from that (ie. linear) to something like ZSXDCFV instead. (ie. staggered) Had I listened, it would’ve been a whole lot easier to switch to actual Beatmania IIDX due to the similar muscle memory. Staggered has LThumb, LMiddle, LIndex, RIndex, RThumb, RMiddle and RRing/RPinky as the main layout. (This is due to needing the left part of the left hand for scratching.)
For 4k, your layout is fine. As for games, there is always Stepmania which has a lot of KB-only charts too. Main version I’d recommend for Keyboard play is Eternia Online.