Please tell us how to rotate objects without F1

Ctrl+arrow keys and pgup/pgdn

Resizing is the same, just shift key instead of ctrl

There's a lot more than just rotation though...how would it know what information to display to you without cluttering up the entire screen?

There's rotation, resizing, modular snapping enable disable, grid enable/disable, radial menu (C), hold left click and drag, hold right click to hold in place, backspace to reset rotation, shift and backspace to reset block size, right ctrl to lock the block in place, ins while looking at another block to copy it, +/- on the numpad to resize the grid, and many other features. Why would it only show information for one possible change (rotation)?

Also, once people learn that the arrow keys and page up/page down rotates the blocks, having this information on screen at all times would no longer be necessary and just useless clutter.

I think the best solution here would be a setting how many tooltips you should get. By default it should be set to "All" so new players don't miss anything. Experienced players can then easily turn them off in the settings.

I think that having too much info on screen would be even more off-putting for a new player when the Journal is implanted like in the java version all these extra controls and how to play the game can be included within that.

First of all, I agree that the learning curve is very steep in RW (especially in the new version, at least when it comes to the building part). I'm also afraid that new players will probably have a lot of trouble when playing the game for the first time, as pointed out by lucyrocketdog ...

For this reason, we definitely need a proper tutorial or ingame tooltips or something like that before replacing the Java version on the store page.

One thing that's definitely planned is a small rework of the current building menu (C). Instead of showing the current advanced options (which can be quite overwhelming for a new player), it will by default only give access to basic things (toggle grid, enable manual placement etc), i.e. basically everything that's currently done via hotkeys. Advanced players can keep the current building menu (so they don't have to deal with these basic things).

Rotating an element is probably one of the most important functions, although I'm not sure if it's sufficient to just show that. Players also need to know a way to reset the rotation, and resizing an element is basically also very important (imagine a player not knowing about resizing, but then he resizes the element by accident, not knowing how to reset it or how this even happened). So just showing how to rotate the element is probably not sufficient... but showing all functions (rotate, resize, manual positioning etc) could result in a bloated HUD...hard to tell which ones are really needed in this case

Maybe some kind of starter quest that asks the player to do the most basic things would be helpful. I.e. mine 10 stone and chop 10 wood. Then craft a primitive work bench and craft 5 simple stone blocks and 5 wooden blocks.
And then some detailled instruction with resizing, rotation, changing shape, etc. But PLEASE make it Opt-in/out. I hate this starter quest meanwhile in 7d2d. its so annoying, even though for real beginners its indeed helpful.

the c button, i think, displays the things you can do in a very clear way, but i only found it by accident. perhaps directing the user to press it for options along with f1 for help would be good. and in those, you can put the keys in parentheses. feels intuitive to me that way.

Information should actually be availble without having a block in hand.

This is a feature I sometimes, sometimes often xd, miss, on and off. If needed.

Some games also have quick build-in tutorial videos where a specific action is shown with the corresponding key to press

Quote from Yaromid

Some games also have quick build-in tutorial videos where a specific action is shown with the corresponding key to press

If I remember correctly this is planned already.