Thank you! I have a lot of convenience methods from prior games to build on and it really helps.
A friend of mine suggested it's not the number of keys but those specific 6, because they don't naturally fit one or two hands. I think I'm going to try changing it to A S D J K L and see if that works better.
If you heard the take damage sound, it probably robbed you of a heart! That's a bug and I'll investigate. thanks for letting me know!