I've tried the method of changing keybinds from the link, didn't work on this distro but gave me an idea to explore - create a custom keymap and load it from rc.conf. Aside from few problems it was easy enough following tips from Arch Wiki:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KEYMAP
Problems were: not all keys are loaded in TTY compared to X. My choice for alternative D, key 135, wasn't recognized so early in boot instead i had to pick a different key (CapsLock). To add to confusion xev tool is reporting X keycodes that are different from codes used in TTY so is of no use. CapsLock in X is keycode 66, in TTY it's 58. Best place to look for correct codes is in keymaps themselfs /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/.