Guide to Zerg Hotkeys

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Aaryn_GenD
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Guide to Zerg Hotkeys

Post by Aaryn_GenD »

Hotkeys and Groups are the most important things with zerg, without correctly using them they are kind of hard to control.

i decided to make this little guide to give some ideas of how a beginner could use their hotkeys & groups with zerg.

first of all you should know that
ctrl+{Number} creates a control group with the selected units
SHIFT+{Number} adds selected units to an already existing group.

i suggest using GRID Hotkeys :-P
for me they are simply the best setup and imitate what you see on the screen (QWERT, ASDFG, and so on)
they are easiest to learn and most effective. some people use standard (which is the same like j for janissary or m for musketeer in aoe3) which is just plain hard to get used to imo.

So what you could use is following setup:

1,2,3 Units:
simple, you don't need more than 3 control groups for units actually. even if you have 3 different unit types in one group you can "TAB" between them and select their speciala bility or something or just double click on one unit type or ctrl+left click to select all of that respective unit type
4 All Hatcheries (TC's):
when a new hatchery is built, select it and press SHIFT+4 to add it to the current group of all hatcheries
5 All Queens:
again, same as all hatcheries.
6-8 Miscellaneous:
can be used for nydus worms or some scouts to drop units or anything else


Explanation:
the spawn larva ability of the queen is the eco ability of zerg.
whenever you spawn a larva on a hatchery, 40 seconds later 4 larvae will pop out on top of the standard 3 a hatchery produces itself giving you more units to queue, let it be workers or military units.

now the trick is on how you do it.
a bad way would be: having all queens in different control grops and manually doing it. costs alot of time and attention. ;)

Now one the best way to do this is to press 5, to select all queens, then press "X" for spawn larva ("X" on the GRID hotkey setup) then hover your mouse to the minimap, and hold SHIFT and now left click on all hatcheries.
what will happen is that all your queens will cast spawn larva on all of your hatcheries. the closest queen to a hatchery will cast spawn larva saving you ALOT of time :-P

OR

Other technique: Backspace + Shift
1. Put all queens on 1 hotkey.
2. Select queens.
3. Press Spawn Larvae hotkey (x, v when you don't use grid)
4. Press Backspace once to center on a hatch.
5. Hold Right Side Shift. DO NOT RELEASE.
6. Spam left mouse click + Backspace
7. All hatches are injected.

Video example showing this:


another tip added by drew was if you have like 10 or so unused larvae, press 4 for your hatchery hotkey and then press Q (to open the build menu for larva) then press and hold down "E" for example for a big army of zerglings.

there is a rally point for drones (workers) and units, both can be set with "F" for drones and "G" for units

BIG REMINDER! what drew said is 100% true.
you really gotta take care of your queens not trying to walk across the whole map (this can be done by just looking at your muliple hatcheries(backspace button is the hotkey for looking at your hatches),
if nothing moves, you're fine which should be most of the time) ;-)
Last edited by Aaryn_GenD on Sat Jul 24, 2010 3:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Bart331
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Re: Guide to Zerg Hotkeys

Post by Bart331 »

nice tips aaryn, maybe i should try zerg some day. For now i am stuck on terran xD
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Re: Guide to Zerg Hotkeys

Post by Aaryn_GenD »

forget terran, stick to zerg^^
much easier to play, especially mid- to lategame
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Re: Guide to Zerg Hotkeys

Post by Bart331 »

i am just getting my feeling for terran back a bit so i first wanna learn them good, then switch
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Re: Guide to Zerg Hotkeys

Post by 36drew »

Looks good mostly.

The one thing I don't like is hotkeying queens. The reason is this:

Let's say you have a queen at your natural that has 50 energy, while your queen at your main has 20.

Your main queen doesn't have enough energy to transfuse. So the queen will run from your natural back to your main to infuse.

While this isn't all that bad, when you get 3 hatch or greater, having queens moving around the map can be a problem.

Though on the flip side, it is faster to infuse with hotkeyed queens... and with the whole smartcast system, the queen closest to the hatchery will always be choosen.

So I guess it's just personal preference. But a person needs to decide what works best for them.

My ctrl groups are very similar overall.
-1/2/3/4 army, sometimes a scouting ling/drone/overlord/overseer takes a group
-6 hatcheries

And basically that's it for me for now. Other races have me using many more hotkeys since hatcheries produce all military.

But for terran I have like:
1-3 army
4 fact
5 rax
6 cc
7 starport

So... a bit different indeed!

Good thread btw!

Edit: I should also add that sometimes I leave a hatchery on it's on, since the rally points might have units running through a line of fire that isn't safe. In this case it usually gets no hotkey. At that point in the game my attention is needed to much elsewhere for me to have hatcheries on more than one hotkey.
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Aaryn_GenD
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Re: Guide to Zerg Hotkeys

Post by Aaryn_GenD »

i don't get your point drew. i never said that i move queens around the map. this is solely for the eco part and it works phenomenal.

if you want a queen which runs around the map, fighting or spawning creep or sth then you can put it on hotkey 7 for example while still being on hotkey 5. i like the fact that a unit can be in multiple cotnrol groups in this game.

i never used queens for fighting only if i'm in trouble or anti air early game, you watching too much day9 daily's? :-P

actually you have to hotkey queens, not hotkeying queens is foolish, you need to do the easy eco part or you jump from hatch to hatch manually clicking the queens. takes too much time. or maybe i got your post all wrong
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36drew
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Re: Guide to Zerg Hotkeys

Post by 36drew »

Nah Aaryn, here is what I mean.

Hopefully it doesn't get lost in communication between Western English and Eastern English.

Basically here is a problem with keying all of your queens together.
Say you have a queen at your main who doesn't have enough energy to inject larva. A queen in your group who does have enough energy will walk from another location on the map to come inject larva. This can be a problem since your queen's can end up walking across the map to do so. And they can get out of position, or even caught in the line of fire. It's also a problem since once off creep they loose their 170% movement speed bonus.

I am not referring to them being used for attacking at all.

Does that make sense?
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Re: Guide to Zerg Hotkeys

Post by HeJurmhoanni »

Yeah thats right drew. I dont hotkey my queens either. I have hatcheries as 1-4 and then i just push 1 1, select gueen, press X and target the hatchery then 2 2, select queen, press X and target the hatchery and so on.. It really doesnt take so much time to do like this. With 4 hatcheries it takes about 5-7seconds to inject them all and you dont make any plunders if your gueen doesnt have enough energy.
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Aaryn_GenD
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Re: Guide to Zerg Hotkeys

Post by Aaryn_GenD »

[quote=""36drew""]Nah Aaryn, here is what I mean.

Hopefully it doesn't get lost in communication between Western English and Eastern English.

Basically here is a problem with keying all of your queens together.
Say you have a queen at your main who doesn't have enough energy to inject larva. A queen in your group who does have enough energy will walk from another location on the map to come inject larva. This can be a problem since your queen's can end up walking across the map to do so. And they can get out of position, or even caught in the line of fire. It's also a problem since once off creep they loose their 170% movement speed bonus.

I am not referring to them being used for attacking at all.

Does that make sense?[/quote]

so that's what you mean. yes this makes sense.to me this didn't happen yet. and in the case of it happening i would do the following:

i would press my hotkey for queens once, thhen hover over the wireframe and i can see how much energy each queen has.

but the longer the game goes the lazier i get with larvae injection and none of my queens happen to have low energy^^
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