Hi everyone! I’m new in sc2 and want to learn how play Zerg. Do you guys have any advice, tip or tutorial to accelerate the learning process?
Your best bet would be to watch videos on basic build orders and fundamentals. There are a lot of different sources - it’s mostly personal preference. PiG has a lot of videos that are very useful.
Good luck and welcome to the game!
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Step one: DO NOT WORRY ABOUT MICRO. Don’t touch your units that attack just send the things. Do not worry about APM. Don’t spam click crap to inflate APM. You can get masters with 130APM as Zerg. 100 is more than enough to get high diamond. Worry about micro. Micro to the point where you are producing just enough attackers to drone up. This is your primary goal. Get the queen injects every 30 seconds built into your brain. Search Loko in YouTube to see how he queen injects. He has a good video on it. I have to unlearn how I was injecting now that I am at like 150apm to get faster. It’s a huge deal. Do it right the first time! (Space bar to change bases while control plus inject hotkey is the fastest)
Use spawning tool (google it) and select a macro build as opposed to an all in. Your first step is going to be mastering 3 base macro builds.
The hardest part of Zerg is knowing when to make drones and when to make attacking units. So many games I would make a round of drones, a wave of units would come in and I would be like crap, if that wave of drones were attacking units I would have been fine haha…
Vibe on YouTube is my personal favorite. He has bronze to gm for every race. He literally will leave games where he ends up having to do too much micro (management of attacking units). That is how dedicated he is to making sure the stuff he does is appropriate for your level. He’s not busting out 300-500apm. He does things you can do easily.
You can win 90% plus of games up to diamond 3 with nearly no micro. Just focus on saturating 3 base with drones and not dying because you didn’t make attacking units at the right time. Watching vibe or possibly pig as mentioned, they’ll tell you timings of things which is important to know because then you know when to make roaches or lings without dying or making them too early.
Make sure you’re playing the game mode you want to practice. Don’t practice builds in 2v2 and then transition back into 1v1 using said builds for example. Very different in play style. In fact, I was diamond 3 before I started 2v2. Using my 1v1 builds in 2v2 I would get recked in gold because I was expanding too fast to defend against 2 people attacking me (:
Practice in 1v1 ranked. If you’re that worried about wins and losses, play on Asia server if you have okay ping. Asia has the most competitive server. Or Europe if your ping can’t handle it. After you log in just log out, change the server, and use your same password. Do not play custom, or unranked to practice ranked games. Practice ranked to get better at ranked. Asians are crazy because of the amount of cyber cafes they have. They’re very talented. 3100 MMR is like gold 2 or 3, versus in the US 3100 is like plat 2 or 3. Even with that, their 3100 players are as good as 4000 players on US IMO.
Add me if you want more help. I’m 39-5 this season 1v1 but that is straight cheesing. Cheesing is fun but I love macro games. They’re a lot more fun. Macro games, I ran like 60% last season. I mainly just mess around now because it’s gonna take me 500-1000 more games to drastically improve from where I am at. I started this game last season. I placed silver 3, and am diamond 1 now. I know I am capping out on my initial learning curve, so I know it’s gonna take me 2x-3x the games I have under my belt to get to the point where I improve enough to get good lol… I don’t have the time for that as much as I would love to.
ChillinSpree#1165 if you want to add me. By no means am I a pro: there are a lot better people on here than me. But I love helping people and know a good deal about Zerg in general (:
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Wow…thank a lot for the advice! Massive amount of info.
I didnt know about this great vibe or pig vids (Very educative).
Again, thank you so much Chillin for the info and for taking the time to write this post.
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If I could add, I bet to make small numbers first and focus on zerg flyers or on Hydras. It could be useful if we go ling-Hydra (Zergling-Hydralisk) strategy. But trying to be economical is the hard way. But if you assume that you can take 2 gold bases, expect heavy income but continuous rushes.
And create enough Hatcheries and “Queen Injects” to spend the money. It doesn’t help if you have 10.000 Minerals in the Bank… and no Larva to create next units. ![:wink:](https://d212vo0owly06i.cloudfront.net/en/sc2/images/emoji/twitter/wink.png?v=6" ":wink:")
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WinterSC made a zerg guide pretty recently (less then 2 years). That should be a good start. Once you start playing more and get a hang of it, LiquidSnute’s stream is one of the best zerg streamers to learn from. He explains a lot of what he’s doing, and streams daily.
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Basic opener is 17 hatch (16 hatch vs protoss) 18 gas 17 pool 20 overlord and make 2 queens and some lings when pool is done.
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Look up lowko tutorial vids.
Play roach builds (rather than hydra, lings, banes, mutas, etc… easier to learn basics with.)
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practice creep spread (extra control group for creep queens) and injects 15min+ per day on a different map every time (the 1v1 map pool has 7 maps in total).
–> Your eyes should always go like this:
minimap, minerals/gas/supply, minmap, scout with a unit (overlord, zergling, changeling), minimap, minerals/gas/supply, tech / upgrades,
minimap, minerals/gas/supply, minmap, scout with a unit (overlord, zergling, changeling), minimap, minerals/gas/supply, tech / upgrades,
minimap, minerals/gas/supply, minmap, scout with a unit (overlord, zergling, changeling), minimap, minerals/gas/supply, tech / upgrades
Also set a goal of what to make (roaches until like 120 supply into roaches + 20-ish hydras into corruptors + 8-ish broodlords + 10-ish lurkers + 6 queens for creep spread (maybe 10 in total; remember to shift-queue injects and expand).
Goal: Get as many drones as possible (max 80-90) and then army.
You’ll want like 70-80 drones but more drones means you can put down 1 spore + 1 spine per base or more if needed.
The better you get, the more multitasking you can try and the more drones you can build before the actual army.
Tut the basics is just injects, creep spread, expanding and builing units.
THe minimap is the most important place to look. Focus on your macro. If you can hit your injects and make your drones you can run over anyone till maybe mid plat when you need to start working on micro. Don’t forget to scout. Watch games like serral so you can start to develop what to look for and what to do with the information you see.
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queens are like low key super heavy
maybe 1800 pounds if i guessed, how much weight is lost if constant injects and creep?
maybe 5 lbs per minute but if you bank the energy for transfuses you can crack that 1850 lbs limit
once you learn how many pounds the queen weighs you are off to winning games on the solo q ladder