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Queens, as you'll find out, are probably the best unit in the game in terms of utility and essentiality. All Zerg units are morphed from Larva, which are spawned from the Hatchery at a rate of one Larva every 15 game seconds. The Hatchery will stop producing Larva if there are three or more currently tied to it. The Inject Larva spell spawns four Larva in 40 game seconds (not one Larva every 10 seconds, but four Larva in 40). This means that a good Zerg player will look back and inject every single Hatchery he owns every 40 game seconds. Queens can inject Larva even when the Hatchery has more than three Larva, to a maximum of 19 Larva on each Hatchery. There are some games where there's a big engagement and the Zerg instantly makes dozens more units (sometimes more than a hundred) and keeps piling on the pressure (used to be known as Sauron Zerg).
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A Queen near the Hatchery, ready to use Inject Larva
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This Hatchery is waiting for its Larva to spawn
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This mechanic is so important that if you're not injecting you're working at a maximum of 30% of your production capacity (there are times in the late game where production is only determined by Larva injects). Be ready to practice this mechanic, hone it, it is by far the most unforgiving macro mechanic in the game, as you cannot stack multiple injects on one Hatchery, and cannot inject any other structures than a Hatchery. It has to be done one Hatchery at a time every 40 game seconds. It is very difficult, and not even the best of professional Zerg players have consistent injects.
/Coffee's Note: There are a lot of different ways to mange your Larva injects. Read the document below, or look up inject tricks on Google if you really want to learn how to do it quickly and efficiently! /End note |
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Creep spreading down a ramp
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Creep seems like a nuisance, right? Wrong. With those disadvantages come two amazing advantages. The first is that everywhere there is Creep, the Zerg player has vision, i.e. the fog of war is lifted for that area. It's not uncommon for more than half the map to be revealed to the Zerg player by the time 13 game minutes have passed (this point in the game is also called “the mid-game). Creep is half of the reason that Zerg is called "the map-hack race". The second reason that Creep is your friend is that every Zerg ground units moves approximately 1.5x faster on Creep. Creep can turn a really bad engagement into a really good one, or an even match into a massacre. As a bonus, Protoss and Terran can't build their buildings on Creep, so if you get Creep up into their bases, they'll have a tough time building.
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