Importance of Hotkeys and Good Habits

The default hotkeys in StarCraft are far from perfect and using them will often create poor habits that are hard to change later. While the information in this article isn’t necessary to improve and it won’t help you improve right away, it will help you to create better habits when starting to play the game and give some quality of life improvements that make the game easier to play, all by changing settings outside of the game.

Hotkeys

There are many different hotkey setups out there: default, grid, the core etc. Most of them aren’t the greatest and they all have disadvantages. I would recommend you work on your own hotkeys and set them up in the way that you like them. Everyone has slightly different hotkey setups. As long as your hotkey set up is working for you then it is good, however don’t be afraid to always continue to change and improve your hotkeys as you play the game. With that being said, TheCore is one of the best starting places if you don’t mind using the right side of the keyboard. If you are used to default hotkeys already and don’t want to make such a drastic change or are just looking for some hotkey suggestions I have listed the ones I would change below.

Remember: there is no perfect hotkey set up. No matter what hotkeys you are using, don’t be afraid to change things that aren’t working for you as much as you would like.

TL;DR

Here is a sample hotkey file which includes what I discuss below. Don’t miss out on Repeat Rate below though which is not a part of this file.

Above is a hotkey file which you can put in your StarCraft hotkeys folder. The hotkey file is just default hotkeys with all of the changes I have listed below implemented. Feel free to download and use the hotkeys to try them out, and see what parts of the hotkey set up you want to implement to your own hotkey set up, or use these hotkeys and change them based on your hotkey preferences.

General Keys

Patrol Default Key: P Recommended Key(s): anything that works for you on the left side of the keyboard that isn’t already a basic action. Z and Q are good choices but you could also choose anything in the QZVR square of keys that isn’t already a basic action or a control group (such as A being for attack move).

Hold Position Default Key: H Recommended Key(s): not as necessary to change as patrol, as H is much easier to press than P, however if you prefer it to be closer to other keys than like patrol anything on the left side of the keyboard will work.

Morph Lair Default Key: L Recommended Key(s): Something on the left side of the keyboard that isn’t a unit you can make. For example, if you set morph Lair to Z, then every time you go to make Zerglings and select your Hatcheries if you don’t have larva but try to select larva and make Zerglings you will turn all of your Hatcheries into Lairs.

Melee Upgrades and Metabolic Boost Default Key: M Recommended Key(s): I personally like Z for these upgrades however as long as it is on the left side of the keyboard it will be better. (you can also change range upgrades from A to something like X so all of your upgrades line up on the keyboard but that isn’t as important)

Pneumatized Carapace (Overlord Speed) Default Key: P Recommended Key(s): I personally use X for this one however something like V (for Overlords) would also make sense. As long as it is different from morph lair/hive, researching burrow, making Queens, selecting larva or your control group keys, you can pick anything you want.

There are some other hotkeys which can be nice to change, such as Drone morph to Ultralisk Cavern, Drone morph to Infestation Pit, Lair morph to Hive, Researching Muscular Augments (hydralisk speed @hydra den), Morph Ultralisk from Larva and anything else that is on the Y, H, N keys or further to the right, however these are up to personal preference and how comfortable you are with pressing those keys. If you aren’t comfortable pressing a key, change it to something else.

Control Groups

Control groups should be moved around so they are easier to access and give you more control groups to easily work with. Common keys to move control groups 6-0 to are: Q, W, E, ~, Spacebar. Other keys would also work, so you can choose which ones you like and you can also keep control group 6 depending on how difficult it is for you to press that key.

If you make Q, W, or E into control groups you will have to move the following keys to something else:

Q Queens

W Nothing by default to move!

E Research Neural parasite Cast neural parasite Cast Contaminate Overseer oversight Morph Extractor Morph Viper Morph Baneling Morph Lurker



In addition to adding these control groups, it is highly recommend to move the steal control groups to something easier to press, generally swapping with the standard ones. Since it is very rare to ever need the same unit/structure on multiple control groups the steal functions are almost always better. I would recommend changed add and steal to a group to Shift+# and Create and Steal to Ctrl+#. You can then move the basic add and steal to Shift+Alt+# and Alt+3 respectively.



Note: in addition to changing your standard control groups to steal, you can consider swapping control and shift so some actions are smoother. Namely, Shift to create and steal allows you to hold shift and deselect units and then recreate the control group when shift deselecting. As well, using control for add and steal allows you to egg hotkey eggs by holding control, clicking the egg and then pressing the hotkey without having to switch from control to shift.

Camera Location Hotkeys

Camera location hotkeys are important to get used to because they allow you to more easily respond to drops/multi-prong attacks, quickly take your next base. In addition to all of this, camera location hotkeys are also the best method for injecting your Hatcheries which is integral to Zerg macro.

Most players use the function keys for camera location hotkeys and this has been provided in the hotkey file above. It uses shift+F1-F8 to set the camera location, F1-F4 to go to the first four camera locations, and then F5-F8 or Ctrl+F1-F4 to go to the next four.

This is a very common solution and one that I use myself, however there are many other ways to use modifier keys (shift/ctrl/alt) to create and use camera location hotkeys. For example, you could use Shift+A,S,D,F,Z,X,C,V to create camera locations and Ctrl+A,S,D,F,Z,X,C,V to go to those locations.

Rapid Fire

Rapid fire is important for many abilities in the game. It allows you to hold a key and automatically cast spells such as Infested Terran, Neural or Abduct. To set up rapid fire, go to the choose ability or A.I. Target in the hotkeys tab and add an alternate that is the same as the ability you want to have on rapid fire. For example, for rapid fire corrosive bile, which is on C by default you would have Choose ability or A.I. Target to be Left mouse button or C. To add more than one rapid fire key, edit the hotkey file that is in your StarCraft folder and add to the choose ability or A.I. Target field.

SC2 Hotkey File: Setting up Rapid Fire

Repeat Rate

Keyboard repeat rate is how fast your computer repeats a key when it is held down and the repeat delay is how long after pressing a key down before your keyboard starts to repeat that key. The fast your repeat rate is, the fast you will be able to make large numbers of units like when remaxing on Zerglings. Additionally a faster repeat rate allows you to rapid fire abilities like Infested Terrans faster, this is often how pros cast large numbers of Infested Terrans quickly, through a high repeat rate, holding down the rapid fire ability and waving their mouse across the screen.

There are a few ways to increase your repeat rate past the windows limits, including through the registry or through your keyboard depending on which keyboard you have. The method I prefer is through an exe file that you can find here. You can also download the file from here below. All credit goes to EricTetz on GitHub.

I would recommend a repeat delay of 120-130 ms and a repeat rate of 1-2. This should allow you to still be able to type normally (repeat delay) but still be able to make units quickly (repeat rate). Keep in mind, this file will have to be used every time your PC restarts.

To use the keyrate file, copy the file path into a command prompt, or drag the file into the command prompt and then set the parameters using spaced numbers for repeat delay first then repeat rate, as shown below. Then hit enter and your repeat rate should be updated!