Zerg Camera Hotkey Inject Tutorial

*** There seemed to be some confusion about the quicker version of the Injects. They are still done with the CameraHotkeys, the only difference is that i preselect the inject queens with a hotkey rather than box them individually. I DO NOT use basecamera ever and i think the camera hotkey version is much superior to basecamera one. ***
Since it is one of the most asked questions when i am streaming i decided to upload a video about Injects!
This Method is how most professional Zergs do their injects, everyone uses either the version with boxing, the one with preselected queens or both.
If u have any questions about this technique let me know : )
* One thing i forgot to mention is that you can know when to start the next cycle either by naturally realising that u have additional Larva, or by seeing the Inject Animation being over on one of the Hatcheries (if they are synced up). But usually it should become a natural Rythm

[@fadikiki]

Best part of this video isn't about hotkey inject, tho there is a great explanation why you should not inject in early game the way you do in late. Best part of this video starts from @5:00, when Lambo explains zerg's flow: inject, creep spread, scouting, overlord positioning and only then army movement. Of course you have to react accordingly to different scenarios, but it is very solid frame to practice your macro as zerg.

[@iamskelebro8927]

2:30 You can also get the camera to center perfectly on the hatchery (or anything) by clicking on its portrait when it is selected.

[@tkrudi]

Wow that’s like cheating

[@Necrocidal]

You can bind that action to a key too, "center camera on selection" or something like that in the hotkey editor

[@xitaris5981]

​@@Necrocidal Just FYI for people hearing about this for the first time, the default hotkey for this is ctrl + f, which I actually use because I have ctrl bound on my mouse. It's much better than clicking the portrait imo

[@bogdan.butunoi]

Never liked the portrait click. Ctrl F if desperate. Just bind it to a control group & double click that control group #.

[@alexchoi5835]

This is the level of zerg micro I've been looking for! Nice video and great instructions! Best of luck in future tournaments!

[@marievanderpoel]

Watching a bit later then others but this content is absolutely amazing, I especially appreciate you taking the time answer all the questions in the comments, I got a lot of precious tips I was wondering as well there. Thank you Lambo ! Great video !

[@Alekouzos]

'' playing zerg its all about rhythm'' Dude thats so deep and acurate!

[@samirelghottmy902]

Great Videos as always. Thanks for the in depth explanation.

[@IsaacFNghost]

I'm gonna switch to this method. Going to take a lot of practice because I've been putting my queen on a different hotkey with each hatchery on a different hottkey

[@kg3436]

Awesome. This is exactly what I was looking for.

[@Serit76]

thanks for the ncie tutorial, but may I ask how you actually assign control / camera groups. For me I can't really do crl+F5, so i need to use 2 Hands for that, so I wanted to know if my Keyboard is too big or I handle my finger placements wrong :/

[@LamboSC2]

i assign camera hotkeys with shift+ the f-keys, so i press shift+f1, shift+f2 etc. untill shift.f7 at the start of the game to set them up.

[@EstevezenlaColmena]

I apreciate tip making the box on minimap direction. But, would we make the box alwais on this way for make clic on minimap more easily enithing time?

[@sofocusedgaming992]

Lambo, Appreciate the content. Question, are you using rapid fire on the injects so you don’t actually have to hit your target?

[@fadikiki]

@LamboSC2 can you please tell more about zerg's macro rythm? For instance, you say at @5:00 that you believe inject-creep should be a nice rythm, because it takes same time to inject and drop a tumor. Im masters player, and in the mid game i always have too much tumors scattered all over the map to spread. I was trying inject-spread flow with my inject-queens on one hotkey and creep-queens on the other, but there is always a time gap when my army isn't building, because im too busy creepspreading - I can feel how my larva just lying around idle. Maybe it's more efficient in midgame to inject→make army/overlods→creepspread → scouting (because making army is just as fast as injecting)? Or maybe i miss something, because now i spam tumors like madman, maybe it should be like 2-3 tumors on each side, so it would preserve time...

[@shunpeng3609]

One part of what differentiates pros from good players is the amount of mastery they have over the simplest things. If you look over pro zerg’s POV, they spread their creep in like what < 15 seconds for the whole map? That’s the mouse control required to speed it up. As he said in the newest vid, start slow and accurate, and you’ll speed up eventually so you won’t be spending as much time spreading creep.

[@sonkegrewe4111]

Hey Lambo, I know this Video is really old but maybe you see the comment. I am struggliung with the speed of lategame injects as a grid player as "x" and F keys are so far apart. Do you use your thumb for the x key or how do you go about it?

[@LamboSC2]

yes

[@flrn84791]

You can also add ` (backtick, Grave in the hotkey file) as an alternate

[@tkrudi]

Great video! Thanks!

[@dancingsamba]

What keyboard do you use where it is easy to select f6 and f7? seems so far away?

[@LamboSC2]

I use a Ducky One, which has the normal F-key layout. But one little trick i use, is that i put the f1-f7 keycaps in upside down so it is slightly closer to me!

[@PeteAYOR]

I tend to box the queen starting from the top left corner so I it's fastest for me to place her in the top left corner of the hatchery for faster injects. I tried it and it works nicely but it sort of takes quite a bit of extra apm throughout the game to constantly put the queens in the right spot. Every time a new queen spawns, or when it died, or when it had to move away from the hatchery and then came back I need to do it. Do you think it's worth it?

[@bvg129]

If you are still wondering, totally worth it. You do 3-6 injects every 25 seconds, queen runs/dies not so often.

[@mantramusic5009]

great video!

[@i6100i]

Thanks for the great video, wondering how do you think about using backspace to switch camera between bases? Maybe in the late game?

[@LamboSC2]

So the backspace method, where u rehotkey your basecamera hotkey to space, is something that does not have any advantage over the method shown here. It is slightly slower and abit less accurate, but still very quick and probably the 2nd best method after this! If you are good with the Backspace method there is no huge necessity to switch to this one right away. Just keep in mind that the technique shown in this video is the optimal one, and just using camera hotkeys in general will be very important anyways if u reach high levels in starcraft. : )

[@j4240]

@@LamboSC2 hello lambo i don't know if you will reply since its an old video, but this method doesn't account for macro hatcheries it seems like. Also how is it quicker than the backspace method? I get the 'accuracy' part since you wouldn't have natural queen runing up to main but i don't see how it can be quicker. Thanks again for the video

[@LamboSC2]

@@j4240 If i recall correctly i did explain this at some point in the comments to someone else so this is almost nostalgic for me, either way here goes: Using alternating fingers to press different keys in quick succession is always faster than pressing the same button 4 times to begin with. If you try to press space 4 times in a row you can compare it to pressing f1-f4 and it should be a little slower to begin with, which means it won't be slower than the backspace method but rather the same speed capped by the speed of pressing the inject and mouseclick (this seems to be a general flaw in the theory of some people that don't have the muscle memory yet, not sure if that's the case here). The biggest timesave from the f1-f4 comes into play from 2 things: 1: when you do add macro hatcheries or extra bases past the first 4 hatcheries you do not want to make extra queens for them, but you'd still be forced to cycle through them with the backspace method (ontop of that it becomes really hard to not mess up the queens if you do it in the same speed as the camera location technique) - to your question about macro hatches, usually in tvz, which is the only matchup on high level where you do put macro hatches, you make them on the map and then stack injects with creepqueens when you have the time. Or you do it like dark and just not inject them at all. 2: When anything goes wrong and a queen moves away, or even if you just have 1 hatch already injected/no energy on one of your queens and you would want to skip it/fix it, you'd still need to cycle through all the hatcheries everytime to get to where you want to be with the backspace method. No matter your level is this will happen a couple of times per game and always loses you time.

[@j4240]

@@LamboSC2 thank you so much for explaining !

[@hurdler]

How do you finger the alternating F-keys and X for camera/inject? I use X for inject as well but it's hard for my hands to alternate between bottom and top of keyboards.

[@LamboSC2]

I lift my hand abit, so my thumb is below my hand and presses the x every time, and i press f1 with the ringfinger f2 middle finger f3-f7 with the index finger! It needs some practice but after a while u can get used to it. or u can also always swap the inject hotkey to something more comfortable :)

[@hurdler]

@@LamboSC2 Ok Thanks a lot! That makes a lot of sense now.

[@kyrn3901]

@@LamboSC2 I've always used the spacebar to switch between hatches. I just can't get used to the F hotkeys due to them being so far away. Do you think it's just preference or is F hotkeys for specific bases a huge advantage?

[@LamboSC2]

@@kyrn3901 It is a pretty big advantage honestly, just being able to use screenhotkeys even without injecting with them will make organizing your economy alot quicker. I am not saying its a must to a certain level of the game, but using them definetley is an advantage rather than preference!

[@PeteAYOR]

At the stage where you're no longer boxing queens for injects, why don't you use the base camera hotkey to quickly swap between your hatcheries, since you already have a control group for all your inject queens?

[@LamboSC2]

because it will go to hatcheries without queens on them, which will lead to queens running around. And it will lead to queens running around very often (even before i have hatches without queens) without me being able to fix it without screenhotkeys. So overall there is no upside for the Basecamera Inject but quite a couple of downsides compared to just using the screenhotkeys.

[@user-ge2vc3rl1n]

Lambo, there is a hotkey for centering a selected unit/building, this is control C in broodwar I forget the default in SC2, you can use this or click on the portrait instead of creating a control group and recalling it, because it's much faster to center with hotkey.

[@LamboSC2]

Hi, it's control+f in sc2 and i actually know that this hotkey exists, but i hotkey my drone when i send it to a new base location and just pressing 7 twice isnt slower than pressing controll f because u have to go there with your cam first to select the hatch for the control f to work (so it's more like f3->select hatch->controll f>shift f3 versus 77->shift f3). Also very often there might be a zealot attacking my drone or a ling standing where i want to expand so i can quickly press 7 twice to switch to the drone and move it away. Overall if u dont have an open hotkey to use for that controll f is completley fine, but i feel like having that drone hotkeyed is decently usefull and not slower either : )

[@user-ge2vc3rl1n]

@@LamboSC2 the muscle memory from broodwar makes this fairly natural for me, thanks for the response

[@DaChaosify]

Could you make a video about your other Zerg hotkeys? Love your vid btw!

[@LamboSC2]

My general hotkey setup is pretty much just grid, and i use all 10 controllgroups (7 of which are army hotkeys), which is hard for most other players to copy since i use my mouse for controll groups 7-0! So i don't think it would be the most usefull video : )

[@DjTic64]

Hey lambo, thks so much that's something à could not figure out. Something i didn't get. You said having the ringfinger on F1 and the tumb on x, so how do you maintain shift clic ? Or u go back F1 7 x clic, f2 7 x click each time. Seems impossible regarding the speed you did inject..

[@LamboSC2]

Why would i need to hold shift or press the queen hotkey everytime? It is just 5(or whatever you use as the queenhotkey) f1 x click f2 x click f3 x click etc. . Shift doesnt do anything and u only need to select the queens once. (i explain it around 6:15 in the video again)

[@DjTic64]

@@LamboSC2 I see ! my bad indeed you do not have to click the queen hotckey each time, but the shift click allows you to click x just one time and then go for all camera hotckeys and mouse click, but you made the point, it's not so much important and you seems going very fast tho ^^ thx :)

[@KaedeHot]

I put my injecting queens in one hotkey, and use space to cycle the bases and inject this way.

[@metodo1772]

Thanks for the explanation. What about injecting through the mini map. Isnt it faster?

[@flrn84791]

How would you even do that accurately?

[@josesuch4962]

okay, this is what I wanna know

[@starcraft2casts476]

@lambo Why bother putting the new hatchery on a new control group? You can double tap the control group with all of your hatcheries to center as well. Is there another reason?

[@manta7255]

It's because with 1 hatchery, you can see the timer on the inject

[@xitaris5981]

Based on another comment, it's partially because he puts the drone on a separate hotkey in case micro is needed before the hatchery goes down (dodging probes and reapers etc) and also doubles as a way to center the hatchery without needing to use ctrl+f

[@peterpickguitar]

I just use space bar to cycle through the hatcheries, click Queen, then v inject.

[@Herold_sc2]

Nice video

[@trewq398]

thank you

[@crem4x968]

Lambo, what do you think about injecting in the minimap?

[@mcblanc900]

its too slow, dont do that.

[@xitaris5981]

To expand on McBlanc's statement, it requires more mouse accuracy and the more stressed you get the more your fine-motor skills diminish, so when you need to macro mid-fight your accuracy will be lower and likely to cause you to inject slowly or miss injects. There's a Serral POV game where he injects 5 hatcheries in

[@flrn84791]

Why use X to inject and go back and forth between F row and lower row when you could add ` (Grave) as an alternate to inject in your hotkey profile? Pinky is over that key anyway when the fingers are on the F row.

[@LamboSC2]

i use that grave as an army controll group hotkey, i also press x with the thumb without any issues. But feel free to change it to whatever you prefer

[@alfiechen4349]

Do you use the basecamera hotkey to do the preselected queens inject?

[@LamboSC2]

no, i also use the camera hotkeys for that.

[@gerardocastro2802]

fuck that was so fast, it really semmed like you were using the basecamera@@LamboSC2

[@Foxmizou]

Thanks for the info Lambo N1 !!! ^^ I have one question you use the "Drag camera" button ? in any moment of the match ?¿ many thanks !

[@LamboSC2]

Only to make my Camera Location Hotkeys, other than that no.

[@Foxmizou]

@@LamboSC2 and DPI ? Im trying lower like 800 but feel is too slow is better high ?¿ ^^

[@LamboSC2]

@@Foxmizou Whatever works best for you is the best, no need to copy me. I am using 800 and so are alot of other top players but there is no objectively too low or too high DPI.

[@Foxmizou]

@@LamboSC2 many thanks preciated your help ^^

[@xitaris5981]

Serral does ;)

[@frankm.2238]

How is it so fast though? F keys and inject button are so far apart. Is he using thumb for inject and middle finger for f keys?

[@xitaris5981]

In a different comment he addressed this and said he uses his thumb for X and I believe he uses all 4 fingers for F-keys; this is based on another comment where he addresses why camera hotkeys are actually faster than the backspace-rebound-to-spacebar method.

[@joseoctaviomendozacaceres9836]

Maestrazo.

[@danyyy_8733]

How do you know when its time to inject? I have the problem of spamming injects all the time even tho its already injected, and then when in battle forgetting to inject.. :(

[@sayance8]

injecting when its already inject is fine, the inject will ' queue up' as unit, so your bases will stay inected all the time I'm doing the same especially in the late game when im' gathering too much energy on queen cause i miss some inject in the early

[@danyyy_8733]

@@sayance8 The problem is that you get larvae every 30 seconds so if you do your macro cycle in 5 seconds you have 25 seconds to do other things like scout/creep/add tech etc.. Now if you spend that time constantly trying to inject you are loosing alot of time you could spend on the other mentioning stuff you also need to do.

[@caloreen1992]

@@danyyy_8733 There's interval timers that you can play on youtube that will make a noise every 30 seconds. You play with that as practice and eventually you should get a good feeling for it without the noise. Same way musicians get good rhythm playing with a metronome and then having good rhythm without it.

[@solas6342]

@@danyyy_8733 Like he said it's all about rhythm. Playing Zerg is like a dance. You just have to get used to doing the steps over and over. Takes practice to build muscle memory. Spend Larvae-Creep Spread-Inject, Spend Larvae-Creep Spread-Inject, over and over and over the whole game. If you train your brain to associate two actions together it makes it easier to do consistently. Every time you creep spread, remember to inject as well. Eventually your brain will just do both almost automatically.

[@danyyy_8733]

@@solas6342 I see, thanks guys!

[@javaskull]

The upper right corner thing is new fo rme. I'll have to try that.

[@xitaris5981]

Keep in mind that it's specific to the way he's used to select-boxing. For instance, my preferred method would have me putting it in the upper left corner.

[@fall0rn]

at 3:08 that first queen inject is so fast u cant even see his cursor change when he pick the inject hotkey wtf? i slowed it down 0.25 and u can barely see him doing it how?! also how does he do the inject while switching cams without having to press inject again?

[@jackherbic6048]

After the beggining of the game you select the queen hotkey then go f1 v click f2 v click f3 v click f4 v click, so you don't even have to move your cursor it stays on the hatcheries.

[@Bumpki]

How come later in the game you do not care about accuracy as much and can get away with using the fast method?

[@jackherbic6048]

Queens will have banked some energy so there wont be a missed inject that causes wandering

[@xitaris5981]

Also, seconds matter more in the early game, so queens swapping hatcheries in the late game doesn't instantly kill you like it can in the early game. When you only have 24 larva every minute with perfect injects on two bases, having 3-6 larva delayed is delaying a large percentage of your production, but when you have 60 larva every minute with perfect injects on 5 bases, then having 3-6 larva delayed is a smaller percentage of your overall production

[@peterpickguitar]

Ya but then my F2 can't go all in :)

[@dabbs82]

How does he go from F keys to the x so fast?

[@kolaolaha1466]

You don't need to add a hatchery to an extra hotkey if you wanna make camera location right at the senter, its enought to add it to your first hatch and then double tap it, i cant undestand why you should do it other way.

[@kolaolaha1466]

Also, what the max amount of larvae you can stack on one base?

[@LamboSC2]

I have an open hotkey anyways and it doesnt cost me anything. I hotkey the drone once i rally it to the new base, so if i see any unit popping up on the minimap that could deny the expansion i can quickly select the drone before it gets there and save it. I am pretty much all about optimization, this is a small thing that noone has to copy, but since i use 10 hotkeys and i only need all my 7 army hotkeys very late into the game it doesnt affect my Hotkey Layout. It also saves at least one click because in order to center it with the overall hatchery hotkey, u need to move your screen to the position of the hatchery first to select it after it started, and then double tap the hotkey after adding it to the other hatcheries, whereas i already have the drone hotkeyed before it gets there and just double press the hotkey i used for my drone to select the hatchery+ center it. Tl:dr: the way i do it has very small upsides, but no downside. To your other question: a Hatchery can have a maximum of 19 larvae!

[@kolaolaha1466]

@@LamboSC2 Ait, thank you very much for such open answer, I didnt know you binded your drone to a hotkey.

[@raensaeck]

I can't even reach Ctrl + F7 lol

[@nonstandard5492]

lmfao right?

[@yehastell590]

pinky+thumb?

[@xitaris5981]

I rebound ctrl, shift, and alt to my mouse ;) I never stretch my hand for anything which, besides being convenient also helps with hand and wrist strain by a lot

[@josephnguyen851]

More video

[@Regunes]

A freaking shame the people who made my keyboard had the Brightest idea to put the F"X" Buttons 1Cm above the rest of the keybinds.

[@user-ge2vc3rl1n]

mine is about 3CM above the other keys, I don't really have any trouble with this though.

[@vasyapupkin6627]

I have laptop, how can i make it go properly if i must use "function"(fn) button all the time?

[@user-ge2vc3rl1n]

@@vasyapupkin6627 you should be able to lock the FN key, google "lock fn button (and add the brand of laptop)"

[@ScorpexFilms]

who dat sexy boi

[@Jaypan85]

Ein ladder stream mal ausnahmsweise in deutsch wäre schön :)

[@chrisxxx4714]

too fast

[@boredbanana7324]

It depends on which audience you cater to. Is this video specificly for people in your channel asking about it and you simply providing the !inject ? Is this a beginner guide? If the latter is the case. You have to drastically tone down your camera spam. You might not be affected by it anymore, since you have probably seen billions of screen swaps over your carreer, but for a beginner it's very irritating. I personally am Diamond, so I have some hours into this game, and still is a bit irritating for me, watching you do it on stream. When I do it for me it's okayisch because I know I'm initiating that command, my body is ready for it. But if you see someone else do it, it's a different thing. And that is depsite me watching your stream quite regulary, and being acostumed to it a fair bit. Now I would never tell you how you should run your stream. But for a tutorial vid it's especially counter productive, since people try to process the visual information you are providing in abundance, while trying to let the actual info sink in. Just imagine a university prof holding a lecture on higher economics while his powerpoint is sliding every second. ^^

[@LamboSC2]

Thank you for the advice, This Video is indeed mostly for the people who come to my stream and ask me about my Inject technique, most of which are probably higher level players (platinum+). Believe it or not i tried to slow it down to, what i thought to be an acceptable speed for everyone, everytime i wanted to show something. Most of the quick camera switching is me checking how much energy i got and pure muscle memory of doing things while talking and trying to explain. Keep in mind this was shot in one go and i am not a youtuber or anything, this is pretty much just an extension to my stream with the inject command. If i do videos like these in the future ill try to slow it down as much as i can. ^^

[@fall0rn]

@@LamboSC2 u don't explain it at all. you're not clicking inject every time its like u must hold it down and just switch cams but you dont even explain how you do it. all you do is switch super fast between cams and talk stuff that is not relevant, this vid sucks theres nothing to learn from it

[@LamboSC2]

@@fall0rn i absolutely do click inject everytime and i do explain how i do it. There is no holding down anything, as i say in the video the sequence to inject in the earlygame is f1 box queen inject- hotkey (for me x) click, f2 box queen x click, f3 box queen x click, etc. The seuqence changes later to: press the queenhotkey so you do have all the queens selected into f1 x click f2 x click f3 x click etc. I know many ppl that have learned how to inject from this video so generalizing and saying the video sucks and doesn't help just because you don't understand it even though many other comments say the opposite seems weird to me. Either way i hope i could help :)

[@marvinabt4964]

actually, I just downloaded the game, and after the first view I got confused, cause I didn't use Queens before, went into a game and used them and now I can understand what he is doing perfectly fine. And I can say there is nobody more noob then me out here. Im quite used to quick camera switches because of League of Legends content and playing that game myself. The thing thats different here is that you are looking for different things while looking somewhere. In videos you never see the switch coming so it's kinda hard to catch everything, because you don't even know why the switch happens. They happen so rapidly though that I kinda got used to skipping these parts mentally and act as if they didnt happen. The important part where you did fast inputs was explained really well afterwards. Only thing to change there is adding something that shows which buttons you press(could be like a keyboard in the corner) but that would be just an extra. Secondary, I don't think it's a great idea for me to go face real players before being comfortable with pressing my control Groups or cams, because the urge to act quickly from the enemy players aggression will enforce bad habits of not using the hotkeys, because it's short-term faster to not use them. You really kinda scared me as you said "its not as easy as you think" because I think that is pretty hard to do. On a third note, I thought a cheesy tactic would be best suited for me against real players, because that forces us both to have less bases, less macro to do. And obviously Id lose out in a macro challenge, cause Im a noob. It's kinda like in League. If you think you're worse than your opponent, try to cheese cause that's the only way you can win. It takes just that one moment where the opponent isn't thinking about it, and then you catch them off-guard, done it in league many times. I was debating between thinking of a strat myself and googling for one, but I think I'll first try myself.

[@joseoctaviomendozacaceres9836]

Traducido al español tambien i dont speak inglish 😪