Starcraft 2 Beginner's Guide

In this Starcraft 2 Beginner's Guide, I will discuss some Starcraft basics and then give 3 tips that will dramatically improve your gameplay.

Before jumping into this Starcraft 2 beginner's guide, here are a few things you should know if you are brand new (if you have already played a few games, skip this next paragraph):

In a game of Starcraft 2, the goal is to kill the other person's buildings. To defeat the enemy, you need to have your workers get resources, build new structures, and finally train units. Once you have enough units, you can attack the enemy. As soon as one player loses all his buildings, the game ends (regardless of any units left in play).

For the next part of this Starcraft 2 beginner's guide, I will give you the three most important tips for winning as a beginner in Starcraft 2.

1. Maximizing your economy is key to winning games. Your "workers" build structures and harvest minerals. The optimal number of workers is 2 per mineral node and 3 per vespene geyser. Any more or less than that is undesirable.

Click Here for Shokz #1 Starcraft 2 Strategy Guide

At standard maps, this is 22 harvesting units at your main base and normal expansions. Blizzard states that the optimal number is "3" per mineral node, but that is not true. You will increase your harvesting rate with 3 harvesters per mineral node, but there is a lot of wasted time as well. This is referred to as "saturation".

Unless you are going for a specific rush or are being rushed, you should never stop producing workers until you have hit optimal numbers.  You will increase your mineral

If you grab a "rich" expansion with orange mineral deposits, you only need 18 harvesting units as there are only 6 mineral nodes at each rich expansion.

2. "Damage" does not describe a unit's damage entirely and is a misleading stat. Some units get multiple attacks. For example, the Thor's anti-air attack is actually 4 attacks. Where it says 6 damage per attack, it really means 24 total damage (4 attacks x 6 damage per attack).

Also, different units do not attack at the same speed. The Hydralisk may appear weaker than a Stalker since a Hydralisk only deals 12 damage per attack to the Stalker's 10 (14 vs armored) and a Hydralisk also has a lot less HP. 

However, the Hydralisk attacks every .75 seconds (12 damage / .75 seconds = 16 damage per second). The Stalker only attacks every 1.44 seconds (10 damage / 1.44 seconds = 6.944 damage dealt for each second attacking a normal unit and 14 damage / 1.44 seconds = 9.69 damage dealt per second versus armored units).

In reality, the Hydralisk deals more than twice as much damage as the Stalker despite having similar "damage" rankings! You can calculate damage per second by dividing damage dealt by attack speed - the DPS of a unit is a more accurate representation of its firepower.

3. Pay attention to unit damage bonuses. Some units in Starcraft 2 deal bonus damage to different unit types, making them good counters versus specific units. Here are some common units and their bonuses:

Marauder: +10 damage versus armored units
Hellion: +10 damage versus light units (more with upgrade).
Thor: +damage to light air units
Phoenix: +10 damage to light air units (+5 damage x 2 attacks per hit)
Immortal: +33 damage to armored units (huge amount!)
Ultralisk: +15 damage versus armored units

As a result, the Marauder, Immortal, and Ultralisk are great versus armored units, while the Hellion, Thor, and Phoenix are great versus light units.

4. Learn how to properly scout. I reveal the proper method for scouting and exactly what you are looking for (most players don't have a clue) in part 1 of my free e-mail strategy course, which you can sign up for in the box on the left of your screen.

5. Learn Hotkeys. I cannot emphasize this one enough. Hotkeys are keyboard keys which are shortcuts which you can use to issue commands for building structures, training units, and controlling units.

For example, hitting the "A" key and then clicking somewhere on the map will move your units and set them to automatically attack whatever they encounter. this is much faster than clicking the "attack" button on screen.

Once you get out of the Bronze league, you do not have time to be clicking all over the screen when you want to build units or buildings. Your keyboard needs to be used for building commands, and your mouse should be used for movement.

The most important hotkeys you will want to learn:

- ALL of the hotkeys for training units, especially workers ("S" for SCV, "S" for select Larva and "D" for Drone, and "E" for Probe.)

- Hotkeys for the most commonly trained buildings and units (Pylons ("E"), Supply Depots ("S"), and Overlords ("V").

That is it for the Starcraft 2 beginner's guide. From here, I strongly recommend picking up the Shokz Guide, which has all of the strategies you will need to reach the top rank in online play.

Are you still struggling to get into the Diamond League?

If you answer the above question with a yes, then I urge you to pick up the Shokz Starcraft 2 Mastery Guide.

This routinely updated advanced guide contains strategies for ALL the races, an advanced 1v1 guide, a 2v2 guide with powerful strategies for Terran, Zerg, and Protoss players that will have your opponents begging for mercy. Click here to get it now!