For those who recently started playing Starcraft2 , there might already be many things you must learn about to improve your game play that seem a bit overwhelming at times. You might have started playing the game before, using your mouse only and clicking on each buildings and units for you construction, before you learned about the importance of hot keys in the game.

The keyboard and mouse is the most important weapon in each battle, because one mistake could put you behind in your match. But there are also many features in the game that helps new comers improve their game-play. One of these features is the “screen saving (Create Location) feature.

What exactly is the Screen Saving (Create Location) feature?

Much like setting each of your buildings and units with a certain hotkey number, you could also save certain scenes of the map as a hotkey also. So in any given situation, you can quickly switch to that certain part of the screen, when you need too. So you no longer have to scroll slowly around the map to reach certain parts of you’re base or clicking on the mini-map for this. It’s able to let you get around the map instantly and shave down the time wasted, while you’re trying to manage you’re base and workers.

How should you use this Screen Saving (Create Location) feature?

It’s quite simply to use, just pick a spot that you wish to be saved and set a hotkey for it and whenever you need to return to that certain part of the screen that you saved, by hitting the hotkey, it will instantly bring you to the location you had saved before.

A good location to Screen Save

Why the Screen Saving (Create Location) feature so important?

This feature lets you get around important locations in an instant, instead of scrolling or using you’re mini map to get around. So you’re able to move you’re forces or even works instantly to a location without wasting time with scrolling around on the screen or clicking on the mini-map. This is just an addition that helps players manage their focus a bit easier. Examples of this would be, whenever you would use an worker to construct an building (Scv or Probe), you could instantly hit the Screen Saving hot key to bring up you’re minerals of your main base and instantly be able to queue you’re workers to mine on the minerals or gas, right after they finish constructing their building. This is also useful for whenever you’re base is under attack and you need to quickly send units back to your base, just by hitting the hotkey, you’re able to send you’re units back instantly, without wasting time clicking on the mini-map or scrolling back to your base.

*The Screen saving hot key doesn’t affect control of the unit you might be using. An example of this would be, how when I use to play before, I would always hit the hotkey for my main building and bring up the screen of my base, but by doing so it makes me lose control of the unit I wanted to use. So consider the screen saving feature a good method of helping you manage your main base and you’re expansions around the base.

when constructing an building with an worker

Instantly back to you're minerals or gas line to queue after construction

What are the hot keys for (Create Location)?

In your main “Menu” click on “Hotkeys” and then click on “Global” -> “Camera” then scroll down the menu and see what your hotkeys are set as. Most of the time it’s either “Control – F2 – F5 / Control - Shift – F5 – F8) But if you hotkeys are different, feel free to change it to something that makes you feel comfortable to your liking. It allows you to save up to 8 locations. Once you have set your Create Locations hotkeys, you also need to know the hotkeys to jump to the locations you saved. Once everything is set to your liking, it’s time to give this feature a test!

By using the screen saving feature, helps you shave off a time from scrolling around or clicking on your mini map to get around. You mostly want to save the screens of your main base and expansions around, so you can quickly access these locations, whenever you need too. Hope this tiny tip can help new comers who might still have problems with base management or location spotting a tiny edge in their game-play.