Excess minerals for zerg

As the game progresses, it's common for one to accumulate significantly more minerals than gas. If you're Protoss or Terran, you can put these minerals into zealots or marines, both of which are quite useful for basically the entire game (once they have charge, zealots in particular are potent no matter what the situation is). However, I find that the only candidate for minerals-only spending for Zerg--that is, zerglings--are nowhere near as worthwhile in the mid and end-game. They just get chewed up too easily. Consequently, I end up in situations where I have 500+ minerals and negligible gas and am not sure what to do about the surplus.

Are zerglings better than I'm giving them credit for? What should Zerg players do with excess minerals?

Zerglings arent bad, but what about another hatchery + queen? Either at an expansion or at your established base.

What the deer said - get an expansion or just put down another hatchery in your main ^_^.

And if you have excess minerals, not a lot of gas, and tons of larvae, it never hurts to get more Zerglings ;). It can really help to have a hitsquad of Zerglings that you can keep separate from your main army to deny enemy expansions.

*grins* get +1 attack early, you'll see the whole game dynamic shift significantly.

Another option is more Crawlers. If you're spreading Creep properly you can get a sizable amount of Crawlers out in the field and they're a lot tougher than people give them credit for.

or just more drones but i'd say an additional queen

Hatcherys, Queens, Drones, and Crawlers are good ways to spend your min.

On the note of zerglings, you NEED to have the speedling upgrade or else they arent as great as they need to be. Spreading them out through the map gives you a lot of map presence as well, they serve are warning signs to moving armies or expansions. most of the time your creep will only eat half the map, the lings can cover the other half.

and in the later game they serve as a decent wall and can do decent damage if not dealt with, (of course if they have collosi or Tanks... then you shouldnt make as much lings).

Don't forget about overlords.
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sexyJenny live

I think that extra hatcheries are key--the idea of extra queens without extra hatcheries is nominal, unless you are heavily, heavily massing creep across the map.

One queen per hatchery for consistent larva injections is sufficient, but later in the game when you have excess minerals, the optimal thing to do is strategically expand.

Besides helping your macro, the additional expansion gives you access to more resources, allows you to spread drones out more (this means an attack or drop does less damage), gets you 2 more geysers (more gas, yay!), and also diverts energy attention.

The last point is often times underestimated: A relatively new expansion is oftentimes the center of your opponent's attention. He'll want to take it down before its economical benefits kick in for you. Also, it's weak and unfortified.

If you are macroing at a level where your gas is nominal, that means that you can DEFINITELY put that gas to good use. If you have 2000/2000 or even 2000/1000 unless you are planning on suddenly dropping several ultralisks, that expansion isn't really as important as macro itself is. Then again, additional hatcheries help you macro, which means this is definitely the way to go.

Also, I'd like to reinforce the idea that spine crawlers could be helpful at this point: that's extremely true. I would suggest just making 3-4 per expo, especially when toss has potentially transitioned to air and terran is doing drops (thor or mmm). Making those crawlers would also mean you have to respawn drones to make up for the usage, which is additional mineral usage.

It's as simple as this.

Macro!

If you have way too many minerals, throw down some hatcheries / expos (focus on gas). If you're worried about spreading yourself too thin, use the excess minerals for spine crawlers.