Hatchery

"The Hatchery is the heart of any Zerg colony. It spontaneously generates larva, which in turn are used to spawn your various warriors and minions."

- Daggoth

The hatchery is the foundational structure for every zerg colony.

Overview
Hatcheries perform three vital functions that no colony can survive without: producing the creep, which most zerg structures require in order to be built, giving birth to larvae that can mutate into the various zerg breeds and digesting minerals and vespene gas to change into a nutrient form that zerg can use to feed their mutations. In addition, the hatchery is one of the only structures that can be built without pre-existing creep (the other being the extractor) and is therefore essential for any expansion attempt.

Building Abilities
The hatchery can mutate into a lair, and later into a hive.



StarCraft II
The zerg continue to use hatcheries in StarCraft II. Hatcheries continue to be able to create creep. Upgrades for s and overseers are researched at the hatchery and its evolved forms, but at least a lair is required first. This change allows the player to research the upgrades at any hatchery they control as long as they have a lair, rather than being limited to researching them at the lair itself.

If multiple hatcheries are selected, pressing the "S" hotkey will select all of the available larvae at all the selected hatcheries. The player must press a hotkey (or select a morph icon) once for each unit they wish to build.

Two rally points are able to be set on a hatchery; one ("G") for s and another ("Y") for warrior units. The doesn't get a rally point.

Each individual egg can be separately rallied; this overrides rally points set for the hatchery.

A hatchery spawns a new larva every 15 seconds if there are less than 3.

Building Abilities
The hatchery can evolve into a lair.

Development
As of February 2010, the hatchery no longer researched burrow. This has since been reverted.