Speedrunner beats Elden Ring in less than seven minutes without fighting a single boss

One can easily get a hundred plus hours of playtime from Elden Ring's vast open world or at least 30 hours worth of campaign time. However, a speedrunner named Distortion2 wants to experience the title in an entirely different manner. Last month, they started speedrunning the game and beat it in about 49 minutes. Today (April 12), they managed to do the same in 6 minutes and 59 seconds, breaking their own record of 8 minutes and 56 seconds set yesterday.

In the attached video, one can see that he heavily relies on in-game glitches to progress. Certain actions, if inputted right, can zip your character past most bosses and trick the game into thinking that you beat them. However, this is a cumbersome process that requires frame-perfect inputs that might not be reproducible every time. YouTuber Daravae has created an excellent two-part series explaining how zips work in Elden Ring.

While From Software games are arguably one of the most challenging ones, they're seldom free from game-breaking bugs, as seen above. Previous titles, such as Dark Souls 3, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Bloodborne, have their fair share of cracks that speedrunners exploit, and Distortion2's name is quite common on the world record lists. The current Elden Ring record will likely be untouched for a while, as Distortion2 has stated that they're done with any% runs until new exploits are found.

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