Elden Ring speedruns are spiraling out of control, but they're nothing if not absolutely impressive. And this one might be the most amazing of all yet.
YouTuber Distortion2, who gained fame for being the first to finish the new FromSoftware title in under 30 minutes, has now beaten the game in less than nine minutes, reports IGN. The player made heavy use of the infamous Zip Glitch to achieve the feat, which allows anyone to teleport across the entire map in seconds.
Distortion2 uploaded a video of the speedrun on their channel, which has earned over 464k views at the time of this writing:
As you can see in the video, this Elden Ring speedrun skipped a lot of content all throughout the game en route to the sub-9-minute speedrun. For one, he managed to reach Stormveil Castle from the Chapel of Anticipation in mere seconds by using the Zip Glitch.
From there, he was zipping through (pun intended) multiple locations in no time at all, and he didn't even need to ride Torrent. By the time he went through Farum Azula, only around 4 minutes of game time had elapsed. And by the time he fought his first boss fight with Maliketh, he was sitting at around 5 minutes.
For the Maliketh boss fight, Distortion2 still made heavy use of the Zip Glitch to avoid actually fighting-showing what looks to be an intricate knowledge of the game's glitches. Though most of the time, he did seem to struggle with performing the Zip as it often takes him multiple tries to get the bug to work in his favor.
For now, Distortion2 made it clear in the description of his video that he'll "keep grinding" to bring his Elden Ring speedrun to under 7 minutes. The biggest problem he had, according to him, was performing the zip during the Maliketh boss fight. Otherwise, he didn't have a problem with mostly skipping through to the game's end.
Read also: Elden Ring Mods: Easy Mode, Hard Mode Made Possible by Modders
Elden Ring Speedrun Attempts At A Glance
Speedruns of FromSoftware's first open-world Soulsborne started modestly enough. Among the first to finish, an Elden Ring speedrun played through the entire game without dying in less than three hours. Now, this was an impressive achievement at the time (early March), but it will all just snowball from there.
Later that same month, the same guy (Distortion2) posted a video of the first sub-30-minute Elden Ring speedrun on his YouTube channel. He achieved this without using the Zip Glitch, mind you, and often relied only on raw skill to subdue mandatory bosses in a heartbeat:
The Elden Ring Speedrun Community Is Growing
According to GamesRadar, there is an immense amount of competition to conquer FromSoftware's The Lands Between in record time. So many players are trying their best to one-up their competitors, proven by how deep they've been digging into Elden Ring's guts for new exploits to shave even seconds off their playtimes.
With just how many more exploits are being discovered by players (even those who aren't speedrunners themselves), it might be a matter of time before a new, world-record Elden Ring speedrun appears.
Related: Best 'Elden Ring' Mods to Try to Elevate Your Gaming Experience [2022]
Story posted on GameNGuide
Written by RJ Pierce