The Elden Ring speedrun record has yet again been shattered, this time by an enterprising Tarnished named Hazeblade. The new record is now 24 minutes and 37 seconds, replacing Distortion2's previous best of 29 minutes. That's impressive work.
How was this new Elden Ring speedrun achieved?
Despite a recent Elden Ring patch designed to fix bugs and tweak some gameplay features, it looks like certain speedrun strategies are unchanged. As pointed out by Dualshockers, Hazeblade used a known glitch by the name of "The Zip", which allows players to launch themselves across the map and save huge amounts of travel time. The glitch is apparently dependent on certain aspects of player hardware, but it essentially relies on incorrect warping in order to let the player skip parts of Elden Ring's storyline. Along with the Icerind route method, which involves picking up an extremely powerful weapon early on, this allowed Hazeblade to reach his impressive sub-25-minute time. To think it was only earlier this month that a player managed to beat From Software's brutal RPG in under an hour, too.
Another speedrun record was also set by streamer Kogarrashi; he managed to complete the game in under 25 minutes as well, although he was using an existing save file (one that had started the New Game process 43 times, remarkably). Since the New Game Plus mode in Elden Ring lets you use previous unlocks, Kogarrashi had an advantage over Hazeblade, but his time of 23 minutes and 6 seconds is still an impressive accomplishment. Meanwhile, I'm over here spending literal hours fighting story bosses. Such is the nature of the speedrunning beast.
What is Elden Ring?
Elden Ring is the latest fantasy action RPG from Dark Souls and Bloodborne developer From Software. It shares a number of similarities with those games, as it's effectively an open-world game with Souls combat and exploration. You are a Tarnished, and you have come to the Lands Between to depose the demigod Shardbearers and take your place as Elden Lord. Along the way, you'll do battle with terrifying beasts, explore a wide range of different locations, and meet other Tarnished, all with their own agendas. You might even indulge in a little online cooperation or competition. Just make sure you're not using the rumored RCE exploit.
You can pick up Elden Ring right now on PlayStation consoles, Xbox platforms, and PC. It's proven to be a huge success for From Software, selling 12 million copies within just a few weeks on sale. As such, we almost certainly haven't heard the last of the Lands Between; whether we get a sequel, single-player DLC, or something else entirely remains to be seen, but we're betting the Elden Ring train will keep a-rollin'. Stay tuned for more info on this game.
