Speedrunner Beats 'Elden Ring' In 9 Minutes (By Losing)

Most mortals believe that beating Elden Ring might pose a challenge even greater than that of comprehending the game's story, but speedrunners actually see it as the easiest game in the Dark Souls series. Regardless of how hard it might be for our brains to conceive (and for our egos to accept), highly skilled players are already surpassing the game's biggest challenges so efficiently that they've had to come up with their own set of challenges to keep it interesting. Some of these include beating the game by becoming a pacifist who only heals their combat summons and doesn't directly inflict harm upon enemies.

One thing that's remained hard, however, is beating the game in a dumb manner that's also fast – up until now. Speedrun legend Distortion2 has just beat the game in less than 9 minutes and without enabling even a single act of violence. Last time we checked, top speedrunners like Distortion2 and Mitchriz were trying to master the “zip”, an exploit that allows bypassing fights by instantly going from one side of the map to the other in a way that resembles taking an invisible zipline ride.

 It's been over a week since that – like 8 years in Speedrunner time – so we should perhaps check out the technological advancements they've made in the meantime-

That looks bad, but these are speedrunners, so no way he won't get up and kill the boss with a dance emote or something, right? Nope! This new strategy has players getting intentionally ravaged by the penultimate boss, which somehow tricks the game into thinking the final boss has been killed, and thus takes players to the final area where they get to mend the Elden Ring and finish the game.

Even though this is just glorious, we get that pacifist runs aren't for everyone – especially when they end with the heroic pacifist getting turned into non-vegan watermelon juice, so readers who are into violence will probably love learning that Distortion2 also had the patience to get his revenge on every boss in the game by smashing them with his butt.

Top Image: FromSoftware, Xam3lpt