Distortion2, a streamer and experienced Dark Souls series speedrunner, seemingly broke the record for the fastest Elden Ring speedrun today with 36 minutes and 20 seconds of gameplay. The achievement was registered on his Youtube channel just a day after he achieved a 37-minute run.
Elden Ring‘s growing speedrunning community has different categories that dictate loadout or strategy restrictions, such as exclusively allowing or exclusively banning specific tactics. Distortion2 made this speedrun in the Any% category, where everything is allowed. From bugs to dying, all that matters is finishing the game in as little time as possible.
It’s possible to see Distortion2 use some tricks in the beginning of the run. For instance, instead of waiting for the game to load when opening a door, Distortion2 saves and returns to the title screen just to load the game from there. This process sometimes cuts some time in different areas. He also jumps to death before the first boss, Grafted Scion, even appears to totally skip the unnecessary fight.
As the run progresses, Distortion2 uses some parkour tricks to skip entire areas, as well as the trick of returning to the title screen and reloading the game. Near the end, there are bosses that he can’t skip, and he chooses to use a build around the weapon Icerind Hatchet +9. It has an AoE special ice attack that excels at dealing a lot of damage to bosses from afar. He also uses some summoning spells as Lone Wolf Ashes and Spirit Calling Bell.
Just days ago, the record for fastest Elden Ring speedrun neared an hour, but Distortion2 himself broke it with a 49-minute speedrun earlier this week. Now, he’s broken his own record again with his latest 37-minute run, even after dying unintentionally for the Godskin Duo bosses. He is still trying to trim some time off his latest milestone.
Despite Elden Ring‘s difficulty (or because of it), the game’s speedrunning community is growing and developing a number of categories and strategies in their attempts. As these communities continue to grow and learn, fans can expect to see more and more records being broken across various categories, with different run types such as Any% having their own rulesets. This means setting new records will likely be a matter of time. Distortion2, however, has established himself as one of the biggest speedrunners on Twitch and already has plans to finish the game in under 30 minutes, according to the description on his latest video. Fans can keep up with his attempts to set new Elden Ring records on his Twitch channel.
