Kai Cenat beats Elden Ring after 166 hours and 1,700 deaths

One of the most-watched streaming events of 2024 has finally come to a close after Kai Cenat conquered Elden Ring today.

Many fans of the streamer believed the feat to be impossible, especially when taking into consideration the effects of burnout over the course of the last week. Cenat pressed on, however, eventually defeating the Elden Beast and crossing the finish line.

Cenat, who started his quest to defeat Elden Ring in a “100+ hour stream” on May 10, finally beat the game a week later. It took him over 166 hours to complete his task, and he died over 1,700 times while doing so—many of which came at the hands of the notoriously difficult boss Malenia.

Cenat’s victory over Malenia was practically a cultural event on the internet yesterday, and the streamer was virtually moved to tears after the encounter. While many Elden Ring players elect to fight Malenia after beating the final boss of the story, the Elden Beast, Cenat took a slightly unorthodox route by beating the infamously challenging Malenia first before putting an official capper on his run with the actual final boss fight.

“Kai put in fucking work,” a Reddit user BJRone on Livestreamfail said of Cenat’s Elden Ring run. “Nothing but sleeping and playing for a week straight would drive even a Souls[like] veteran insane, so the fact that he had no prior experience but managed to pull it off is awesome. Dude could have taken the easy way out and quit so many times and ultimately his community probably wouldn’t have cared that much but you could tell he REALLY wanted to beat the game.”

After one of the most draining weeks of his on-camera career, Cenat can finally put Elden Ring to bed—for now. His runthrough of the game was exceptionally well-timed, though, considering he can now piggyback off the hype of this streaming event and repeat it not even a month from now when the game’s long-anticipated DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, is released. 

Shadow of the Erdtree is likely set to have the equivalent of practically a full game’s worth of content, considering how long it took to develop, as well as the price point attached to it. The DLC will be released on June 21.