Elden Ring is FromSoftware's most ambitious title yet, and the developers packed an amazing level of detail and complexity into its open-world setting. However, one unexpectedly popular aspect of the game is speedrunning, with fans competing fiercely to beat the game faster. Now, one Elden Ring speedrunner has set a new world record with the help of some newly-discovered glitches.
After just a few weeks, Elden Ring fans began to achieve incredibly fast speedrunning times. This has reached a point where it seems like Elden Ring speedrunners are setting new records daily. It appears that the discovery of game-breaking glitches, particularly ones that allow the player to teleport, has changed the way that speedrunners approach this title.
Streamer and Souls speedrunner Distortion2 recently posted a video to their official YouTube account that chronicles their most recent Elden Ring world record. The video is nearly 13 minutes long, but the speedrun it contains only covers about half the runtime. As the video title "Elden Ring Any% Unrestricted Speedrun in 6:59 (WORLDS FIRST SUB 7 MINUTES)" states, Distortion2 has set the first world record for speedrunning Elden Ring in less than seven minutes. In the video, they are shown using glitches to teleport across the Lands Between, sequence break, and even kill necessary bosses.
The video shows Distortion2 rapidly teleporting across the game's setting by using glitches as a means of transport to mandatory chests and bosses. The Elden Ring speedrunner went into detail on how this was achieved in a pinned comment below. Apparently, Distortion2 used two glitches in particular in this run, which have been nicknamed "The Zip" and "Megazip." The Zip is a frame perfect glitch that activates when players combine several actions--blocking, holding walk, and pressing W to move forward--resulting in a combination of 139 frames. If this total is reached, the player will then teleport a varying distance, with the leap being greater the longer that the W key is held down.
Meanwhile, the Megazip is a glitch activated when pressing the W key inside of a 12-14 frame window after using the Zip. This glitch quadruples the player's momentum, allowing them to be launched even further. However, the most important element of the Megazip may be the way it allows players to functionally skip over fighting the game's bosses. Distortion2's video shows them using the Megazip to kill both Malekith and the game's final boss, the Elden Beast. However, the nature of the teleportation means that Radagon is left in peace, as beating him isn't technically necessary to clear the game.
Elden Ring is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.