How to beat Elden Ring in under 9 minutes

In the nearly two months since Elden Ring was released, the average player has reportedly needed dozens of hours to finish the “main story” portion of the game. Given that, the fact that the speedrunning community can now demonstrate a complete start-to-finish Elden Ring run in under nine minutes might be a little surprising.

Even for experienced Elden Ring players, watching Distortion2’s takedown of the game in 8 minutes, 56 seconds—a run in which he doesn’t attack a single enemy—can be confusing. So let us help you out with a quick primer on the short history of Elden Ring speedrunning thus far and the glitches and exploits that are driving players through the Lands Between in ever-shorter amounts of time.

Wrong warps and flying horses

Just days after Elden Ring‘s late February release, players marveled at traditional deathless runs that clocked in at just under 2.5 hours. Soon, though, players were dipping into old Dark Souls speedrunning tricks to bypass tough bosses or reach new map sections via careful, barely survivable jumps. That led to the first public, sub-hour Elden Ring speedrun by Twitch streamer LilAggy on March 9, just 12 days after the game’s release.