Elden Ring launched almost two weeks ago, and most people are still finding new things to do. It is an extremely expansive game that can easily take over 40 hours just to finish the story alone. However, the speedrunning community doesn’t have that kind of time. The impatience of speedrunners has led to the incredible feat of beating Elden Ring in under an hour.
This run was posted by LilAggy, a prolific speedrunner in the Souls community. It was an Any% run, which basically means that anything goes. Regardless of how game breaking a bug or exploit is, you can use it to finish the game faster. And it’s these game-breaking glitches that have led to this run.
More specifically, it’s the presence of a sequence break in Elden Ring that speedrunners are taking advantage of. By performing certain actions, you are able to skip ahead and avoid the mass majority of otherwise necessary content. Combine that with the incredible mechanical skill on display, and you end up with a run like this.
The scariest part of this achievement is that there are likely many more glitches to be found. Some speedrunning communities discover game changing bugs several years after a game’s launch. For example, just last year a streamer named Boba accidentally discovered a level skip in Metal Gear Solid that saved over two minutes. If a game that was released 24 years ago still has tricks to find, then you can be certain that Elden Ring does too.
How much faster can it get?
With the knowledge speedrunners currently have of Elden Ring, a run close to 50 minutes seems possible. LilAggy’s record-breaking run featured less than ideal RNG and multiple deaths. If a run can be executed that accounts for these issues a sub-50 might be possible.
As for the future, though, we have no idea how fast Elden Ring speedruns will become. It’s possible that another huge exploit will be discovered that allows players to skip the whole game. Perhaps one day something truly crazy like a sub-10 minute run will be possible.
