Just a few weeks after the launch of Elden Ring, a not easy game from FromSoftware, it has been surpassed in just over half an hour, in only 33 minutes and 50 seconds. Streamer Distortion2 got the record just a few hours ago. This speedrunner has been steadily beating his own record, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to stop any time soon.
Although the speedrun.com leaderboards for Elden Ring haven’t opened yet, it looks like Distortion2 already holds the world record. Well, at the time of writing this note, no faster time has been shared.
If you’re wondering how that’s possible, it all boils down to wrongwarping. Anyone who has followed speedrunning before will have seen this in many other games. Basically, it’s about tricking the game into taking you to the wrong place, which means you can die and respawn in a different place than you would normally respawn. Distortion2 makes use of it to its advantage, blasting through the huge game in a fraction of the time it would normally take.
For those unfamiliar with speedrunning lingo, this speedrun is in the “Any%” category. This means that the runner simply has to get to the end of the game as quickly as possible, using any route. Secondary content, or indeed content that is usually required, can be skipped if a way is found. This differs from categories such as 100%, which requires completion of all content, or “glitchless”, which would prohibit the use of wrongwarping.