Written by. Ryuki Ishii based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-03-11 12:48 JST)

[Update 2022/03/14 19:55 JST]
The newest record is now 28 minutes and 59 seconds (in-game time).

[Original Text 2022/03/11 16:27 JST]
The Elden Ring speedrunning record went under an hour just the other day (related article), but speedrunner Distortion2 has already managed to cut that time down to under 40 minutes in the any% Wrong Warp category. The record (37 minutes and 15 seconds IGT) was set during Distortion2’s Twitch stream. The Elden Ring category on the speedrunning aggregate site speedrun.com won’t open until March 18, so we can’t be certain, but this is likely the fastest run as of this writing.

Please be aware that this article contains spoilers and gameplay footage of Elden Ring.

image taken from Distortion2’s Twitch stream

For most people, Elden Ring takes at least 50 hours to beat during a normal playthrough. How can you trim that down to 40 minutes then? The key is the Wrong Warp glitch that allows you to teleport to a location you shouldn’t be able to warp to. Dark Souls Remastered has a glitch of the same name, which is quite difficult to reproduce. Elden Ring’s Wrong Warp glitch has the same premise but is much easier to execute.

In Elden Ring, if your character is standing on an unstable location when the save file is loaded, the character will spawn back to the starting position in the area. Using this technique, along with Teleporters and the fast travel feature, will allow you to skip content and reach a late-game stage. In fact, you can use the Wrong Warp glitch to reach Farum Azula without defeating a single boss.

That said, defeating late-game bosses without any preparation is quite challenging. For that reason, the current speedrun route makes detours to gather items such as the Royal Knight’s Resolve skill and the Icerind Hatchet, which comes with the Hoarfrost Stomp, a skill considered powerful by many players, before heading to Farum Azula.

The Royal Knight’s Resolve skill can be used on melee armaments to increase its damage on the next attack. The buff effect will normally go away after an attack, but that isn’t the case for the weapon you have in your other hand or the weapon you switch to after using the skill. The buff won’t go away in these cases, although we’re not sure whether this is intentional or not. Distortion2 utilizes these two skills to take out late-game bosses quickly.

Other glitches are used during some of the story bosses, such as a glitch that stops them from moving or skips the fight altogether.

Some of these glitches also affect normal playthroughs, so they might get fixed in future updates, which would change the optimal route for speedruns. There’s already a separate category that prohibits the use of the Wrong Warp glitch, and a category called All Remembrance that requires speedrunners to beat all major story bosses.

FromSoftware titles are popular among the speedrun community, and Elden Ring looks to be no different. We’ll likely see more breakthroughs in the near future as the community is currently in the process of coming up with the best strategies for each of these categories.

As for Distortion2, you can check out his speedrun attempts on Twitch. His previous records are archived on his YouTube channel.