Elden Ring speedrun record is now under 13 minutes, with the help of a metronome

Written by. Ryuki Ishii based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-04-08 19:51 JST)

Elden Ring’s Any% Unrestricted speedrun record (using the old Ver.1.02) is now under 13 minutes, with speedrunner Mitchriz finishing the game in just 12 minutes and 32 seconds using a newly found technique called Mega Zip.

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

Speedrunner Distortion2 broke the 20 minutes mark in late March (related article), and there has been a lot of progress within the speedrunning community since then, notably the aforementioned Mega Zip glitch that allows you to skip the final boss entirely. Distortion2 recently finished the game in 14 minutes and 8 seconds, but it didn’t take long before Mitchriz renewed the record yet again. Mitchriz is also known as the record holder of the blindfolded Sekiro speedrun, by the way.

The Zip glitch allows you to blink through space and skip all the locations where it previously required a bit of time to traverse through. The glitch can also be used to skip some boss fights altogether. It’s not easy to pull off, as it requires extremely precise, frame-perfect inputs while maintaining the game at 60fps. That’s why you can hear the sound of a metronome in both Mitchriz and Distortion2’s videos. Since the glitch is highly dependent on the player’s PC environment, it’s not allowed in most of the Elden Ring speedrun categories on Speedrun.com.

The Mega Zip seems to be a variant of this Zip glitch, and it is used to perform a massive warp from the Erdtree to the very edge of the world map. As you can see in Mitchriz’s video above, you can skip the final boss entirely by successfully performing the Mega Zip glitch. A sub-13-minute run is already an insane feat, and I wonder how much shorter the record time can get from here.