As Elden Ring speedruns get faster, the runners aren't only becoming more efficient, but also skipping more of the game on their way to the credits. In the latest world record run, which clocks in at 12 minutes and 32 seconds, Mitchriz only has to fight one boss.
The new 'zip' and 'mega zip' technique lets you zoom around the game and make times like this possible. The 19 minute record, less than two weeks old, already looks slow and ancient by comparison.
To pull off the trick, you can see Mitchriz set his character up in a blocking animation as a series of sounds play in the background to guide him, like he's playing Mario Kart and about to start the race. When the final beep hits, he presses W and his character gets catapulted across the map so fast that the world takes a second to catch up and load in.
Zips allow Mitchriz to skip all of Limgrave and head directly into Liurnia. From there, he has to pick up the Icerind Axe (for the weapon skill) and go through the waygate to a late game area. In previous speed runs, this is where the real run started because it leads directly into a series of bosses before the end of the game, but in the current route, this is the first and last boss. With zips, every boss after that can be skipped, leading right to the end of the game.
"Alright, it all comes down to this. Two zips to go," Mitchriz said as the loading screen took him to the game's final area.
With extremely specific character positioning and a PC that's able to maintain a framerate stable enough to make the glitch possible, he was able to propel his character directly onto the steps before the final fog door in the game. Instead of walking through it, he performed another zip that sent him to the edge of the map, which ended the final boss battle before it even began, granting him the bosses' Remembrance and the final cutscene—which he skips, of course.
It's ridiculously fast, faster than the current world records for Dark Souls (21 minutes), Dark Souls 2 (14 minutes), and Dark Souls 3 (31 minutes). But the 12 minute run doesn't seem close to the end for Elden Ring speedruns. In this very run, Mitchriz discusses a potential way to bypass the initial seven minutes of setup with a mega zip and a series of zips afterward to kill the remaining two bosses. A zip-only run, if you will. Who needs the horse?
