Elden Ring speedruns are already under the 30 minute mark

(Image credit: FromSoftware)

Update: Distortion2 has now beat the game in 30:24, here on Sunday, March 13th at about 8:30pm ET/5:30pm PT. Distortion has set their next goal as 28:06 or better, and is streaming attempts live on Twitch.

Update 2: Distortion2 has done it—28:59 is now the current record.

Original Story: Elden Ring speedruns started out at times like two and a half hours, then just a day later went to less than an hour. From there? From there its been madness, as "Any%" speedrunners aggressively shave off minutes at a time with each newly discovered trick and glitch—tech, in speedrun parlance.

For now we're down to speedrunner Distortion2, who clocked in a shocking 33:55 today, March 13th, 2020, just a couple days after saying that speedrun times would definitely go below 40 minutes soon. Congrats to Distortion2 on setting ridiculous records before rankings site speedrun.com is even accepting entries.

Any% speedruns, for those not familiar, are speedruns that take advantage of any bug, glitch, skip, exploit, or cheese they can find in order to make it to the end of a game as quickly as possible.

With times already nearing the 30 minute mark, it's not implausible to think that they'll go below 30 minutes within the next day, or aim for sub-20. Elden Ring has more optional areas than any FromSoftware game before it, with a mere handful of bosses standing between the truly dedicated speedrunner and the final fights. The open world structure helps, as does the discovery of some truly weird sequence-breaking area skips both built into the game on purpose and via bug.

That, and there's a big, weird bug out there that makes you teleport. No, not joking, but nobody can figure out how to do it reliably.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.