Elden Ring's game-breaking zip exploit sees speedrun record go under nine minutes

Elden Ring speedruns have been fascinating to witness since the game's release. The world record seems to shrink every day as speedrunners nail strats and discover new methods. A mere few days ago the record was sitting at 12 minutes and 32 seconds, an already impressive feat for a game with a sprawling map and hundreds of hours of gameplay. Now, someone has managed to beat the game in under nine minutes.

Speedrunner Distortion2 was the first person to gain a sub-30 minute speedrun across the Lands Between. He's been hard at work since then, taking the world's first sub-20 minute speedrun and then shaving 14 seconds off of Mitchriz's 12-and-a-half minute run. His latest crack at the game has netted him a time of 8 minutes and 56 seconds (thanks, IGN).

It's all thanks to the latest zip strategy, which is letting speedrunners skip past entire portions of the map and defeat certain bosses. It works by guarding and then slowly walking forward for a specific number of frames. Pull it off, and the character will be launched forward, sometimes for short distances and occasionally across a large chunk of the map. Distortion2 also used the zip method to kill Maliketh, something which Mitchriz hadn't done but discussed as a potential timesaver at the end of his speedrun.

A nine-minute run is no mean feat, but Distortion2 ended his video by saying he "could still do much better." Both he and Mitchriz were unable to fling themselves far enough through the final fog door on their first attempt, with the latter speedrunner calling it one of the toughest zips to pull off in the entire run. Speedrunners will inevitably begin nailing down the timing on zips more consistently, too. Distortion2 is aiming for a sub-seven minute run, and I have no doubt it won't be long before we see that happen.

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Mollie spent her early childhood deeply invested in games like Killer Instinct, Toontown and Audition Online, which continue to form the pillars of her personality today. She joined PC Gamer in 2020 as a news writer and now lends her expertise to write a wealth of features, guides and reviews with a dash of chaos. She can often be found causing mischief in Final Fantasy 14, using those experiences to write neat things about her favourite MMO. When she's not staring at her bunny girl she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade.