It has now been a full month since the arrival of Elden Ring, and the hugely popular Souls game shows no sign of stepping out of the spotlight anytime soon. With 12 million copies sold in less than three weeks, many of those playing are still struggling through certain areas, while those who have finished the game are either discovering new elements like the wall that can endure 50 hits, or trying to finish its story as quickly as possible.
Seasoned Souls players have a history of doing weird and wonderful things with FromSoftware's games long after they've finished them. Beating bosses with a bunch of bananas, for example. It's never long until the speedrunning begins, and that quickly becomes very competitive. One month in, and one of Elden Ring's most prolific speedrunners has already completed the game in under 20 minutes.
Distortion2 really got the Elden Ring speedrunning going when they managed to beat the game in less than 50 minutes. A time that had people with the jaws on the ground at the time but now feels like an eternity. They then beat their own record becoming the first player to finish the game in under half an hour, but got beaten to the punch by a rival speedrunner when it came to getting the first sub-25 minute time in the books.
Not to be beaten twice in a row, Distortion2 then got to work on becoming the first player to finish Elden Ring in less than 20 minutes, and they have achieved that goal. It did not come easy, though. Despite the rapid nature of speedrunning, it took Distortion2 a grueling 15-hour stream to finally break the record, eventually registering a time of 18 minutes and 58 seconds. The streamer admits they were on the cusp of throwing in the towel right before they finally managed to topple the 20-minute mark.
There is a caveat. Like other Elden Ring speedrunners, Distortion2 continues to use the 1.02 version of the game, prior to its most recent patch. The update fixes a number of bugs and glitches, some of which speedrunners have been using to shave precious seconds off their record times. That may mean the times being set right now will never be beaten, and if speedrunners are ever forced to play Elden Ring with the latest updates applied, a new leaderboard will need to be established with the current runs being ranked separately.