Just when you thought Elden Ring speedruns might become a thing of the past, a brand-new glitch is letting speedrunners shave off minutes from their best runs. FromSoftware recently nerfed several moves that were allowing Elden Ring speedrunners to quickly defeat difficult bosses, but when FromSoft closes a door they also open a window thanks to the Zip Glitch.
The Zip Glitch is still not well understood even by the players who employ it, but very basically, it involves guarding and then tapping the "W" key on your keyboard. Macros already exist to make the Zip Glitch a little easier to employ, but otherwise, it's up to the player to finesse the correct cadence of key taps.
The end result is being able to teleport vast distances and cross previously impassable gaps. This can get you to places much faster than before and eliminate minutes of running around.
For an any% speedrun, the Zip Glitch is proving to be invaluable, especially to Distortion2. He's been running through Elden Ring at ludicrous speeds for a while now, first under an hour then 49 minutes, then 33 minutes, and then 28:59 minutes. Now, thanks to the Zip Glitch, Distortion2's most recent run is just 25 minutes and 29 seconds.
The biggest use of the Zip Glitch gets Distortion2 straight to Malikreth from the Crumbling Farum Azula. Even though it takes him a little while to implement the glitch, it still more than makes up for the time it takes to make it to Malikreth the hard way.
Distortion2 notes in the video description that the glitch is likely to be banned from leaderboard submissions since the glitch is very hardware dependent and also very random. FromSoftware is also likely to patch this glitch out as soon as the devs figure out how it even exists in the first place. But in the meantime, we might even see Elden Ring done in under 20 minutes very soon.