Elden Ring Pro Beats Game In About Two Hours Without Dying Once

Elden Ring has been out for nearly two weeks now and, if you’re anything like me, you’re still making your way through the expansive gothic world of the Lands Between. Not everyone is taking their leisurely time with the game, though, as one speedrunner ripped through FromSoftware’s action-RPG in just two-and-a-half hours…without dying a single time! Color me jealous.

As spotted by PC Gamer, YouTuber niko bellic—not the GTA IV protagonist—posted a video last week of their Elden Ring speedrun. Things kicked off similarly enough. Niko chose the Vagabond, an excellent starting class with a high health pool and decent strength stat, to start their run. After “dying” the one required time in the beginning of the game to the multi-armed Grafted Scion and skipping the tutorial area, niko hit the main world of Limgrave and immediately began sprinting to three Sites of Grace, which grants you Torrent. The faithful steed is not merely a get-out-of-jail-free card should you encounter a hard-ass boss, it’s also a necessity for exploring Elden Ring’s massive world. The double-jumping horse is also what helped niko speed through the game.

You can guess how the rest of the run went. Niko skipped most fights. Instead, they opted to blitz through entire areas just to pillage them while beelining through much of the Lands Between, only stopping to take down mandatory bosses like Margit, the Fell Omen. Niko defeated some optional bosses here and there and took damage all throughout the run, but they managed to crush Elden Ring with the starting armor and without taking a fatal blow. Wild!

What I find truly impressive about niko’s speedrun is how skillful it is. He used a couple of exploits, including one which resets enemies but retains your spot by quickly closing the game. But otherwise, niko proved to be no slouch. Most enemies were killed in a matter of moments and the boss encounters didn’t last more than 10 or so minutes. That’s what I love about FromSoftware games: watching folks with a deep understanding of the genre just totally destroy them.

Kotaku reached out to niko bellic for comment.

As far as I can tell, niko’s no death Elden Ring speedrun is the fastest posted. The site Speedrun, which catalogs an extensive list of games and the times speedrunners complete them in, doesn’t have anything listed for Elden Ring right now. There are some YouTube videos of other players speedrunning the game faster than niko, like someone who apparently beat the game in a little under an hour, but no one’s surpassed niko’s no death run. Not yet, anyway.

Elden Ring is one of the most popular games out right now. While the numbers have since decreased, the action role-playing game broke Steam and Twitch records not long after its February 25 release. There are also hacks and mods available for the game, so it’s only a matter of time before folks uncover copious secrets in the Lands Between—if they haven’t already.