Elden Ring speedrunner butt-stomps his way to the Elden Throne

There's no doubt that Elden Ring is a tough game, but experts have already beaten it in so many silly ways that you're quickly running out of excuses for giving up at Margit. Distortion2, an Elden Ring speedrunner who also happens to hold the current unrestricted any-percent record, recently completed a full playthrough of the game where he only damaged foes with the Ground Slam Ash of War.

For context, Ground Slam is basically Elden Ring's equivalent of the classic Mario butt stomp. Thankfully for Distortion, the Ash of War does have a couple of positive traits that make it more viable than you might think. It covers a lot of distance, it's difficult for enemies to hit you out of the animation, and it has a wide area of impact. Unfortunately, it's also slow as molasses and has a huge window of vulnerability after using it, which makes it a tough ability to use in a game as fast-paced as Elden Ring.

Still, Distortion managed to defeat every major boss (i.e. every one that gives a Remembrance) by only using the one attack over and over. He stitched together a two-hour highlight reel of the run on his YouTube channel, and you can check it out below. While the run begins with him easily taking down a number of tough bosses like Margit, by the end of the game, he has to tank hits from fast-hitting bosses like Godfrey and Maliketh just to land a chunky stomp. It doesn't seem like the most engaging way to play the game, but it's apparently possible — if you're an expert speedrunner, that is.

Currently, Distortion2 holds the world record for an Elden Ring unrestricted any-percent run with a 6:59. Yes, that is six minutes, fifty-nine seconds. The strategy for this run involves using a variety of "wrong warp" bugs and bizarre movement glitches known as the "Zip" and the "Megazip" to basically skip the entire game.

According to an explanation posted as a comment on his latest run, several of these tricks require the player to "megazip" away from the boss arena. This apparently causes the floor of the boss arena to disappear, which makes the boss fall into oblivion and die. In other words, we're less than two months from Elden Ring's release, and speedrunners have hacked it apart to such an extent that it's hard to imagine the record falling much more than that.