With Elden Ring arriving as the latest challenge for fans of FromSoftware’s style of game design, some skilled players are now working towards winning with different levels of mastery. While Elden Ring speedruns have become commonplace for fans of the game, some special challenge runs have still remained too difficult even as players become experts of the Lands Between.
One of these players, however, has finally broken through one of the most difficult challenges and managed to beat Elden Ring without taking a single hit from any source. It should also be noted that among runners, this type of run is referred to as a “damageless run,” which has a few differences from the more commonly seen “no-hit run” that only requires players to avoid hits from enemies.
The player who managed to accomplish the feat first is Twitch streamer SekiroShadow, or Seki for short, who grew a following as a no-hit and speedrunner for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. However, with Elden Ring’s collection of bosses offering a completely new challenge, Seki has spent the last month routing and practicing no-hit and damageless runs in that game, including attempts after patch 1.03’s rebalancing. This has led to the player finally achieving the world’s first no-hit and damageless run of Elden Ring on a recent stream, a recording of which is also available on their YouTube channel.
In the case of the damageless run of Elden Ring, there doesn’t appear to be much difference between the no-hit run, as unlike other FromSoftware titles there aren’t many pieces of gear that require players to take damage to reach top meta. So players like Seki will likely keep from splitting the two runs, instead challenging their increased mastery by shaving down the time required to complete the game without taking any damage. Considering that this initial success took almost three hours to complete, a no-hit player also beating Elden Ring in under 25 minutes might be a ways away.
Regardless of the time it took to accomplish the task of completing Elden Ring without taking a single hit, it can’t be emphasized enough how incredible this feat is for a player like Seki. It shows an impressive mastery of the game that most players might not even consider possible after being repeatedly beaten down by an Elden Ring boss 100 times. However, fans of this kind of content may want to keep an eye out because Seki will likely continue to improve on the feat, as history has shown with the player’s equally impressive wins in previous FromSoftware titles.
Elden Ring is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S.
