On July 9, well into the night, Twitch streamer Ainrun roared with relief after beating Elden Ring’s final boss. After two and a half hours of exhaustion, he had finished the game without receiving a blow from any enemy or spending a single rune to make his character stronger. “Oh my God, it’s over, boy, come on, yeah!” he said deliriously. “Oh my God, fuck this game. Elden Ring level 1 rune unsuccessful, yes!
Elden Ring can be a frustrating but gratifyingly difficult game on its own terms. Once finished, however, die-hard fans have had to find other ways to keep the challenge alive. Speedrunners finish the game as quickly as humanly possible (currently a little over an hour without using bugs). One has defeated all the big bosses using only his ass. Even among these feats, races without success and without levels have a special place. There is something as simple as it is incredibly old about effort.
“I’ve been doing unsuccessful executions and game speeds from FromSoftware since 2020, starting with Dark Souls 1,” Ainrun told Kotaku in an email. Since then, he has made unsuccessful executions of all three Dark Souls games, as well as Sekiro, and has even completed a “trilogy” execution where unsuccessful plays had to take place sequentially. Now focused on Elden Ring, the open world design allows for some interesting options and more room for strategy.
That’s how the previous attempt ended, by the way pic.twitter.com/RHJtbXw5Mh
– Ainrun (@Ainrun_ttv) July 10, 2022
While well-known Souls streamers like The Happy Hob have already completed RL1 No Hit Runs, these skip the game’s first boss, the Grafted Scion. You have to jump over a cliff and die to advance to the start of the game, regardless of whether the Scion is defeated. But where other streamers overlooked the initial fight, Ainrun considers it an important part of the race (she blatantly refers to hers as the “best” version of this type of race).
“Personally I think this breaks a sequence that the developers intended for you to go through with the game, so I choose to do the fighting,” he said. In his opinion, this first Scion is actually one of the most difficult bosses of the race without success. “I spent a lot of time practicing it, looking for openings to take advantage of,” he said. “I was also motivated by the fact that most other players choose to omit this boss. In my opinion, a ‘challenge’ race like the one I’ve done is supposed to be a challenge, [so] using shortcuts doesn’t really make sense. ”Players like YeetsMeMario have also incorporated Scion fighting into their careers.
From here, it’s about executing some key strategies against a couple of specific bosses. Since there are no levels, character constructions are quite minimal, but they still play an important role. The Ainrun prefers to carry the great spear of the Snake Hunter, as it is fast, does a lot of damage and requires little investment. After collecting it in the arena of Rykard’s head, it is further optimized with the Red Mane’s War Ashes Flame. It hurts a lot in the posture, and Ainrun’s goal is to stagger the heads and then punish them as much as possible while they are stunned.
While this is a proven and true strategy in Elden Ring in general, it is especially important in fighting head-on against Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy. In his snake form, his “ground shock” attack is incredibly difficult to dodge, so Ainrun makes sure to kill him before he can ever get him out. “A member of my community named Arham devised a brilliant strategy of using Rykard’s sleeping pots at the beginning of his first phase that would put him to sleep for about two seconds,” he said. “That fight was the most accurate fight of the race where I had to run perfectly.”
Gideon Ofnir is another fool. The wizard has an arsenal of splashed spells that must be faced. Previously, players skipped it using an off-limits parkour trick. In the last patch, this is no longer an option. A runner named Vswed devised a strategy to stun Gideon using a clamp with bleeding specifications. However, this did not work for Ainrun, so he and his community decided to use crouching, which is most often used in PvP to trap invaders. “This meant that I could only kill this boss based on my execution instead of relying on it [an] extra buff, ”he said.
But even with practice and planning, racing can still end in disaster. In a previous RL1 No Hit race attempt the same night, Ainrun executed it all perfectly only to run into a needle attack in the final moments of the final boss fight. “Elden Beast was supposed to make another attack (rings) that I normally use to find out where the next head will appear and kill him as he approaches, but he made a needle rain attack, which is very difficult to avoid and the last needles cut me off and ended my career, ”he said. Without losing a rhythm he started again and nailed it all.
One of the most amazing things about the race is not even finishing like a top notch bush, but doing it so fast. With just over two hours, the game unfolds at a breakneck pace. Ainrun then focuses on completing the unsuccessful execution trilogy by adding a successful attempt by all the main bosses. Once this is done, it will address it with the “no levels” requirement. While Elden Ring will get DLC in the future, players like Ainrun show that even after hundreds of hours there are always new mountains to climb.