An Elden Ring player finished the game without being hit or levelling up in just 2.5 hours

rockpapershotgun.com:

Elden Ring is challenging, it’s fair to say. That’s why the idea of tackling the game’s die-rise-repeat formula without taking a single hit and never levelling your character’s runes is pretty dang impressive. Well, Elden Ring streamer Ainrun managed to do that, and didn’t skip the Grafted Scion boss like other streamers. Nice.

Ainrun finally took out Elden Ring’s final boss in the wee hours of July 10th, but he’d only started two and a half hours before. His reaction? “Oh my god dude fuck this game. Elden Ring rune level one no-hit run, yes!” That sounds about right. You can watch Ainrun’s successful run in full on his Twitch archive here. He’d been foiled right at the end of an earlier run, but rolled off that to land the successful attempt:

This was how the earlier attempt ended btw pic.twitter.com/RHJtbXw5Mh

“In my opinion, a ‘challenge’ run like what I’ve done is supposed to be challenging, [so] using shortcuts doesn’t really make sense,” Ainrun told Kotaku. His build used the speedy Serpent-Hunter Great Spear and the fiery Ash Of War called Flame of the Redmanes. His strategy was to stagger bosses and go in for the kill, which seems to have worked pretty well for Ainrun. He says the trickiest bosses were Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy and Gideon Ofnir. Rykard’s groundshock attack as a serpent isn’t easy to dodge so Ainrun had to finish him off before that phase, and the sorcerous Ofnir required a crouch-poking strategy to topple him.

Elden Ring is on Steam for £50/$60/€60. If you’re still struggling with the game then check out Hayden’s Elden Ring walkthrough. You might want to read through our guide to the best builds for Elden Ring too.