The $10,000 Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree speedrun tournament is over, and the winner is $4,000 richer after taking first place in "the final hours"

gamesradar.com:

The $10,000 tournament held by Elden Ring speedrunner Distortion2 has come to an end, and the winner submitted the winning run just hours before the deadline. 

For a quick primer, the goal of the tournament was to kill all Shadow of the Erdtree Remembrance bosses and Bayle the dragon at level 1 using only DLC weapons, with the additional caveat that you can only gain one Scadutree level each time you beat a boss. Runners could also use any of the items available on the premade character save files, most notably talismans. A few glitches were allowed, especially those that skip areas like the newly discovered pegasus walk, but this wasn't your typical any% clear where runners just zip to the end and kill bosses with gravity. 

The winning run comes from Spicee, who one-upped second place runner Blanix in "the final hours" of the tournament, as Distortion2 announced in Discord. Spicee managed a 1:14:41 run, while second place clocks in at 1:17:05. That might not sound like much, but a 144-second lead is actually the second-biggest time gap apart from the 9th and 10th placements, with last place coming in at 1:29:14. With the way the tournament prize was divided up, Spicee will walk away $4,000 richer. 

Naturally, the whole run was streamed and recorded. The opening minutes are among the most fascinating. Spicee goes for the Blade of Mercy DLC talisman, which boosts damage after a critical hit, and the Great Katana from the opening swamp. They also snag the Firespark Perfume Bottle, the Repeating Crossbow, a couple of Scadutree Fragments, and some thin beast bones to craft throwables which come in later. 

Spicee submitted several other runs before ultimately taking first place, and you can see the refinement that went into their routing. The little optimizations add up to precious seconds saved. Throwing knives are used to distract some enemies in order to snag items like the Carian Thrusting Shield and Flame Spear Ash of War, for instance, with the latter coming in