On July 9, late at night, Twitch streamer Ainrun shouted in relief after being defeated Elden Ringthe ultimate boss of. After two and a half grueling hours, he finished the game without being attacked by any enemies or spending a single rune to make his character stronger. “Oh my god, it’s over, let’s go, yeah!” he said deliriously. “Oh my god dude, this game. Elden Ring rune level one no-hit run, yes! “
Elden Ring can be a nasty game but has very hard rewards on its own terms. Once completed, however, die-hard fans had to find other ways to keep the challenge alive. Speedrunners end the game Humans as fast as possible (currently just over an hour without using a glitch). One who beat every big boss just use their ass. Even among these feats, missed, uneven runs hold a special place. There’s something both plain and simple about effort.
“I did miss runs and speed runs Word software games as of 2020, starting with Dark souls 1,” said Ainrun Kotaku in an email. He has since made no hits of all three Dark souls games, as well as Sekiro. He is currently focusing on Elden Ringfeatures an open-world design that allows for some fun choices and more room for strategy.
While being famous soul streamers like The Happy Hob having completed RL1 No Hit Run, those bypass the game’s first boss, Grafted Scion. You must jump over a cliff and die to start the game, regardless of whether Scion is defeated or not. But when other streamers ignored the original fight, Ainrun considered it an important part of the race (he boldly calling him “the best” version of this run).
“Personally, I feel this breaks a chain the developers intended you to go through in order to progress with the game, so I chose to join the fight,” he said. In his opinion, the first Scion is actually one of the harder bosses on the run unaffected. “I spent a lot of time practicing it, looking for loopholes to take advantage of,” he said. “I am also motivated by the fact that the majority of other players choose to ignore this boss. In my opinion, a ‘challenging’ run like the one I did is supposed to be challenging, [so] using keyboard shortcuts doesn’t really make sense”. Players like YeetsMeMario also incorporated the Scion fight into their race.
From there, it’s about executing some key strategy against a few specific bosses. Since there’s no leveling up, character building is pretty minimal, but still plays an important role. Ainrun prefers to use the large spear Serpent-Hunter because it is fast, deals a lot of damage and requires little investment. After picking that up from Rykard’s boss arena, he continued to optimize with the Ash of the Redmanes Flame of War. It deals a lot of postural damage, and Ainrun’s goal is to stagger the bosses and then punish them as much as possible while they’re stunned.
Although it is a tried and true strategy in Elden Ring in general, it is especially important in the boss fight against Rykard, the Lord of Blasphemy. In his snake form, his “ground-breaking” attack is extremely difficult to dodge, so Ainrun makes sure to kill him before he can take it down. “A member of my community named Arham came up with a great strategy of using sleep gourds on Rykard at the beginning of phase one that will put him to sleep for about two seconds,” he said. “This fight is the most accurate fight in the race that I have to perform perfectly.”
Gideon Ofnir is another lunatic. The mage has an arsenal of miscellaneous spells that put you head-to-head. Previously, players would bypass him using an out-of-bounds parkour trick. In the latest patch that is no longer an option. A runner is called Vswed devise a strategy to stun Gideon using the special Rapier. However, that didn’t work for Ainrun, so he and his community instead decided to use the slot ability, which is more commonly used in PvP to roll-catch invaders. “This means that I can kill this boss depending on my performance rather than relying on [an] increase,” he said.
But even practicing and running the plan can still end in disaster. In an earlier attempt to run RL1 No Hit on the same night, Ainrun executed everything perfectly. only to run into a needle attack in the final moments of the final boss war. “The Elden monster was supposed to do another attack (Ring) that I normally use to figure out where the boss will spawn next and kill him when he spawns, but instead he did a needle rain attack, which was very difficult to avoid and the last few needles cut through me and ended my run,” he said. Without missing a beat, he started over and nailed everything.
One of the best things about running is not even finishing level one, but doing it very quickly. Just over two hours, the game screen opened at breakneck speed. Next, Ainrun is focusing on completing the hit trilogy by adding another hit All Main Bosses effort. Once it’s done, he’ll deal with it with a “no leveling” request. While Elden Rings will receive DLC in the future, players like Ainrun show that even after hundreds of hours there is there are always new mountains to climb.
