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Late on July 9, Twitch streamer Ainrun roared with relief after being punched elden ringthe last boss. After a grueling two and a half hours, he finished the game without getting hit by an enemy or spending a single rune to boost his character. “Oh my god it’s over dude let’s go yeah!” he said madly. “Oh my god dude screw this game. elden ring Rune Level One No-Hit-Run, yes!”
elden ring can be a frustrating but rewardingly difficult game in its own right. However, once completed, die-hard fans had to find other ways to keep the challenge alive. Speedrunners end the game as quickly as possible (currently just over an hour without glitches). You have defeated every big boss only use her ass. Also among these achievements, the no-hit, no-leveling runs occupy a special place. There’s something straightforward and incredibly old-school about the endeavor.
“I did no-hit runs and speed runs FromSoftware Games since 2020, starting with Dark Souls 1,” said Ainrun kotaku in an email. He has since completed all three no-hit runs Dark Souls games as well Sekiro, and even completed a “trilogy” run where the no-hit runs had to be all back-to-back. He’s concentrating on that now elden ringwhose open-world design allows for some interesting choices and more room for strategy.
Although known souls streamers like The happy hob If you have already completed RL1 No Hit Runs, they will skip the game’s first boss, the Grafted Scion. You have to cliff jump and die to get to the beginning of the game, regardless of whether the Scion is defeated. But where other streamers sidestepped the initial struggle, Ainrun considers it an important part of the run (he cheekily calls him “the best” version of this barrel type).
“Personally, I feel like this breaks a sequence that the developers intended for progression in the game, so I’m going with the fight,” he said. In his opinion, this first Scion is actually one of the more difficult bosses in the no-hit run. “I’ve spent a lot of time practicing it and looking for opportunities to take advantage of it,” he said. “I was also motivated by the fact that the majority of other players skip this boss. In my opinion a “challenge” run like the one I did should be challenging, [so] Using shortcuts doesn’t really make sense.” Players like YeetsMeMario have also incorporated the Scion fight into their runs.
From there, it’s all about executing a few key strategies against a few specific bosses. Since there is no leveling, the character builds are pretty minimal, but still play an important role. Ainrun prefers wielding the Serpent Hunter’s Great Spear as it’s fast, deals high damage, and requires little investment. After picking that up from Rykard’s boss arena, he further tweaks it with the Ashes of War Red Mane Flame. It deals a lot of posture damage, and Ainrun’s goal is to stagger bosses and then punish them as much as possible while they’re stunned.
While this is a proven strategy in elden ring In general, it is especially important in the boss fight against Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy. In his snake form, his Earthquake attack is incredibly difficult to dodge, so Ainrun makes sure to kill him before he can ever parry it. “A member of my community named Arham had a brilliant strategy of treating Rykard with sleep pots early in his first phase, which would make him sleep for about two seconds,” he said. “This fight was the most precise fight of the run where I had to execute perfectly.”
Gideon Ofnir is another sucker. The wizard has an arsenal of sizzling spells that he must face head-on. Previously, players jumped him with an out-of-bounds parkour trick. In the latest patch, this is no longer an option. A runner called Vswed devised a strategy to stun Gideon with a bleed-spec rapier. That didn’t work for Ainrun, however, so he and his community instead opted for crouch pox, which is more commonly used in PvP Roll catch invaders. “It meant I could just kill that boss depending on my execution instead of relying on it [an] Extra buff,” he said.
But even practice and planning runs can still end in disaster. On a previous RL1 no-hit run attempt that same night, Ainrun executed everything perfectly only to get caught in a needle attack in the final moments of the final boss fight. “The Elden Beast was supposed to do another attack (rings) which I usually use to figure out where the boss spawns next and kill him when he spawns, but instead he did a needle rain attack that was very difficult to avoid is and the last few needles cut me off and ended my run,” he said. Without missing a beat, he started over and nailed everything.
One of the most amazing things about running is not even ending up as a level 1 peel, but doing it so quickly. After a little over two hours, the playthrough unfolds at a breakneck pace. Next, Ainrun focuses on completing the no-hit run trilogy by adding a successful one All main bosses to attempt. Once that’s done, he’ll tackle it with a “no leveling” requirement. While elden ring DLC will still be around in the future, players like Ainrun showing that there is still some after hundreds of hours always climbing new mountains.
