Elden Ring speedrunner LilAggy has pulled off what you’d be forgiven for thinking might be impossible - a complete run of the game without getting hit, while also randomizing every enemy, boss, and item (aside from the key ones).
The rules of the challenge were brutal, to say the least. Of course, the main part was simple, if not exceedingly difficult in of itself - don’t get hit. Hits were classified as either damage or staggers from enemies or traps (not environmental or self-inflicted non-lethal damage), but an exception was made for Mohg, Lord of Blood’s ‘Nihil’ attack, since it’s impossible to avoid.
Otherwise, all of the game’s enemies were random, meaning there was always the chance of meeting the notoriously Malenia right at the start of the adventure, and all items - apart from key items like Great Runes - were jumbled up, too. This means that unlike in non-randomized Elden Ring challenges where players are able to plan out their builds and grab everything they need to become an unstoppable menace right from the get-go, LilAggy had to work with whatever materialized, for better or worse.
This, combined with the requirement to beat the tutorial boss, Grafted Scion, being banned from quitting out of the game or using the Memory of Grace item to escape tricky situations, and having to re-randomize the game after every loss, you can understand why this took over a thousand attempts.
IT FINALLY HAPPENEDAFTER 1000+ ATTEMPTS... WORLD FIRST ELDEN RING ITEM + ENEMY RANDOMIZER NO HIT RUN pic.twitter.com/7L6ZLtlpQbFebruary 11, 2024
The winning run, which was streamed on Twitch over the weekend, took around four and a half hours to complete in total. Randomized hijinks included replacing Margit, the Fell Omen (generally speaking, one of the easier early story bosses), with the Godskin Duo - a tough pair of bosses who are tricky to deal with at the best of times. The finale saw Radagon swapped out for the Fallingstar Beast, and Elden Beast replaced by an Erdtree Avatar, which, on the whole, are certainly more approachable fights.
There’s no doubt that this is one of the hardest possible challenges any player could hope to pull off in Elden Ring, so to say it’s an achievement would be an understatement. We’ll have to wait and see what daunting tasks the streamer dares to take on when the DLC expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, eventually releases.
For more games like Elden Ring, be sure to check out our list of the best RPGs, as well as the best PC games.
