It’s fun to watch people speedrun Dark Souls. It’s a game famous for its punishing difficulty, yet speedrunners show how it’s possible to bend the game to your will. 19-year-old Alex (aka NaxHPL) just achieved the world record for one way to complete the game, allowing him to finish it in 25 minutes and 17 seconds. He didn’t even realise he’d become a record holder!
There are three different kinds of speedruns for Dark Souls, and this one is called “Any% Kiln Skip”. Here’s how the website Speed Souls explains the difference between the three runs:
- Any% Triggering the end credits (done on the current patch).
- Any% Kiln Skip: Triggering the end credits after utilising the Kiln Skip. Possible on the latest patch only on Xbox 360.
- All Bosses: Triggering the end credits after defeating every boss enemy, including the DLC.
The whole run is below, and I’ll guide you through how he pulls it off afterwards:
He’s moving fast, obviously, and manages to take out the first boss in a couple of strikes. Then again, that’s fair game for anyone who’s played Dark Souls before. What caught my eye was the great risks he takes in rolling himself off various cliffs to save time. Falling off a ledge, dying and potentially losing all of your souls was one of my greatest fears. Here, it’s no big deal.
Though Alex achieved a world record time, he actually screwed up a few times, including circling around and trying to fight a black knight for way too long…
…and falling off a ledge in Anor Londo.
This cost the run precious seconds, which should have doomed it, but Alex kept going. The reason he’s able to complete the game so quickly — the any% run is over an hour — is thanks to a glitch removing most of the second half of the game, dumping the player at the very end.
“You can skip to the Kiln when you get the Lordvessel. Rest at firelink and go to firelink altar, walk to kiln door turn right and jump off. When it gets to loading screen quit the game, when you turn back on you will be inside kiln, the door will be closed so the only way out would be homeward bone/dark sign or death.”
The glitch is only possible on certain versions of the game, except on Xbox 360.
As Alex puts the finishing touches on the game’s final boss, Gwyn, he concedes the run didn’t go very well. As he skips past the end credits, he prepares for the worst. Fortunately, the game reveals he pulled off the record, prompting him to immediately drop his head onto his desk.
Congrats Alex!
Comments
5 responses to “Dark Souls Speedrunner Breaks World Record Without Realising It”
It may just be me, but using a glitch to skip half the game seems a bit odd for a speedrun record. Then again I am pretty much the complete opposite to a speedrunner so maybe it’s a usaul thing to do. Personally I’d consider the record for speedrunning through every required part of the game a bit more legitimate.
I feel exactly the same way.
Speed running has different requirements. Some have 100% runs other any %. Some are allowed glitches, some aren’t. Pretty well done regardless.
Agreed. I don’t see the point in a speed run involving a glitch that allows you to skip half the game.
There are different categories for exactly that reason. Mostly though, runners choose them based on what they find most interesting to play not what is considered “legitimate”.
For example, the Ocarina of Time any% speedrun requires you to glitch out of Kokiri forest, get a bottle and then use a glitch to go straight from the boss room of the Deku tree to the destruction of Ganon’s tower. It takes roughly 20 minutes.
Most people don’t do the Any% kiln skip category in Dark Souls for a couple of reasons: 1) It requires that you play on the 360 version without DLC. Many Dark Souls runners tend to do the all bosses run which can only be done with the DLC and the PC version is the preferred version of the game. 2) It’s not as interesting as the other categories.
A lot of people complain about speed runners using glitches and how that’s not the point of the game or it’s not legitimate. Unfortunately, that’s not the point of speed running. Speed running a game is using whatever is available to you within the game (that means glitches are okay but cheats are not) to get to the end as fast as possible. The entire exercise is arbitrary, which is why there are categories with arbitrary goals. Of course, all competitions can be said to have arbitrary goals and it’s up to the competitors to set those goals.