The Soulsborne series, encompassing Dark Souls and Elden Ring, is characterized by its challenging difficulty and its incredibly complex, interconnected world design. For speedrunners, these games offer a unique challenge: exploiting the very rules of the world to bypass vast sections of content, defeat bosses instantly, and minimize completion time. While developers patch many major exploits, critical glitches, skips, and sequencing breaks often remain viable, forming the foundation of world-record attempts. This comprehensive guide details the most crucial, often precise, speed-runner secrets across the Dark Souls trilogy and Elden Ring, focusing on hidden movement exploits, key boss sequence breaks, and high-level routing secrets essential for mastering any run category.
Mastering Movement: Essential Skips and Sequence Breaks
The core of any successful speedrun lies in utilizing unique movement exploits and clipping techniques to bypass intended progression barriers, radically altering the game’s internal sequencing.
Dark Souls III: The Irythill Dungeon Skip
This high-level skip allows runners to bypass the entire Irithyll Dungeon and a significant portion of Profaned Capital, dropping directly onto a lower section of the map. It requires highly specific positioning and a fall control item/spell (like the Cat Ring or Spook sorcery). The unmarked secret is using a precise off-camera angle on a railing to clip through the geometry, saving crucial minutes in both All Bosses and Any% runs.
Elden Ring: The Great Rune Skip (Rykard’s Great Rune)
In high-level Elden Ring runs, obtaining Rykard’s Great Rune is often expedited by a precise, early-game skip. This involves using a hidden death plane exploit near the cliffs of Caelid to quickly warp to the entrance of the Volcano Manor area without completing the entire Mt. Gelmir climb or joining the covenant. This sequence break is vital for rushing the end-game requirements.
Dark Souls Remastered: Kiln of the First Flame Early Access
The ultimate sequence break in the original Dark Souls involves accessing the Kiln of the First Flame far earlier than intended. This requires an advanced, frame-perfect sequence break using the “Fall Control” mechanic and a specific jump near the Catacombs/Tomb of the Giants area, allowing runners to bypass the need for all four Lord Souls. This skip is the cornerstone of the Any% world record category.
Boss Assassination: Hidden Glitches for Instant Kills
Certain bosses, particularly those with complex geometry or inconsistent coding, can be exploited using highly specific attack patterns or positioning, often leading to instant or near-instantaneous defeat.
Elden Ring: The Commander Niall Instant Kill
This glitch, which remains viable in certain patches, relies on a highly specific geometry manipulation technique. By leading Commander Niall (boss of Castle Sol) to a certain invisible boundary near the fog gate and initiating a guard counter or specific heavy attack, the boss can sometimes be triggered into falling off the map, resulting in an instant defeat and the quick acquisition of his Great Rune.
Dark Souls III: The Gael Phase Skip
In the Ringed City DLC, a high-level Phase Skip exploit against Slave Knight Gael exists. By maximizing burst damage (often using specialized weapon arts or specific spell combinations) during a small window in his Phase Two transition, runners can bypass his entire third phase, accelerating the fight significantly. The secret is maximizing damage input while his animation is playing, abusing the damage threshold mechanic.
Dark Souls II: The Old Dragonslayer Fall Exploit
In Dark Souls II, the Old Dragonslayer boss (Heide’s Tower) can often be tricked into falling off the edge of his arena. By utilizing highly aggressive positioning and specific baiting techniques near the perimeter of the circular arena, the boss’s collision detection can be momentarily bypassed, resulting in a fall that instantly awards the soul. This is a crucial early-game shortcut.
Item and Resource Manipulation: Inventory Exploits
Speedrunners often utilize glitches involving the game’s inventory and menu systems to gain immediate access to high-tier gear or resources, bypassing long farming sessions.
Elden Ring: The Rune Duplication Glitch
The most impactful exploit in Elden Ring speedrunning (and casual play) is the Rune Duplication glitch. This typically involves a specific sequence of menu inputs (like storing and withdrawing items rapidly) combined with the use of Golden Runes to force the game to miscalculate the inventory values, resulting in massive, instant currency acquisition. This is the unmarked key to immediately meeting the minimum stats for end-game weapon requirements.
Dark Souls III: The Item Quick Swap (TearStone Ring)
While not a duplication, DS3 runners utilize the Quick Inventory Swap to gain maximum advantage. This involves assigning the Red TearStone Ring to the quick menu and equipping it at the last possible moment before a boss lands a hit. This allows the runner to instantly gain the 20% damage buff, maximizing a “One-Shot” potential without having to manually navigate the menu, effectively exploiting the game’s timing.
Conclusion: Exploiting the Rules of Geometry
For the dedicated speedrunner, the Elden Ring and Dark Souls series are puzzles waiting to be broken. Mastery is achieved by understanding not just enemy patterns, but the game’s internal code limitations. By learning the precise jumps for the DS3 Irithyll Skip, abusing the Elden Ring Great Rune skip for early access, and mastering the intricate Rune Duplication glitches, runners turn insurmountable challenges into minor obstacles, constantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible within the fragmented worlds of FromSoftware.
GGC