Elden Ring’s latest glitch lets the horse take flight
It’s hard to pull off, but it may be a boon for speedrunners.
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Elden Ring speedrunners were forced to scramble for a new strategy when the game’s1.03 patchhit last week. That update heavily nerfed various speedrunning crutches used by record holder Distortion2, which has naturally led to a scramble to find better ways to break the game. Elden Ring players may already have found an answer: make the horse fly.
It’s hard to track exactly who discovered the glitch first, but theearliest videodates to March 17. It works like this: In certain areas of the map, you need to dismount Torrent immediately before letting it plunge to its death. Then, when you spawn the horse in again, it’ll be able to run across the sky, pegasus-like.
That makes it sound easy. It’s apparently a pretty difficult glitch to pull off, and can only be done in specific areas of the map. The afore-linked video shows a “launch point” outside Volcano Manor, but it’s also achievable in Mountaintop of Giants. Distortion2 has been pulling it off on Capital Outskirts.
On Distortion2’sTwitch stream, a lot of experimentation is happening, but it’s as yet unclear if the flying horse glitch will offer any tangible benefits to speedrunners (not to mention the fact that this will likely be patched onceFromSoftwarenotices). It’s possible to gallop beneath most of the Leyndell Royal Capital, but emerging safely back onto the map appears to be the next obstacle to overcome. “At this point I don’t know if doing this will be faster than just going through this place normally,” Distortion2 said on stream.
The glitch also provides access to some interiors using Torrent, though how this will be useful, again, has yet to be established. Whatever the case, it might not be long before the old sub-30 minuteElden Ring speedruncan be matched in the new 1.03 version of the game.
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Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.
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