An impressive new speedrun record has been set for the popular, indie Viking-themed survival game Valheim. The speedrun is undeniably impressive, as it beats Valheim's previous record-holder by 47 minutes.
Unlike some speedrunning communities, Valheim's community allows players to bring a fully leveled and equipped character to their runs right from the start thanks to Valheim's New Game+ mode. This makes the challenge of the speedrun center around finding Valheim's different bosses that are placed all over the game's randomly generated maps with different biomes. Some of the bosses require specific conditions to spawn that can slow runs down as players search for them.
The record-breaking speedrun comes from YouTuber NickRawcliffe, who manages to kill all of the bosses in just under 90 minutes. NickRawcliffe first finds Eikthyr, an electric Stag god, whom he swiftly kills with just a single punch thanks to his leveled Valheim character. From there, he tracks down a swamp to fight the gelatinous Bonemass boss, which can be tricky for many speedruns as players have to find a swamp with a crypt and hope that contains the boss's runestone to reveal its location.
From there NickRawcliffe tracks down the dragon boss Moder, who spawns in the tricky mountain regions of Valheim and also requires the player track down a runestone to find their location. The luckiest moment of the run comes right at the end when NickRawcliffe stumbles on the final boss of the game, Yagluth. Rather than having to spend the time hunting down the boss's runestone, he sees the boss over the horizon on a coast that is infested with goblins, which saves NickRawcliffe an incredible amount of time.
It is likely that NickRawcliffe's speedrun will eventually be beaten, potentially soon given how popular the game is. After all, much older games like Super Mario Bros. had a new speedrun record set earlier this month. However, it will likely take some time for another Valheim speedrunner to get luckier than NickRawcliffe did. Valheim's roadmap shows a lot of promising future updates, so it is only a matter of time until NickRawcliffe and other speedrunners will have more bosses added onto their runs with additional tools and biomes to explore. It will be great to see just what else comes out of Valheim's growing community, as the title continues to receive support from its developers.
Valheim is available now on PC.