Many of speedrunning’s milestones tend to
be entirely arbitrary, like the world’s first 85-minute run, the world’s first 85-minute
run but with no glitches, or the world’s first 85-minute run with no bonfires, weapons,
upgrades, levels, playing as a female character with ponytail… B . There is nothing wrong with celebrating
such achievements. Still, realistically, most of these accomplishments
are bested sooner rather than later. However, in September 2022, a historic Dark
Souls All Bosses run was completed. A run that reached a milestone which can never
be broken. The last time an hour barrier fell in Dark
Souls was over 9 years ago. In fact, it was so long ago that we do not
even have the run or runner who accomplished the feat on record. Prepare to Die was in its infancy, not just
as a speedrun when the World Record got pushed under two hours for the first time. Yet, something long inconceivable, and much,
much later highly-anticipated finally happened. The traditionally most prestigious All Bosses
speedrun category was beaten in under 1 hour for the first time. To celebrate this significant occasion, I
will go over which new major strategies allowed the time to be pushed by over 3 minutes in
the past year and how an unlikely candidate would become the player most determined to
do it. Ladies and gents, this is Dark Souls Prepared
to Die Edition All Bosses in under 60 minutes. The last time you could have seen the All
Bosses speedrun on my channel was a world record of 1 hour 3 minutes and 35 seconds
from all the way back in October 2020. It was the culmination of a long effort to
reach my own arbitrary achievement and finish a run in under 1 hour and 4 minutes. The strategies utilized in the run were what
you may come to expect from a Prepare to Die Edition speedrun. An early visit to the Undead Merchant in the
Undead Burg , then a notoriously annoying Box Skip to reach the Lower Undead Burg as
fast as possible and free Sorcerer Griggs for his spells and items. Then the Gold Pine Resin was picked up. Drake Sword was obtained after Taurus Demon
, and I also attempted to acquire the Black Knight Greatsword from the Parish Tower Black
Knight. In 3 out of the 4 attempts, that wouldn’t
happen, and I would reset, but such was the fastest route at the time. To make the sword’s moveset much better,
I used the bread-and-butter moveswap glitch. Skipping through Anor Londo directly to the
Giant Blacksmith was possible by utilizing the Fall Control spell from Griggs. I used Quantity Storage to purchase all the
upgrade materials needed for my sword before fighting Ornstein and Smough. I was also looking to obtain the Red Tearstone
Ring, but instead of physically running to the garden, I used a glitch called Equip Slot
Manipulation to effectively transform an item from the Painted World into the ring. Another skip using the Fall Control in combination
with Air Rolls was performed to enter the Duke’s Archives which were locked behind
a Golden Fog Wall at the time. In the DLC, I had to complete an entire side
quest within Oolacile Township to pursue Gough to shoot down Kalameet so I could fight him
regularly. In the post-DLC late-game parts, I transitioned
my build into sorceries exploiting the immense power of Dark Bead, and cleaned up whatever
bosses were left. Finally, I parried Gwyn before showering him
with my dark arts and lit the last bonfire. With nearly four and a half thousand attempts
at my side, that was finally it. But, while the world record wouldn’t be
lowered for another year, it didn’t mean the speedrun wouldn’t see any development. The most ground-breaking strategy implemented
during the next year was Goughless Kalameet. It is a method of killing Kalameet while he’s
airborne without needing to talk to Gough beforehand. While the fight is slower, it skips having
to run around the entire Oolacile Township, allowing for a new skip to be used, which
I’ll get to in a moment. At the time, I made a video dedicated to Goughless
in which I briefly mentioned that a melee variant of the strategy was figured out because
the Dragon’s tail’s hitbox extends further down than it seems. Back then, no one could estimate how much
time a new route utilizing this strategy could save exactly. Regole was the first player to be curious
enough to find out when he slayed the record in 1 hour, 3 minutes, and 2 seconds in November
2021, but this would only mark the beginning. Over the next month, he progressively kept
improving his best all the way down to a time of 1:01:17. What was interesting about Regole’s runs
was that he chose to use the Dragon Tooth as the primary weapon instead of the Black
Knight Greatsword. It meant he did not have to rely on a random
weapon drop from the Black Knight since the Dragon Tooth is picked up from a chest in
Anor Londo. Not needing magic to kill Kalameet Goughless
allowed Regole to perform the massive Township Skip. This skip utilizes a technique called delayed
Air Rolls, in which the player first jump attacks the edge of the elevator shortcut
leading to Manus , which puts them in a specific animation. At the end of this animation,
it is possible to start chaining Air Rolls and avoid fall damage, as long as the player
has the correct equip load. More important than how this works precisely
is that the entirety of Oolacile Township is skipped, including the Dark Bead pickup
location. This meant the run’s post-DLC part needed
to be done with a melee weapon rather than sorceries. As such, abandoning all sorceries became an
attractive option, which is what Regole did. He thus didn’t have to perform the annoying
Box Skip at the start of the run since freeing Griggs was no longer necessary but had to
incorporate workaround strategies for where Fall Control or other spells had previously
been used. Fortunately, the game saw enough developments
to put these changes within the realms of possibility, such as this fantastic Moonlight
Butterfly kill using the Pike Moveswap. Because the Dragon Tooth route and a newly
revamped Black Knight Greatsword route had a similar structure while maintaining plenty
of minor differences, it was difficult to tell which one would be faster. To figure this out, I swallowed the hard pill
of having to farm a random weapon drop believing the BKGS was the quicker option. After returning from my excursion to… uh…
nowhere, I got into grinding attempts at the beginning of 2022. With 700 attempts, it became clear that the
route variant I was running could not stack up to the Dragon Tooth version, albeit by
only a slight margin. Even so, I managed to take back the record
by an improvement of 15 seconds. The sum of all my best individual segments
was down to 59 minutes flat, meaning a run close to perfect could theoretically achieve
sub 1 hour. Still, such a performance would require many
more attempts. With Elden Ring having just released, I decided
it was time to move on for a bit and leave All Bosses in the hands of others. At around the time when Regole and I were
trading world records, another runner gradually improved his All Bosses personal best and
slowly rose up through the leaderboards. This young and soon-to-be professional physicist
from Brazil went by the name Maarionete, or Mario for short. Dark Souls was not Mario’s first endeavor
in speedrunning FromSoftware games. He started with Bloodborne in 2016, climbing
to 15th place in All Bosses and 6th place in Current Patch Any%. He quickly became known as a Touhou enjoyer,
with Momiji often being seen somewhere on his screen. The limited options for practice on a console
meant he wasn’t taking himself too seriously and simply enjoyed the step-by-step improvements. He started dabbling with Dark Souls later
in 2017, even before I did, but brought a much more competitive mindset only around
3 years later. In 2020 he managed to sneak his way to the top 4 of the All Bosses leaderboards
but would quickly be pushed out by Regole and Danflesh. In 2022, just like myself, Mario falsely believed
in the BKGS supremacy and dedicated many attempts to run with the weapon. While he wasn’t quite eyeing the record
just yet, his efforts were rewarded with a third-place trophy. Then, only about 4 months removed from my low 1:01,
the routes would see another overhaul thanks to a small strategic change. This time, it became clear that the Dragon Tooth
was the faster option. Glitch hunter AndrovT figured out ways to
kill Taurus and cut Hellkite’s tail without the Gold Pine Resin, allowing for a quicker
early pathing. It introduced more luck to these tasks, but
since it is so early into the run, it became worth going for. And with the Resin skipped, killing the Black
Knight became considerably slower, meaning the BKGS route was now out of question. Mario did not hesitate and switched to the
faster Dragon Tooth as soon as possible. However, the one to take the record away from
me would be Regole. After all, he had a lot more practice, having
run Dragon Tooth all this time and already having world record experience from several
categories. He first brought the record down to 1 hour
and 45 seconds, but amidst happiness quickly acknowledged that there was more time to be
saved. And he was right, as proven by further improvement
of the record down to 1 hour and just 8 seconds. He was so close. Mere 9 extra seconds separated Regole from
making history. But perhaps due to a fear of success, perhaps
due to bad luck, hundreds of attempts passed by, and sub one hour was still out of sight. Meanwhile, In the Southern part of the Americas
, Mario set his first personal best with the Dragon Tooth at low 61 minutes. Then, as his skill with the route improved,
he lowered it to just 17 seconds behind the world record. The showdown of who would be the first runner
to break the 1-hour barrier was on. The Brazilian showed incredible form and consistency
when he set not one, not two, but three separate personal bests within a week, trailing Regole
by mere two seconds. It was so ridiculous that after verifying
the first two runs, I jokingly told him to cut it out and simply get it over with already. He then responded that these small PBs were
not on purpose under the next submission only days later. At this point, one attempt out of the tens
being performed daily was all it could take to etch one’s name into the history books. And on Thursday, September 8th, Mario got
on this attempt two hours into his stream while arguably still being a bit sleepy. It started like any other run, decent Taurus,
although not the fastest possible RNG, and a good Hellkite Drake. When approaching the rafters in Anor Londo,
Mario skipped healing, saving him around 3 seconds over playing it safe. Such an approach signaled developed confidence
in his ability to get runs started. However, when passing the Silver Knight guarding
Havel’s stash, the attempt nearly came to an end. Knowing his early game was good enough, Mario
decided to heal up before Ornstein and Smough to maximize his chances of success. Adapting on the fly according to how well
or poorly the run is going is a crucial skill top speedrunners need to possess. The O&S fight was excellent and resulted in
a pace already aiming for under an hour. The margin grew even more significant with
a fantastic Stray Demon boss fight. If from here on out Mario managed to simply
repeat what he had already done in his personal best, sub 60 would be in the bag. But of
course, speedrunning is never that simple, and that’s part of its charm. Priscilla was another place where Mario’s
chosen undead almost lost his life. After nailing one of the hardest skips of
the run at the Duke’s Archives Golden Fog Wall, the run was still far ahead after Artorias. Maybe due to the recent streak of successful attempts, however, Mario was unphased. Yet, the upcoming Kalameet is one of the run’s
most random and skill-demanding parts. Kalameet was not kind, and one of his
cycles was extremely slow, resulting in an 11-second time loss. At this point, the run was 20 seconds behind
Regole’s record, but there was still time to be gained in the late game. The comeback started with the Quelaag segment. Mario first perfectly navigated along the
pixel-wide seam in New Londo Ruins. And then got a great Quelaag boss fight. Nonetheless, Mario’s kryptonite, the Depths,
was still coming up. After losing nearly 10 seconds, the pace was
getting tight. With roughly 14 minutes left in the run, only
14 more seconds could be wasted before the sub-hour faded away. And these 14 minutes still had three frame-perfect
wrong warps needing to be performed. The first after Bed of Chaos… was first
try. After Four Kings, another first try, and what is more, Mario even completed the
segment faster than he had ever done before. With the nerves racking up, performing under
pressure is what separates the good from the best. And on this day, on this run, an aspiring
physicist was poised to prove his worth. At Nito, two more bosses and one more wrong
warp presented the final challenge. There was no margin for error anymore, and
the fights needed to be perfect. That was a fantastic Nito. Now, one more wrong warp… And another first try. Entering the Kiln of the First flame over
17 seconds ahead, two parries stood between this attempt and history, and on September
8th, 2022, the speedrunner Maarionete approached Gwyn’s arena. Saying that this is an extraordinary moment
in the history of Dark Souls speedrunning would be an understatement. It took 10 years, 10 different world record
holders, and countless community members working together for this memorable achievement. But in the end, only one player could claim
the title of the first sub-1-hour run. And with Mario’s grind, patience, and skill,
I believe this trophy is in deserving hands. Just imagine how happy he must have been. Not only did he achieve the sub-60, but he
also claimed his first ever world record in over 5 years of speedrunning. So happy that a minute later… Of course, the typical speedrunners’ reaction. But he clearly knew what he was talking about
as, since this 59:51, he further improved his best by 4 more seconds to 59:47, where
the world record stands today. Huge congratulations to Mario for being the
one to break the 1-hour barrier and claiming his first world record. Links to his Twitch and YouTube are in the
description, so make sure to give him a follow. I can’t wait to see where the category goes
next, as with a highly optimized run, even a time in the 58-minute range is now plausible. Will it be Mario who pushes it down there,
or will Regole come back and reclaim his world record? Or will it perhaps be another unlikely candidate? Only time will tell. Thank you for watching, and have a great day.
