Elden Ring player becomes the first to beat every New Game+ difficulty back to back without getting hit, in an 8-playthrough run that somehow took under 12 hours

Three years on from the launch of Elden Ring, you'd have thought players would have exhausted every challenge run they could possibly take on, but that's clearly not the case, with one noble Tarnished achieving a seriously impressive world first in a back-to-back hitless gauntlet.

Twitch streamer and Dark Souls extraordinaire itzCBD has taken on a lot of brutal challenges across FromSoftware's relentlessly difficult action RPGs, and the latest is so brutal that no one else has accomplished it before. Not only has the streamer completed Elden Ring without getting hit, he's done it eight times in a row – completing the game over and over from regular New Game until the end of NG+7, where the difficulty is scaled as high as it can possibly go without the use of mods.

One hit wouldn't just set him back to the start of his current playthrough, but the whole challenge. For example, even if he'd powered all the way through to NG+5, even the smallest hit would catapult him back to the start of a regular ol' New Game, erasing hours of progress. Now though, after setting out on his quest earlier this month, itzCBD has done it, with the winning attempt taking less than 12 hours. That's wild in itself when you consider that, on average, each playthrough took under an hour and a half to complete.

"I just became the first person to go from the beginning of Elden Ring to the end of NG+7 without taking a single hit," itzCBD writes triumphantly on Twitter, sharing a clip of the final flawless fight against Elden Beast. "That's eight playthroughs of Elden Ring back to back, completely hitless, in under 12 hours. This was a cool run, and I'm happy I was able to complete it so quickly."

Perhaps itzCBD's speed was helped by the fact that he's taken on a similar challenge before. Last year, he completed an Elden Ring new game to NG+7 challenge at level 1 without dying. Not dying is certainly more forgiving than not getting hit at all, although doing it at level 1 makes it a massive ask – as the New Game+ playthroughs become more and more difficult, you'd very likely die in a single hit to most big bosses at that level anyway.

Obviously, though, there's a whole world to traverse that's full of smaller foes waiting to pounce, which could be a nightmare in a hitless run if you're unlucky. A similar situation put a stop to another streamer's level 1 FromSoftware "God Run 3" attempt last year, but thankfully, at long last, he completed that challenge a few days ago.

With one hand for each character, Elden Ring master beats Shadow of the Erdtree and its infamous final boss while playing on PC and PS5 at the same time.