Elden Ring Speedrunner Conquers the Game Using Only Butt Slams

The Elden Ring speedrunning community has never been known for playing things safe, but 2026 has already delivered one of its most absurdly entertaining challenge runs yet. A legendary runner who goes by Distortion2 has managed to clear the entire game without ever swinging a weapon, casting a spell, or even throwing a punch in the traditional sense. Instead, every single enemy in the Lands Between was taken down by the force of a well-timed butt slam.

Yes, you read that correctly. The only source of damage during the entire run came from the character repeatedly dropping their posterior onto hostile creatures, humanoid bosses, and demigods alike. This isn't a late-game novelty build either. Distortion2 started the journey with the humble Ground Slam Ash of War, an ability that sees the Tarnished leap and then crash hip-first into the ground. As the run progressed, it was upgraded to flashier variants like Golden Slam and Erdtree Slam, but the core philosophy never changed: if it couldn't be killed with a butt, it wasn't worth killing.

Watching the footage is equal parts hilarious and anxiety-inducing. The Ground Slam family of skills demands extreme proximity to the target. The damage trigger only activates when the player's body actually connects with the enemy's hitbox, meaning that a misjudged distance of a few pixels can result in a harmless puff of dust while the opponent gleefully counters. And because the animation locks the character into a full jumping-and-landing sequence, dodging mid-slam is impossible. The window between committing to an attack and landing safely is a glaring vulnerability that most normal players would consider a dealbreaker for a serious run.

Yet Distortion2 managed to exploit exactly that risky window with near-perfect timing. The moment an enemy staggered or paused between combos, the butt would descend like a hairy meteor. Despite the slow startup, the Ash of War carries a respectable amount of poise damage, which means it can break an enemy's stance surprisingly often. Against bosses like Margit or Godrick, early staggers turned into critical hit opportunities that were promptly followed by another set of cheeks to the skull. This rhythmic sequence of poise break → critical → ground slam gave the run a weirdly hypnotic flow that kept viewers glued to the stream.

Completing the game this way took just over two hours, a time that could be considered blisteringly fast for a meme run. To put that into perspective, many casual first playthroughs still clock in north of 100 hours. The speed speaks volumes about Distortion2's mechanical mastery and deep understanding of Elden Ring's damage calculations. Every bonk was optimized: positioning for simultaneous damage against groups, using elevation to slightly shorten the jump animation, and memorizing exactly which phases of every major fight allowed a full slam without retaliation.

This kind of creative self-restriction has become a hallmark of the speedrunning scene in recent years. Traditional any% records once plummeted to around nine minutes, pushing the community to seek fresh frontiers. Runners began imposing bizarre limitations — no leveling, no rolling, even voice-controlled inputs. Distortion2 himself has a history of turning the impossible into a Tuesday afternoon, having previously beaten the game with a dance pad and a saxophone controller. The butt-only run feels like a natural evolution of that experimentation, tapping into the same urge that makes gamers attempt Soul Level 1 runs or pacifist playthroughs.

From a design perspective, it's a testament to how mechanically open Elden Ring truly is. The Ash of War system allows almost any skill to be attached to almost any weapon, giving players the freedom to transform a basic butt slam into an endgame nuke with the right stat investment and talisman setup. Distortion2 leaned heavily into faith scaling for the Erdtree Slam and made clever use of talismans that boost skill damage and poise damage. Clips shared online show late-game foes like Maliketh crumpling under repeated orbital strikes of glutes, a sight that still feels surreal even after dozens of rewatches.

What makes this particular challenge so memorable isn't just the comedy. It's the interplay between absurdity and genuine skill. Every successful slam looked like a practical joke the universe decided to allow. Fans in 2026 have already created montages, mods that replace all enemy sounds with cartoonish \u201cboing\u201d noises, and even a new speedrunning category called "Butt%". While that category remains unofficial for now, the community\u2019s enthusiasm suggests it might not stay that way for long. Other runners have started experimenting with butt-only boss kills, and one brave soul allegedly attempted a no-hit variant before promptly getting pancaked by a Runebear.

The cultural impact spills beyond the speedrunning bubble. Memes comparing the Tarnished\u2019s newfound combat technique to professional wrestling moves and old-school platformer stomps have flooded social media. It's a rare moment where a hyper-competitive corner of gaming accidentally creates something that casual fans can laugh about without needing to understand frame data or routing theory. Even FromSoftware\u2019s silent acknowledgment — a cryptic tweet featuring nothing but a peach emoji — was enough to send the community into delighted speculation.

Looking ahead, this run raises an obvious question: what\u2019s next? If an entire demigod-slaying journey can be completed using only contact damage from a sitting motion, then the ceiling for creative challenges has been blown wide open. Maybe someone will finish the game using only the kick attack. Perhaps a marathon run where every boss gets defeated by a different insultingly silly Ash of War. Whatever the next frontier is, Distortion2\u2019s butt-powered triumph will always be remembered as the moment where Elden Ring speedrunning proved once and for all that skill and stupidity can coexist beautifully — and that a well-placed tush can topple even the Elden Beast.

Recent trends are highlighted by Polygon, whose coverage of gaming culture helps frame why spectacle challenge runs like Distortion2’s Elden Ring “butt slam only” clear resonate beyond speedrunning leaderboards: they turn deep mechanical systems (poise breaks, animation commitment, Ash of War scaling, and routing discipline) into a shareable comedic narrative that still rewards mastery, effectively transforming a technical optimization exercise into a community-wide meme-and-montage moment.