Since Tears of the Kingdom arrived last month, Legend of Zelda fans have spent an incredible amount of energy relentlessly exploring the picturesque plains of Hyrule and enjoying what they have to offer.
Some players have been dedicating most of their time in the game so far to building and sharing an array of interesting contraptions that can unleash waves of destruction, help solve platforming puzzles, or make it easier to get around, while others have been trying to find as many glitches and secrets as possible.
On the other hand, if you’re someone who has an interest in trying to scythe through the game as quickly as possible, SmallAnt’s latest stream might be worth checking out.
Have you made it to the end of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s main story yet?
The streamer, who’s recently managed to achieve 100% completion in the game and beat it without using any weapons, bows, or shields has, as of their latest broadcast, decided to have a go at speedrunning it, putting their experience of doing the same in previous Zelda titles to the test.
They began by establishing the ground rules that they’d be making their run attempts in version 1.1.0 of the game and skipping the intro to avoid having to sit through seven minutes of cutscenes, even though this would make the runs ineligible to be submitted to the game’s Speedrun.com leaderboard.
Their first run saw them finish the game in an hour and eight minutes, which then became the benchmark to beat. By the end of the stream, they’d managed to grind their time down to just under a minute, stopping the clock at 59 minutes and 58 seconds, following several tense moments spent yelling at Link to grab Zelda’s hand more quickly, fulfilling the goal of beating the game in under an hour.
Despite the skipped intro, this impressive feat still ranked several minutes behind the game’s any% v1.0.0 world record at the time, which was held by another streamer, gymnast86, with a mind-boggling 53 minutes and 55 second run that you can watch in full below.
Amazingly, this run has since been beaten by a 53 minute and 39 second run from another speedrunner, Player5, which looks to be the current record as of writing and was set during a seven-hour-long streaming session.
Given how new Tears of the Kingdom still is, odds are this record will soon be surpassed, as speedrunners inevitably find more strategies and routes that could well get the top any% time down to a time around the 23/24 minute mark that some have managed in Breath of the Wild.
Regardless of what you’re getting up to in Tears of the Kingdom while you wait for its eventual DLC to arrive, make sure to follow us for a bunch of helpful guides that can aid your adventures in Hyrule by showing you how to find the secret Gerudo shop, grab a Hylian shield or unlock Skyview Towers.