For Valheim there are now official speedrun categories including leaderboards and a world record. While many players need hundreds of hours to defeat all bosses in the game, one player has completed all five in less than 90 minutes. All without cheats, but with a few tricks.
This is the record: The player and speedrunner NickRawcliffe has defeated all bosses in Valheim in one hour, 23 minutes, and 46 seconds – a world record as of now (via speedrun.com).
How did he do it? Rawcliffe played in a so-called “New Game+”. He didn’t start completely fresh, but took his character from an old save. This is allowed in this speedrun category.
He was allowed to bring all items from a previous save that can also be obtained in the game. Cheat items like the sword Dyrnwyn are prohibited. However, he could set all skills to the maximum level if he wanted.
In his inventory were some of the items needed to summon bosses as well as some food, weapons, and armor. This saved him time gathering resources or crafting items. We have included the full run with his video here for you:
Valheim Speedruns with Special Rules
How does such a speedrun work? There are different categories for speedruns. Rawcliffe’s record is found under the category “All Bosses, New Game+, Random Seed, Glitchless”. There are some rules:
- all bosses must be defeated (in any order)
- cheats/admin commands during the speedrun are prohibited
- the character can be carried over from an old save
- the old character may even be upgraded with cheats, as long as the upgrades could also be obtained without cheats
- the world (“seed”) must be generated randomly
- exploits like clipping through walls with the help of a chair are prohibited
The seed determines what the world looks like, where bosses and special items spawn. If the seed were not random, speedrunners could simply choose a world where all bosses spawn directly. You can read more about this in our best seeds in Valheim and what you can find there.
The rules are not officially from the game, but set by the Valheim speedrunning community. The players want to set a challenge for themselves and master it – similar to the player who only wants to kill the end boss in his “Boss Challenge”.
The challenge in the speedrun is to find the bosses as quickly as possible. Since the seeds must be generated randomly, each boss is always in a specific biome, but not guaranteed to be found.
Rawcliffe had to find all Vegvisirs first, which show him the locations of the bosses, and then visit and defeat the bosses. He was especially lucky with the end boss Yagluth – during the search for the Vegvisir, he stumbled directly over the boss’s altar and was able to fight him right away.
In our guide, you can find out how to summon and defeat all bosses in Valheim.
How can I participate? The leaderboard is generally open to everyone, and the community around Valheim speedrunning is just getting started. So you still have good chances to secure a spot.
It is important that your entire speedrun is recorded without edits and submitted. A timer must run that accurately tracks when you start the game and reach the goal. All of this will then be uploaded and presented on the website speedrun.com. There are different categories:
- All bosses
- Specific bosses
- Multiplayer
- along with various specifications such as New Game, New Game+, Glitchless, Standard, Random, or Set Seed
A speedrun is a great way to set yourself a new goal in Valheim if you find you have nothing else to do. Try to break a record. For example, there is already a German record for the boss Eikthyr by player Nilsibus, who currently ranks 6th in the world. Alternatively, you can find here on MeinMMO 5 things you can do in Valheim after defeating the end boss.
