Hitless gaming pro Heyblasty put over 800 hours into beating Borderlands 2 without taking damage, and less than a day before he finally managed his goal, challenge run streamer darksmoke11 did it first. 

“Yeah, darksmoke11 got the run less than a day before me,” Heyblasty notes in a Reddit thread, though darksmoke11 only started the Sisyphean undertaking about two months ago after being motivated by Heyblasty’s initial commitment to it, and ended up using a similar overall route. But it was never a real competition. 

“The dude is really good,” Heyblasty congenially says about darksmoke11 on Twitter. “As soon as I saw his first attempt, I knew that the ‘world’s first’ was not going to be free.”

If anything, it’s exciting that two expert Borderlands 2 players managed to do what many people thought was inconceivable. As a bloody shooter filled with damage numbers, Borderlands 2 provides a single-player experience that’s sometimes punishing and always riddled with bullets, though the game ultimately proved to be no match for either Heyblasty or darksmoke11. 

Borderlands 2 was the 112th game Heyblasty knocked out with a no-hit run. He tells bewildered fans on Twitter that “I’ve been doing hitless for the past six years now. The more runs you get the less hype you feel at the end.” That’s another thing Heyblasty and darksmoke11 have in common: after performing flawless takedowns of the Warrior monster in Borderlands 2’s final boss fight, both players hardly reacted at all. 

“Dude, I just beat Borderlands 2 without taking damage,” darksmoke11 declares in monotone. “That’s awesome.” It really is. 

Borderlands fan will get to see Borderlands 4 early after Gearbox agrees to fly him to the studio following cancer diagnosis: “I never expected anything like this.”