Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a gameplay session. However, while numerous players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a single branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the game with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that combines the conditions of the original two.

That causes fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a Link that never obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the title that refuses to load some locations. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear issue, as the character he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to clip through the world. A few would find these means reason to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a penalty of sorts stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last several long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.