Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

One could think that after two years 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 attempted to complete the game with only a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a single branch—meaning, the very same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character acquires full stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the states of the original two.

That causes new issues, though. The fused file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the game that refuses to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls across universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is still a weak weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows Link to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not completely a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.