Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous gamers have attempted to finish the game using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire game. But if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a third game file that combines the states of the original two.

This causes fresh issues, though. The fused file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the title that refuses to open some areas. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows him to phase through the world. Some would consider these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last several hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still just a stick. He can't necessarily clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer banned over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.