Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although numerous players have attempted to complete the game using only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the game using only bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. 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 distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link gains full endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to instruct the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This causes new problems, however. The fused save file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the game that fails to open certain areas. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is still a weak weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables him to phase through the environment. Some would find these means reason to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest spares the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all only a stick. He is unable to always clone items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.