Streaming Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose special rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a one branch—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest tool in the entire game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That causes new problems, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the title that fails to open some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective item that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that allows Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his quest spares the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

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