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

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have attempted to complete the game with just a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. But if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable build of the game that refuses to load some areas. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he pulls between universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll ban one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest spares the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate items during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so technically, it's not completely a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

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