Streaming Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven 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 The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to finish the game using just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a one stick—meaning, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the time he went through the game using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate 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 file, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this character gains full stamina and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That creates fresh problems, though. The merged file has a Link that never acquired the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the game that fails to open certain locations. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that enables Link to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still just a stick. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.