Streaming Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single branch—specifically, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with zero stamina. A single stick run, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially important when working with the most fragile tool in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, however. The merged file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the title that fails to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The video version of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all just a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.