Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have tried to complete the game using only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, like the instance he played the game solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That causes fresh issues, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the title that fails to open certain areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that renders encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a glitch that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would consider these means reason to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still only a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.